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My feeling about David Gordon Green ’s reboot of “Halloween” in 2018 was that the talented director fundamentally misunderstood what worked about the John Carpenter original, draining the project of actual tension, despite a few solid set pieces. Having seen his follow-up, “Halloween Kills,” I think I was right. This film muddies its entire concept with a bizarre, unrefined commentary on mob mentality that is quite simply some of the worst material in either Green’s career and the history of this rocky franchise (which is saying something if you’ve seen, say, "Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers"). It’s a shame too because, once again, there are set pieces that work—and the ones here are particularly brutal—but campy dialogue that calls attention to itself, too much fan service in the references department, sidelining Laurie Strode herself for most of the project, and truly inconsistent characters lead to a final result that definitely doesn’t kill. It barely even wounds.

In what feels like a clear nod to the first sequel, “Halloween Kills” picks up immediately after the end of the 2018 film (and it’s also probably not coincidental that most of it takes place at Haddonfield Memorial Hospital). However, it opens by introducing a few new/old characters—familiar names for fans of the Carpenter films but new to the Green ones. The most prominent is Tommy Doyle ( Anthony Michael Hall ), the kid that Laurie was babysitting on that fateful night in 1978. He gets together with fellow survivors every year, including Lindsey Wallace ( Kyle Richards , reprising her role from the 1978 original), Marion Chambers ( Nancy Stephens , also from the first two movies), and Lonnie Elam ( Robert Longstreet , not in the Carpenter movie, but the character is). They’re getting together on Halloween to celebrate surviving four decades after the most traumatic night of their lives, but they’re really set up as future victims for anyone who has ever seen a horror movie (which is, based on their behavior, absolutely no one in Haddonfield).

Meanwhile, across town, Cameron ( Dylan Arnold ) stumbles upon the bleeding body of Deputy Hawkins ( Will Patton ), who is rushed to the hospital, where he will eventually share a room with Laurie Strode ( Jamie Lee Curtis ). As the two reminisce and recover, Michael Myers escapes the burning house from the end of the first film and begins a truly brutal rampage. On that note, “Halloween Kills” is a much darker film than the last one, filled with more than a dozen of what slasher fans used to call “quality kills.” As Myers makes his way across Haddonfield, Laurie’s daughter Karen ( Judy Greer , at least given a bit more to do here than last time) tries to stop Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson ( Andi Matichak ) from joining the mob formed by Tommy to track him down. As they chant “Evil dies tonight,” they make, shall we say, some mistakes.

On that point, Roger Ebert wrote the following about the first “ Halloween II ” back in 1981: “The plot of 'Halloween II' absolutely depends, of course, on our old friend the Idiot Plot which requires that everyone in the movie behave at all times like an idiot.” It’s almost as if co-writers Green, Danny McBride , and Scott Teems had this quote on a whiteboard in the writer’s room because this is the aspect they get the most right when it comes to being faithful to the first two movies. Everyone in “Halloween Kills” is wildly idiotic, whether it’s the mob formed too easily by Tommy, the common trope of victims who know there’s a killer on the loose investigating the thump upstairs instead of just running, and some truly boneheaded decisions in the final scenes that really stretch credulity. The truth is that when a film like “Halloween Kills” is working, audiences will ignore the “Idiot Plot.” It’s only when they’re not invested that it becomes a problem, and that’s the case here.

There are brief moments when the craft here does make the Idiot Plot easier to ignore. Michael Simmonds shoots the film with a fluid viciousness, and the editing by Tim Alverson allows things like burst jugulars and smashed heads to linger. It’s a little surprising that the film is being released on Peacock so quickly because it’s really the kind of thing that works best with an audience, preferably at midnight, cheering each new murder.

Although I suspect even the hardcore fans of the last Green film would be disappointed even in a crowd. The biggest difference between the visions of Carpenter and Green comes down to momentum. The first “Halloween” is lean and mean, whereas this movie can’t maintain focus for longer than a few minutes, and so it tries to use cheesy, overheated dialogue to impart seriousness that the pace lacks. In particular, Laurie’s monologues are a mish-mash of nonsense about unstoppable evil. And fans will be truly sad that she barely leaves the hospital or even impacts the plot, which is a baffling decision given how much fans of the last film praised Curtis’ return, seeming to tie Myers and Strode together before untying them here.

