Review: Halloween Kills

 

What an absolute and total piece of shit. That alone could be my entire review for this movie, but even that simple sentence - as all-encompassing as it is in my complete disdain for this self-important crime against the franchise - is not enough to satisfy me.  This movie both does and doesn't deserve the time and effort I am going to put into this review.  I am so angry at this film - and imagine that word used in its most pretentious form, because the director and writers very obviously refer to this movie in such a way - that merely dismissing it is not enough.  This is the cinematic equivalent of a festering boil sitting a half-inch from an unwiped asshole - pulsating and leaking pus - and I am going to lance this motherfucker.

Set immediately after the events of 2018 Halloween, this movie looks at what worked and didn't work in the previous entry, and doubles down on every single part that didn't work and tells the audience 'You will appreciate it his time!'  It's fitting that a key piece of imagery in this movie is a baseball bat, since director David Gordon Green and writer Danny McBride metaphorically beat the audience into submission with their 'vision' of what should be enjoyed when watching a Halloween film.  Not what people actually enjoy, mind you, what they think you should enjoy, and it's your fucking problem if you don't.

(As an aside, I realize that there is a third person credited with writing the screenplay, but I am confident that all the worst instincts of this script can be traced to McBride, with an assist from Green, so Scott Teems escapes my wrath for now)

They think they have done something so special - so subversive and hardcore and never-before-seen - when they have done something so utterly basic and trite and predictable.  "Look, we brought back a whole bunch of characters from the original movie - played by their original actors! - and you don't know who will live and who will die!"  Wow, just like how Halloween 6 brought back Tommy Doyle (played in that film by Paul Rudd in his debut) or how H20 brought back Marion Chambers as it's opening fucking kill.  Wow, how brave and different, you guys.

It's not even shocking when they kill the (vast majority) of those characters off - it's so obvious that the whole reason they were brought back for this movie was for that very reason.  If anything, they used those characters as a crutch to carry the weight of their 'message' (a stupid been-done-a-thousand-times-and-better-by-any-Living Dead-movie message: Who are the real monsters?) In fact, the whole major plot point of Tommy Doyle starting a lynch mob that goes after the wrong person (spoilers, fuck you) is so completely unnecessary to the plot of the film that it feels added in to give the movie a proper runtime more than to do anything worthwhile.  Well, a proper runtime and another needlessly gory death to add.

Jesus Christ, the gore in this movie.

I appreciate good gore effects - I will sing the praises of 1980's The Thing or 2010's Piranha 3-D to anyone willing to listen - but this movie goes right past excessive straight into exploitative.  It's one thing to show a brutal head crush or stab wound, it's quite another to linger on the suffering of the victim, or to all but caress the visual with the camera.  There's a difference between 'look at this cool shit we did with a gore effect' and what this movie does.  This movie enjoys the suffering it inflicts on the mostly-nameless victims.

And understand, this movie has a high kill count, and precious few are ones we have any connection with.  This is why bringing back the original characters all but assures their doom: The movie does nothing to make you care about any of the victims.  It's counting on nostalgia to make you care about these characters, given how precious little we get of them prior to the mayhem.  The only characters to get any sort of character work are the black couple seen getting into their car from the first film and the gay couple.

And now we are going to talk about that gay couple.

Played by Michael McDonald and Scott MacArthur, it is very obvious from the get-go that you are supposed to laugh at these characters.  The affectations, the ridiculous behaviors, the fact that they refer to each other as Big John and Little John - these characters are ridiculous and on the same level as Deputies Nick and Tom from Halloween 5 - the two deputies that famously had clown music accompanying their every appearance.

This movie so thoroughly ridicules the two - spending as much time on them as they do several of the returning characters, which is damning on multiple levels - that when Michael appears to inevitably kill them (they live in his original house) the audience at the theater I was at laughed as they were stalked.  They even laughed as they were murdered, which was a real comfort to me as I sat watching the movie with my boyfriend.

I can tell with these characters and the gratuitous kill of the possibly-gay child in the 2018 film that, again, they think they are doing something different and edgy with their movie.  And it might've been if this film had come out sometime during the first two seasons of Family Guy, since that is about the level of edge it actually is.

(And for those that might try to defend the child murder in the 2018 film, it is implied that Michael kills another in this one - but it is only implied, not shown - and you will not convince me that the sexuality of the two characters didn't play a part)

This movie also makes goes to Thorns levels of stupidity with Michael's apparently supernatural powers.  He teleports, he has ninja skills, he is impervious to gunshots and stab wounds - it's a miracle they kept him contained for 40 years, given his superhuman abilities.  And this isn't a few minor instances, like in the 2018 - there are major points in the film where Michael is able to apparently fight off 8+ people - all of who are wielding weapons of their own - with ease.  And in both of these cases, he has been stabbed/shot/beaten/burned beforehand.  There's even a scene where he expertly kicks a door to knock a gun so it faces the person shooting it as it fires.  And it is just as ridiculous as it sounds.

