LM23 Rating: If I had Peacock, I would stream it but I’ll go to the theatre.
Has it really been one year already? I remember when they announced the release dates for Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends before they pushed them back one year each due to the pandemic. I was so excited as they were reboots that were more similar to the originals from the 70’s and not like the slasher screamfest of the Rob Zombie Halloween movies. I just couldn’t with those versions of Halloween. The true pull for me to go see these movies in the theatre is the return and revenge of not Michael Myers but of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).
I was totally down and excited for Terminator: Dark Fate when the trailer showed the return of an older but much badder Linda Hamilton busting out the bullets and an RPG at a terminator and saving the day. I was kind of hoping Halloween would modernize its characters and give them a little bit of fashion sense of today and upgrade their weaponry to what Sarah Conner has. But, it seems Halloween Kills features the same old knives and shotguns and Laurie Strode looks like her age if she were to have aged this way back in the 70’s.
The latest trailer introduces us to even more gore with stabbings and mutilations and teeth falling. The constant killing I have to admit, is turning me off from going to see the movie. I had heard that this movie was about the people of Haddonfield coming together to fight back, but the trailer doesn’t really show the united front like The Avengers had in Endgame to defeat Thanos. All you really see is Michael freaking kids out in a playground and he’s randomly killing people who happen to be in his vicinity.
Maybe it’s because I started watching scary movies when I was way too young to, but for me scary movies that are all about killing just aren’t scary. Anything with zombies or like a boogeyman of sorts…they’re never really scary because you know how they look like and you know how they will strike. Scary movies that center around ghosts or the paranormal, now that is something we can work with in terms of the scare factor. But in general, if there is a known scary guy out there, I just think it should be easy to catch him and kill him. We have The Avengers and the Navy SEAL’s and the NYPD detectives from Law & Order…there’s enough A Team members and artillery to finish off a Michael Myers. There is no excuse for something like that to still be walking around after 40 years. We don’t need to rely on just the town sheriff and his gun with just the six bullets in the chamber to try to knock off an inhuman force.
I don’t know what it is but maybe it’s just the era we’re in. There’s a lot of bad things going on in the world and it’s inspiring and great to see movie heroes saving the day and beating the bad guy like in the Marvel movies. Halloween doesn’t really follow that same path of positivity. I want a hero that I can cheer for and can be a formidable opponent to the bad guy. Laurie Strode seems old and frail and she forgot to bring her machine gun and RPG to fight Michael Myers with. It’s kind of like James Bond. Everything has been modernized except the bad guys tend to not reflect the reality of the 21st Century when it comes to international terrorism.
The other issue I have ever since the Halloween movies have been reimagined is that Michael Myers is getting too buff and athletic. The original Michael Myers seemed more like an average guy beneath the mask. He didn’t look as if he had been riding his Pelaton and doing Iron Man competitions in the off season. The creepiness of Michael was that he seemed like an average man with paranormal like abilities. You can see him in the distance and then turn around and he would be right in front of you. He seemed more like a ghost to me versus a zombie who kills which is what he seems to be turning into.
Maybe it’s time to shift towards the back story and motive behind Michael Myers. The constant killing doesn’t really make a plot. What’s with the mask? What’s with the killing only on Halloween again? And why kill others if he only has beef with his relatives? Someone remind me as I wasn’t alive when the original Halloween came out. If the franchise is more about Michael Myers going on a killing spree, then the audience will need to know more about what’s going on behind his mask.
Despite my negative review, I’ll still go to the theatre to see this movie, but I’m only going for Jamie Lee Curtis.
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