“Halloween Kills” follows the classic sequel formula of “Again, But More of It.” There are more kills, more characters, more references, and more general chaos. However, all of it keeps pulling the movie away from the story of a bogeyman who came to life and became something else entirely. We have seen so many variations on Michael Myers over the years from Carpenter’s to Rob Zombie ’s to all of the various sequels in between those two filmmakers. I’m most startled that an undeniably talented director like David Gordon Green made, barring an impressive recovery in the already-greenlighted “Halloween Ends,” what will be one of the franchise's most forgettable. 

In theaters tonight, October 14 th , and on Peacock tomorrow, October 15 th .

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Halloween Kills (2021)

Rated R for strong bloody violence throughout, grisly images, language and some drug use.

106 minutes

Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode

Judy Greer as Karen Nelson

Andi Matichak as Allyson Nelson

Will Patton as Frank Hawkins

Thomas Mann as Young Hawkins

Anthony Michael Hall as Tommy Doyle

Kyle Richards as Lindsey Wallace

Nancy Stephens as Marion Chambers

Charles Cyphers as Leigh Brackett

Nick Castle as The Shape

James Jude Courtney as Michael Myers

• David Gordon Green

Writer (based on characters created by)

• John Carpenter
• Scott Teems
• Danny McBride

Cinematographer

• Michael Simmonds
• Timothy Alverson
• Cody Carpenter
• Daniel Davies

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Jamie lee curtis in david gordon green’s ‘halloween kills’: film review | venice 2021.

Michael Myers is once again back in Haddonfield to spread carnage by the light of jack-o’-lanterns in this second part of a trilogy tied directly to John Carpenter’s original.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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“Evil dies tonight,” shout the inflamed townsfolk of Haddonfield, Illinois, more times than you can count in Halloween Kills . Or maybe it’s “A franchise dies tonight?” I might have misheard. Either way, this latest installment is like a latex ghoul mask so stretched and shapeless it no longer fits.

Three years ago, David Gordon Green successfully breathed new life into the mythology of Michael Myers by building a story about the legacy of trauma and pitting three generations of women from the same family against the psycho-slasher introduced by John Carpenter in the influential 1978 horror classic. Green and his co-writers made the smart choice to ignore the multiple disposable sequels and return to the beloved original, picking up the story of “final girl” survivor Laurie Strode 40 years after that fateful night.

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Venue : Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition) Release date : Friday, Oct. 15 Cast : Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Thomas Mann, Anthony Michael Hall, Dylan Arnold, Robert Longstreet, Kyle Richards Director : David Gordon Green Screenwriters : Scott Teems, Danny McBride, David Gordon Green

But in this second part of a trilogy spun out of the rebooted property — all set on the same night and slated to conclude with next year’s Halloween Ends — Green has made exactly the kind of witless, worthless sequel that bled the franchise dry in the 1980s and ’90s. It premieres in Venice in conjunction with a Golden Lion career achievement award being presented to Jamie Lee Curtis , who deserves to be celebrated for any number of more memorable films.

What’s most disappointing is that after reimagining Curtis’ Laurie as a fierce warrior grandmother, hardened by PTSD into a tough customer at considerable cost to her personal relationships, here she’s basically sidelined in post-surgery recovery. She gets to spout some wobbly Halloween lore, about Michael transcending mortality to become a superhuman disseminator of fear. But mostly she’s just killing time waiting for the inevitable showdown in the closing chapter.

In a screenplay co-written with Scott Teems and Danny McBride, Green’s storytelling skills are in trouble from the start. It’s a full 20 minutes before we find Laurie where we left her at the end of 2018’s Halloween , clutching a nasty abdominal knife wound in the back of a pickup truck with her daughter Karen ( Judy Greer ) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). As firefighters speed in the other direction, toward the blaze of the house where Laurie has trapped Michael in the basement, she screams, “Let it burn!” She seems to know already that Michael won’t be kind to those first responders.

