Halloween Kills

Before returning to 2018, Halloween Kills takes us back to the original Halloween night.

A young Frank Hawkins searches for Michael Myers following the murders of Laurie's friends.

Michael eventually returns to the Myers house.

Police surround him.

And rather than disappearing into the night forever, Michael is captured.

The sequence fills in a piece of history deliberately left unseen in the previous film.

It also establishes something important about Hawkins.

He had an opportunity to stop Michael decades earlier.

He has lived with what happened ever since.

Back in 2018, firefighters arrive at Laurie's burning compound.

Laurie sees the emergency vehicles racing toward the house and immediately understands the problem.

They're going to save him.

Inside, Michael has found shelter from the flames.

The firefighters break through.

Michael emerges.

What follows is one of the film's clearest statements about this version of the Shape.

Michael isn't weakened.

He isn't frightened.

And the fire hasn't finished him.

The firefighters have unknowingly released him.

Elsewhere in Haddonfield, people connected to the 1978 massacre have gathered.

Tommy Doyle is there.

So is Lindsey Wallace.

Marion Chambers.

Lonnie Elam.

These are people whose lives crossed Michael Myers decades earlier.

Tommy was the child Laurie babysat.

Lindsey was there too.

Marion encountered Michael during his escape from Smith's Grove.

They survived.

But like Laurie, none of them entirely escaped the shadow of that night.

Anthony Michael Hall plays the adult Tommy Doyle.

Unlike Paul Rudd's Tommy from The Curse of Michael Myers, this version belongs to the 2018 continuity.

Those previous sequels never happened here.

Tommy has grown up carrying the story of Halloween 1978.

When news spreads that Michael Myers has escaped again, Tommy decides that Haddonfield can't simply wait for the police to stop him.

The town needs to fight back.

His message quickly becomes a rallying cry.

Evil dies tonight.

One of the film's boldest decisions is keeping Laurie largely inside Haddonfield Memorial Hospital.

She's badly injured from her confrontation with Michael.

She believes her burning house has finally killed him.

Then she learns the truth.

Michael survived.

But unlike the previous film, Laurie can't simply grab a weapon and chase him.

This time, Haddonfield has to confront the monster while Laurie watches the consequences unfold.

Karen and Allyson survived the burning house with Laurie.

But the nightmare hasn't ended for either of them.

Allyson, in particular, refuses to sit safely inside the hospital while Michael continues killing.

She joins the search.

Karen understands the danger better than most.

She has spent her life resenting the way Michael's existence shaped her childhood.

Now everything Laurie taught her suddenly feels horrifyingly relevant.

Michael Myers isn't family history anymore.

He's walking through Haddonfield.

Kyle Richards returns as Lindsey Wallace, reprising the role she first played as a child in the 1978 original.

It's one of the movie's strongest connections to Carpenter's Halloween.

The little girl Annie Brackett babysat is now an adult.

And once again, Michael Myers is somewhere nearby.

But Lindsey isn't six years old anymore.

When Michael comes after her, she fights.

Her presence reinforces the central idea of the film: Michael's victims aren't limited to the people he kills.

Some survive him for decades.

Michael's childhood home has occupants again.

Big John and Little John now live in the Myers house, fully aware of its infamous history.

On Halloween night, that history comes through their front door.

Michael's repeated return to the house becomes increasingly important.

Other characters assume he's hunting Laurie.

But Michael's movements suggest something more fundamental.

He is going home.

Again.

As news of Michael's murders spreads, fear becomes anger.

Tommy organises local residents.

People grab weapons.

Cars fill with volunteers searching the streets.

For decades, Michael Myers has stalked isolated victims.

Now an entire town is hunting him.

On paper, that sounds like Michael's worst-case scenario.

But Halloween Kills explores what happens when fear spreads through a crowd.

Haddonfield's anger soon becomes dangerous in its own right.

The phrase begins with purpose.

Evil dies tonight.

Michael has terrorised this town long enough.

But repetition transforms the slogan.

People stop thinking individually.

The crowd wants someone to punish.

When another escaped Smith's Grove patient is mistaken for Michael, the mob pursues him through the hospital.

Laurie knows immediately that the frightened man isn't Michael.

The crowd doesn't listen.

Fear has become hysteria.

