HALLOWEEN KILLS (2020) – Dreadful and mindless. Nice music score though.

It’s Halloween and what better way to “celebrate” the annual event by watching some horror movies. Top on the list must be Halloween Kills which capitalise in its association with festival as well as with a long running successful franchise. This movie was originally scheduled to have been released last year but was delayed one full year due to the corvid 19 pandemic. Halloween Kills takes off immediately from the ending of the last Halloween movie, the 2018 reboot simply titled Halloween. In that movie, our killer was presumably defeated and killed in a fire. Naturally he survived and continues to kill and cause havoc in the small terrorised fictional town of Haddonfield on that same faithful night of the Halloween of 2018.

Once again David Gordon Green takes on the helm as director as was the case with the 2018 reboot The movie pays tribute to the original 1978 John Carpenter original with some flashback sequences at the beginning. These provided a bit of nostalgia especially with the chilling classic music score written by John Carpenter pounding to the beat of our increasing heartbeats. But as soon as the action takes place back to the present day 2018 environment, the movie loses any edge it might have had. Director David Gordon Green seem to know only one way to provoke the scares which is through applying the lazy jump scare tactic. As I watch this, I just get the feeling that Halloween Kills is just a series of jump scares from start to finish. This sort of scare tactic can be unnerving if done creatively and scarcely but irritating when overdone as in the case here. The jump scares are invariably followed by some gruesome kill. The film makers seem to think that one bloody kill after another is entertainment! These scenes of violence become numbing when there is little plot to hold them together. It doesn’t help when all the characters behave irrationally and stupidly only to predictably be killed off one by one.

Jamie Lee Curtis the star of the series seem to be taking it easy in this installment. She spent most of the time off screen, and lying in the hospital bed recovering from her injuries from the last movie, when she is on screen! At least she is spared from looking ridiculous since she pretty much had nothing to do or say.

For me, the only redeeming value in Halloween Kills is the music score. John Carpenter’s original music score still sounds great today and has withstood the test of time perfectly.

Halloween Kills is part of the trilogy which is planned for the reboot. The final installment Halloween Ends (hopefully this is true) is slated for release next October. By virtual of that, one can safely expect killer Michael Myers to survive this episode (surprise, surprise) all logic on how he can manage to survive. I for one will not be looking forward to another mindless trip down this memory lane if this is the kind of quality that is going to be perpetuated.