Before all that, we wade through clunky detours and messy recaps of Michael’s history, from his murder at age 6 of his teenage sister, through his 1978 Halloween night rampage in Carpenter’s film to his escape from a psychiatric hospital 40 years later — along with another patient who’s roughly half his height and yet somehow later manages to be mistaken for Michael by an angry mob.

The writers have combed the original story by Carpenter and Debra Hill for any surviving minor character they can subject to more punishment. That includes Tommy Doyle ( Anthony Michael Hall ), whom Laurie was babysitting in ’78; and Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards, reprising the role), whose babysitter, Annie, was one of Michael’s victims. Annie’s dad, former sheriff Brackett (Charles Cyphers), is still around, now working security at Haddonfield Hospital.

Also still kicking is Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), a colleague of Michael’s former psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis, now sadly departed but resurrected in an inadvertently amusing flashback by someone doing a bad Donald Pleasence impersonation: “Pure eve-ill!” That 1978 interlude sheds light on Will Patton’s Officer Hawkins, played in his rookie-cop years by Thomas Mann in scenes that reveal how he failed his fellow officer and didn’t stop Michael when he had the chance. But Patton’s main function here is to give Laurie someone to talk to in the ICU.

That leaves a whole lot of barely developed characters to hunt down Michael or help pump up his body count. Or both. At the nominal center is the posse captained by Hall’s blustery bore, Tommy, leading the “Evil dies tonight!” charge. He’s accompanied by feisty Allyson, packing heat like Grandma taught her; her boyfriend, Cameron (Dylan Arnold); and Cam’s father, Lonnie (Robert Longstreet), who narrowly escaped a brush with Michael back in ’78.

Green amps up the violence and gore at the expense of actual scares or even a modicum of suspense. This is a curiously numbing bloodbath, as the masked Michael (James Jude Courtney) supplements his knife skills with everything from a pickax to a fluorescent light tube. Within the context of Carpenter’s laser-focused plotting, Michael’s kills were often subversively playful, suggesting a warped sense of humor beneath his psychosis. Here, he’s just a mayhem machine, going through the motions.

Laurie speaks in awed tones at one point of “Michael’s masterpiece,” stirring up the mob and disseminating chaos. But there’s no sense of him having much of a plan beyond eliminating anyone dumb enough to get in his way. Or a gay couple — called Big John (Scott MacArthur) and Little John (Michael McDonald), in a touch I assume was intended to add some levity — sufficiently heedless to think they can slap a coat of paint on a haunted house and live there unharmed. None of this is either frightening or fun, unless you get a kick out of watching Judy Greer wield a pitchfork.

Perhaps the saddest way in which Green bulldozes the lean-and-mean essence of the Carpenter mold is how far he strays from the latter’s insidious use of music. For those of us who saw the phenomenally successful 1978 indie back before its terrifying power had been diluted by endless riffs and rip-offs, the needling synth notes of Carpenter’s score could plant themselves in our heads whenever we entered a dark empty house. (OK, I’m speaking for myself.)

I felt a genuine jolt of excitement as the first gut-churning electronic rumble is heard here over the Universal logo. But as in everything else, restraint has been abandoned. Carpenter’s son Cody and Daniel Davies share composing credit with the master, going big and bombastic, and layering in vocal elements. But instead of getting under your skin, the music hammers you over the head. Call it Halloween Overkills .

Full credits

Venue: Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition) Distributor: Universal Production companies: Universal Pictures, Miramax, Blumhouse, Malek Akkad, in association with Rough House Pictures Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Thomas Mann, Anthony Michael Hall, Dylan Arnold, Robert Longstreet, Kyle Richards, Nancy Stephens, Charles Cyphers, James Jude Courtney, Nick Castle, Omar J. Dorsey, Michael McDonald, Scott MacArthur, Diva Tyler, Tom Jones Jr., Carmela McNeal, Michael Smallwood Director: David Gordon Green Screenwriters: Scott Teems, Danny McBride, David Gordon Green Based on characters created by John Carpenter, Debra Hill Producers: Malek Akkad, Jason Blum, Bill Block Executive producers: John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jeanette Volturno, Couper Samuelson, Danny McBride, David Gordon Green, Ryan Freimann, Bob Osher, Andrew Golov Director of photography: Michael Simmonds Production designer: Richard A. Wright Costume designer: Emily Gunshor Editor: Tim Alverson Music: John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, Daniel Davies Special effects makeup designer: Christopher Nelson Casting: Terri Taylor, Sarah Domeier Lindo

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Halloween kills, common sense media reviewers.