I fucking hated this movie.  I don't think a horror movie has completely and utterly pissed me off to this level since 2014's Tusk.  That movie was terrible because it was obvious that everything about it was half-assed.  This movie obviously had lots of effort put into it, but apparently no one around to throw ice water on the production crew to keep them from masturbating to their own awesomeness.  At least Jamie Lee Curtis and Judy Greer got paid (and they both gave performances far better than this movie deserved ).

Oh, also: fuck the ending.  We all knew there was going to be a third one, but ending it they way you did?  Fuck the director and fuck the writers for thinking that was acceptable.

Book of the Month: December 2018

 

Offered Books:

The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay

One Day in December by Josie Silver

An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen

Severance by Ling Ma

No Exit by Taylor Adams

Selected:

No Exit by Taylor Adams

Others Purchased:

Severance by Ling Ma

Sometimes a novel is hard to review through no fault of its own: maybe it was a genre that the critic is overly familiar with, so twists and turns are more easily spotted.  Maybe they couldn't connect with the main character for whatever reason, so they didn't get as invested in the action.  Or maybe the reviewer is just not in a reading mood, but still forces their way through the book out of a sense of obligation.  That final point colors my opinions on this book.

I am a big proponent of reading what you like (get 30 pages into a novel and not enjoy it?  Shelve it and move to something else!) and have thankfully reached a point where I will not force myself to continue reading a book that I do not enjoy just because I have finished it.  Life is too short to turn a leisure activity into work.

The problem with this book is, when I started it, I very much enjoyed it.  It follows Darby Thorne as she drives back to her dying mother, but gets caught in a snowstorm in Colorado and is stuck at a rest stop with several other people.  While there, she discovers a kidnapped child in one of the other vehicles, with no idea who drives it.

Great premise, right?  I got to around the point where Darby finds the child when I suddenly hit a wall:  I just didn't feel like reading.  And not just this novel - any other book I picked up was quickly set aside.  This is not a rare occurrence in of itself, but for it to happen in the middle of a novel is rare.  To make matters worse, despite forcing myself through this book, it still took me around two months to finish it (for context, a novel of this length is normally something I can read within a day or two).

Which is why reviewing this book is hard - so much momentum was lost just in the process of reading it that I don't know if the novel was draggy in areas, or if it was a symptom of my reader's block (for lack of a better term).  Thinking about it, I do think it was a bit slow towards the beginning, but once the main action started, it was a solid read.  The characters were believable, the villain was appropriately threatening, and Darby is an all-around great protagonist: I just had a hard time reading the book, so it is hard for me to say that I loved it, or even give it a full-hearted recommend.

It's worth a read, and maybe you'll enjoy it more than I did.

2.5 out of 5

If No Exit was a novel that just had the misfortune to be read at the wrong time, then Ling Ma's Severance is one that benefited greatly from the timing of its reading.  It follows Candace Chen, a millennial working an office job that she does not love - but pays well - when there is suddenly a worldwide plague that is killing off the majority of the population.  While initially everyone thinks 'Shen Fever' will be easily handled, it soon upsets the global supply chain and Candace finds herself essentially alone in New York City.

This was released in December of 2018.

It boggles my mind how prescient this novel ended up being when I finally read it in March of this year.  While it was initially categorized as a satire, it's hard to read it as one in a post-COVID world.  And it makes me glad to have read it later: I was already the in target audience for this novel and reading it this year gives me an appreciation for how well Ma crafted not only her protagonist, but how well Ma understood how a global pandemic would effect people.

Candace is an outstanding character - the novel is told entirely from her perspective, and Ma allows the reader to see both the good and the bad of her without having Candace be too knowledgeable of other character's motivations or softening Candace's harder edges.

The first half of the novel primarily focuses on getting to know Candace and how she arrived at her current job, with a bit of alluding to the world at large and the growing problems also.  The second and meatier half focuses on Candace after she meets with a group of survivors and starts traveling with them.

The part of the book focusing on the group is where the novel really shines.  Bob, the antagonist of the novel and the leader of the group, is a perfect villain: banal in his cruelty but savvy in his leadership.  The other members of the group have enough personality that you can differentiate them from one another, but not so overwhelming in idiosyncrasies that it detracts from the novel.  I might've liked more of the group dynamic to be explored, but - without giving too much away - it is understandable that Candace wouldn't be able to expand on that aspect.

I really enjoyed this book.  Maybe it hit me a bit harder than it normally would have due to COVID, but every millennial should give this one a go, or just any lover of post-apocalyptic literature.

5 out of 5.

Author Links:

Taylor Adams

Ling Ma