And an innocent man pays the price.

At the hospital, Laurie and Hawkins confront something they may have misunderstood for decades.

Michael's return isn't necessarily about Laurie.

Dr Sartain deliberately brought Michael to her in the previous film.

Without that intervention, Michael might never have sought her out.

Laurie spent forty years believing she and Michael were connected.

The truth may be far more disturbing.

Michael doesn't need a personal reason.

Lonnie Elam joins Allyson and Cameron in searching for Michael.

Their hunt eventually brings them to the Myers house.

That's exactly where Michael is waiting.

Once inside, their confidence as a group disappears.

The Shape controls the space.

Rooms become traps.

Doorways become blind spots.

And Michael begins dismantling the people who came looking for him.

Karen eventually lures Michael away.

She takes his mask.

Michael follows.

And suddenly the Shape finds himself surrounded.

Tommy's mob has him.

This time there are too many people.

Michael is shot.

Hit.

Stabbed.

Beaten.

He collapses.

After forty years of terror, Haddonfield appears to have finally done what Laurie couldn't.

The town has killed Michael Myers.

Except Michael Myers gets back up.

Michael rises and attacks.

One by one, the members of the mob fall.

Tommy Doyle, the child who survived the original Halloween night, finally confronts the monster who haunted his life.

Michael kills him.

The scene pushes the Shape closer to something beyond an ordinary man.

As Laurie reflects on Michael's nature, the film suggests that every act of violence somehow makes the legend surrounding him larger.

The more Haddonfield tries to destroy Michael Myers, the more impossible he seems to become.

James Jude Courtney returns as Michael and delivers one of the franchise's most physically aggressive versions of the character.

This Michael is still deliberate.

Still silent.

Still recognisably the Shape.

But the violence is relentless.

The film's title isn't subtle.

Halloween Kills is built around Michael moving through Haddonfield and leaving devastation in his wake.

The body count isn't merely background.

It's the point.

This is the night the whole town encounters Michael Myers.

After helping defeat Michael, Karen returns to the Myers house.

She looks out of Judith Myers' old bedroom window.

It's a position that has echoed through the franchise.

Then Michael appears.

The mob didn't stop him.

The beating didn't stop him.

And before anyone can save her, Michael kills Karen.

Laurie's daughter — one of the three women who trapped him only hours earlier — becomes another victim of the Shape.

Although Laurie spends much of the movie recovering, her understanding of Michael keeps evolving.

For decades, she believed preparation could defeat him.

Build the right house.

Own the right weapons.

Wait long enough.

But Michael's survival forces Laurie to consider something else.

Perhaps defeating Michael isn't simply about killing the man.

Haddonfield has turned him into something larger.

A story.

A fear.

A boogeyman.

And every new body strengthens that legend.

John Carpenter again worked with Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies on the score.

The familiar themes remain, but the music has the heavier urgency a film that rarely slows down requires.

Where the 1978 score built suspense from empty streets and dark rooms, Halloween Kills often uses its music to underscore a town descending into violence.

The DNA remains unmistakably Halloween.

One of the interesting things about the 2018 trilogy is just how much happens during a single night.

Halloween (2018) begins Michael's escape.

Halloween Kills starts immediately afterwards.

There is no reset.

No year-long gap.

No peaceful return to normal life.

For Laurie, Allyson, Hawkins and Haddonfield, the nightmare simply continues.

Michael hasn't come home twice.

It's still the same night.

Halloween Kills is deliberately the middle chapter of David Gordon Green's trilogy.

It doesn't resolve Laurie and Michael's story.

In fact, Laurie and Michael never have their expected confrontation.

Instead, the film widens the scope.

The original Halloween was about a handful of people encountering the Shape.

The 2018 film was about Laurie's family confronting the trauma he created.

Kills asks what happens when an entire community inherits that trauma.

The answer isn't particularly hopeful.

Haddonfield tries to become stronger than Michael.

Instead, fear fractures the town.

Tommy Doyle dies.

Karen Strode dies.

Michael returns to his childhood home.

And Laurie is left knowing that the nightmare she spent forty years preparing to end is still alive.

One film remained.

One final confrontation.

One final chance for Haddonfield to escape the shadow cast in 1978.

But before Halloween could end...

Michael Myers had to survive the night.