Brutal, gory, overwrought, shapeless slasher sequel.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Movie awkwardly tries to critique mob mentality (i

No role models. Even Laurie Strode's "strong survi

Makes a clear effort to feature a diverse cast. Ch

Dozens of characters are killed or maimed in inten

Woman in "sexy nurse" Halloween costume.

Several uses of "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," and "as

Social drinking in bar. Minor character smokes pot

Parents need to know that Halloween Kills is the direct sequel to the 2018 reboot Halloween and picks up immediately where that film left off. Fans' favorite characters are mostly injured here, and the thin "story" involves an angry mob, lots of shouting, and so many killings that it becomes numbing…

Positive Messages

Movie awkwardly tries to critique mob mentality (i.e., how quickly groupthink can become dangerous and violent). Clumsily tries to describe the evil of Michael Myers as a kind of collective thing, an embodiment of fear itself. So, as long as we fear -- and divide ourselves through hate -- Michael will keep coming.

Positive Role Models

No role models. Even Laurie Strode's "strong survivor" mode isn't really in evidence here; she spends the movie wounded and in hospital, mostly screaming in pain and/or shrieking at people. Laurie's daughter, Karen, tries to protect a man from the angry mob, but her efforts quickly fall apart.

Diverse Representations

Makes a clear effort to feature a diverse cast. Characters include a Black couple, a queer couple, an interracial couple, Black police officers and medical workers, and a Black sheriff. And main characters include three generations of powerful women. But, unfortunately, these efforts feel wasted, as most of them become Michael's bloody victims. You could even argue that the movie is anti-progressive in its brutal killing of so many diverse characters.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Dozens of characters are killed or maimed in intensely brutal, gory ways. Tons of blood: bloody wounds, blood sprays, gushing blood. Gory dead bodies displayed. Characters stabbed, impaled with knives/sharp objects. Killer bashes victims against hard surfaces. Woman stabbed with broken fluorescent light bulb. Stabbing in eye. Eyes gouged out. Character shot in head. Character's head twisted. Stomach surgery. Guns and shooting. Angry mob shoving, pushing, punching, and beating/hitting killer with bats, sticks, blades, bricks, etc. Killer stabbed with pitchfork. Person jumps from high window; smashed body shown on pavement. Character falls down stairs, breaking leg. House on fire. Dog corpse. Woman screams in pain. Bullies picking on a child. Kids play a prank involving razor blade stuck in candy.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Several uses of "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," and "ass," plus uses of "motherf----r," "damn," "t-ts," "bitch," and "goddamn."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Social drinking in bar. Minor character smokes pot. Dialogue about "buying peyote" and "doing drugs." Pain meds in hospital.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Halloween Kills is the direct sequel to the 2018 reboot Halloween and picks up immediately where that film left off. Fans' favorite characters are mostly injured here, and the thin "story" involves an angry mob, lots of shouting, and so many killings that it becomes numbing. Dozens of characters die in grisly, brutal ways, and there's tons of blood -- spurting, gushing, and oozing -- as well as horrific corpses. Characters are stabbed in the eye, eyes are gouged, a person jumps from up high and spatters on the pavement, and an angry mob attacks. You'll also see guns and shooting, stabbing, slicing, bashing, bullies, and much, much more. Language is strong, with uses of "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "t-ts," "a--hole," and more. Characters drink socially at a bar, smoke pot at home, and take pain meds in a hospital; there are also references to buying peyote and doing drugs. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (19)
• Kids say (46)

Based on 19 parent reviews

This isn't even that bad!

What's the story.

In HALLOWEEN KILLS, the story picks up just moments after the ending of Halloween (2018). An injured Laurie Strode ( Jamie Lee Curtis ) and her daughter, Karen ( Judy Greer ), and granddaughter, Allyson ( Andi Matichak ), ride away from Laurie's burning stronghold, with Michael Myers trapped inside. Laurie goes for surgery for her wounds, while Allyson's boyfriend, Cameron ( Dylan Arnold ), finds Officer Hawkins ( Will Patton ) and gets him to the hospital. Unfortunately, firefighters inadvertently free the killer and become his next victims. Then, in a bar, Tommy Doyle ( Anthony Michael Hall ), who survived Michael's attacks in 1978, riles up other residents of Haddonfield with stories of Michael Myers and starts forming an angry mob. Can Michael be stopped at last?

Is It Any Good?

Compared to his successful, well-crafted 2018 reboot, director David Gordon Green 's sequel is its opposite: an unshaped, overwrought cacophony of shouting and dozens of tiresomely brutal killings. Green seems to have been inspired by the events of the original Halloween II (1981), which took place late on the same Halloween night as the original Halloween and was set largely in a hospital, where Laurie was being treated and where Michael Myers was heading. While that movie tried to re-create the feel of the original (and partly succeeded, thanks to John Carpenter 's help as co-writer, co-producer, co-composer, and possible uncredited co-director), Green goes for an even more chaotic look and feel for Halloween Kills . Rather than an eerily empty, after-hours hospital, Green's hospital is filled with caterwauling, writhing, stacked-up people who must climb over one another to reach the exits.

The angry mob rises unreasonably quickly, so much so that it inspires aggravation rather than sad, weary understanding, and the rage-chanting ("Evil dies tonight!") becomes meaningless in the absence of any real character. (Two of the original actors, survivors of the 1978 movie , reprise their characters here, 43 years later, but the movie does little with them than point them out.) But it's the killings that bring this one down. Rather than a few well-placed, suspense-building deaths, this one lays them on one after another, in the dozens, almost constantly for 105 minutes, with little variation -- and with little to care about. This is less a movie called Halloween Kills and more a movie that has likely killed Halloween .

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Halloween Kills ' violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

What does the movie have to say about mob mentality? What makes people susceptible to it? How can it be avoided? Is it ever a positive thing?

What is the movie's theme? How is Michael Myers equated with fear? How can fear, or hate, be defeated?

What's the appeal of horror movies ? Why do people sometimes like to be scared?

How does this sequel compare to the previous movie, which "retconned" (i.e., made adjustments to retroactively justify continuity) all of the previous Halloween movies, including the original. You've likely heard of reboots, sequels, and reimaginings; which is this? Does it work?

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 15, 2021
• On DVD or streaming : August 2, 2022
• Cast : Judy Greer , Jamie Lee Curtis , Anthony Michael Hall
• Director : David Gordon Green
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Horror
• Run time : 106 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : strong bloody violence throughout, grisly images, language, and some drug use
• Last updated : June 20, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Halloween Kills review – indestructible killer returns in efficient follow-up

Forty years on from John Carpenter’s classic slasher film, David Gordon Green’s latest reanimation of the title is functional but enjoyable

I t’s Halloween 2018 in Haddonfield, Illinois, and the time-honoured festivities are in full swing. At the start of the second episode of the revived franchise there’s already a body impaled on railings, and a cop (Will Patton) gushing blood on the ground. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) – horror cinema’s original Final Girl, now Final Grandmother – is being rushed to hospital, and her house is in flames. But indestructible killer Michael Myers has decided to make a night of it, and is out there armed with a firefighter’s axe, axing firefighters.

Forty years after John Carpenter made the defining slasher movie, director David Gordon Green has made a creditable stab, as it were, at reanimating the title. Green is an occasional indie auteur (George Washington, Prince Avalanche) who leads a double life as a mainstream stalwart, and showed in his 2018 Halloween reboot that he’s more than competent at straight genre thrills. Writing again with Danny McBride, here joined by Scott Teems, Green offers a functional but enjoyably efficient follow-up. It kicks in only minutes after the events of the previous episode, and pretty much follows a straight line, apart from brief flashbacks to 1978, with even a passable Donald Pleasence lookalike on hand to lend authenticity.

There’s not a massive amount of innovation, but the significant new element is that the citizens of Haddonfield decide to hunt Myers down vigilante-style, at the urging of Laurie’s one-time babysitting charge Tommy Doyle, now a bullish barroom bro; he’s played by Anthony Michael Hall, a veteran of the 80s John Hughes cycle. The population storms Haddonfield hospital, chanting “Evil dies tonight!”, bloodlust in their eyes as they pursue the wrong man – which is where the film gestures at a parable about everyday Americans going rogue under the spell of collective hatred. No one actually dons a horned helmet, but we get the message.

But – in contrast with George Romero’s zombie films, where political allegory is the whole point – we’re really here for the slaughter, and the reliable repetition. Loose bits of plot from Green’s 2018 film are strewn all around like fragments of shattered pumpkin, and there are more characters to follow than Haddonfield’s entire original population. But familiarity with the terrain helps us settle in quickly, and while the film doesn’t re-craft old-school slasher politics for contemporary sensibilities quite like 2019’s Black Christmas remake , the focus is still determinedly female. Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie, now wearing Patti Smith’s current hair, is as indestructible as ever; new-generation unscareables Andi Matichak and Kyle Richards give their best; and the always superb Judy Greer manages to convey undaunted intensity even despite some very autumnal knitwear. James Jude Courtney, Nick Castle and Airon Armstrong all loom as Michael Myers – or The Shape, as he’s credited – whose featureless mask has now taken on a slightly rueful expression, as if he knows he’s likely to be on carving duty for a very long haul yet.

• Horror films
• David Gordon Green
• Venice film festival
• Venice film festival 2021
• Jamie Lee Curtis

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Halloween Kills Review

15 Oct 2021

Halloween Kills

“Evil dies tonight!” shout the stoked-up Haddonfield residents as they take up arms — at one point there is a literal pitchfork — to track down boogeyman incarnate Michael Myers. Unfortunately, evil isn’t the only thing dying in David Gordon Green ’s film, the 12th instalment in the series and a follow-up to his 2018 Halloween . Also stumbling to a shallow grave are logical behaviour, winning characters, tension, style and any understanding of what makes John Carpenter ’s 1978 classic so special.

Halloween Kills picks up moments after Green’s 2018 incarnation ends, with Myers surviving being burnt to a crisp by Laurie Strode ( Jamie Lee Curtis ). Laurie, bleeding profusely, is being taken to hospital by her daughter Karen ( Judy Greer ) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). It’s at this point that the hospital, for no reason whatsoever, becomes a focal point for the town to congregate and begin a frankly piss-poor manhunt to take Myers down.

_Halloween Kills_ bends conventions to breaking point, making it impossible to root for any of the dumbass victims.

The plot divides into two, with Myers picking off victims at will and a mob (led by ex-Brat Packer Anthony Michael Hall ) growing increasingly angry and spending an inordinate amount of screen-time running up stairs. Green and co-writers Danny McBride and Scott Teems are circling an idea that our response to serial killers can make monsters of all of us. It’s just a shame they deliver the notion with a sledge hammer.

Elsewhere Myers is going about his business offing townsfolk but with zero sense of surprise or suspense. There are no red herrings or sleight of hand: when there is a creak in the floorboards, a figure in the playground or a presence in the empty back seat of a car, you can bet it’s Michael Myers. Perhaps worst of all, when he is confronted by a group of firefighters with water hoses and axes, Myers turns into a one-man-army in a boiler suit, Jason Bourne with a plastic mask. It’s a genre staple, even expectation, that people will behave stupidly in a horror film, but Halloween Kills bends the convention to breaking point, making it impossible to root for or care about any of the dumbass victims.

Some flashbacks to 1978 capture the texture of the original — there are a couple of inventive kills (including a terrific accidental one) and that theme always rocks — but, perhaps the biggest problem of all is that Laurie Strode becomes a bystander in her own story. Laid up in hospital, there is a (laughable) moment where she stabs herself with morphine to numb her pain, yet still she fails to enter the action. Not utilising both Curtis’ skill and her character’s intense baked-in relationship with her nemesis seems like a dropped ball, just one more way Green’s film goes awry. As Alan Partridge might put it: stop getting Halloween wrong.

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Halloween Kills Is Afraid of Itself

High on its own supply, David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills wants to reimagine the humble slasher flick as both gonzo send-up and social-message movie. Others have certainly done it before him, but rarely with such brazen ambition. You have to admire the effort — even as you survey, mouth agape, the calamitous results. Intended as the middle entry in a proposed trilogy, the film is a sequel to Green’s lean, mean 2018 reboot of John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic, but in truth, Halloween Kills is worlds removed from the meat-and-potatoes thrills of both its immediate predecessor and Carpenter’s original.

Which is a little funny, because this new movie begins, like many a Halloween sequel, immediately after the events of the previous entry. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) lies bleeding in the back of a speeding truck alongside her daughter, Karen (Judy Greer), and granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), on their way to the hospital after having set psycho killer Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney) aflame in the cellar of Laurie’s booby-trapped home. Unfortunately, a fire truck is headed in the opposite direction, toward the blazing house, where the brave firefighters will soon free a surprisingly unscathed Michael from the flames and pay for it with their lives.

Eleven dead and decapitated firemen later, the Shape (as he’s traditionally known) is back on the loose. Laurie, meanwhile, lies in a hospital bed alongside Officer Frank Hawkins (Will Patton), a local cop who was supposedly killed in the previous film. Turns out Hawkins is not only still alive, he has a long-standing vendetta against Michael because as a rookie cop back in 1978, he botched numerous opportunities to shoot the wacko dead.

In fact, the entire town of Haddonfield, Illinois — the sleepy suburban hamlet which just one movie ago seemed completely dismissive and ignorant of Michael’s grisly legacy — is now suddenly animated by the thought of confronting this past. Hanging out at a local watering hole, a group of middle-aged survivors of the original attacks decides, along with a few newcomers, to take up collective arms against Michael. They quickly begin pulling the rest of the populace to their cause. This mob rejects authority — the cops, after all, have failed to contain Michael — and they even have a catchphrase they chant in unison: “Evil dies tonight!” Halloween Kills isn’t content to be a Halloween sequel; it wants to be a Purge movie, too.

Sadly, it doesn’t really deliver on either score. As a director, Green isn’t particularly proficient at orchestrating chaos, and his efforts to capture the pandemonium of an unhinged crowd never really feel convincing. He is one of American independent cinema’s treasures thanks to his facility with improvisation, his ability to capture moments of startling intimacy, and his humanism — all of which distinguished his early career and which he managed to deploy a little in his previous Halloween entry. But those qualities aren’t much in evidence this time around.

When they do appear, the film strikes a discordant note. At one point, we see a distraught mother catch a glimpse of her son’s mangled corpse on a hospital gurney — which might have been moving had it not come right after a gleeful scene in which we see Michael shove a knife inside some guy’s eye. There’s no real pathos animating this moment of grief; it’s just another thing the picture throws at us. And for all the unsubtle talk of trauma that runs throughout the movie, it is handled with zero conviction; we can’t miss it, but we also can’t feel it. When humanism starts to seem manufactured, it ceases to be humanism and becomes the opposite: sadism of the most cynical and opportunistic kind. Green should know that. He does know that, which is why his movie appears to be at war with itself.

Halloween Kills doesn’t really work as a slasher flick either. Michael certainly racks up an impressive body count, but Green has mostly abandoned suspense or scares this time around in favor of extravagant, goofy, and predictable bits of gore. The previous film flirted with this too, even as it lovingly executed the graceful camera moves and elegant tension of Carpenter’s original; you could sense it itching to let loose and indulge in flamboyant slaughter. That restraint has now gone out the window. At times, one wonders if the movie is going for pastiche, an over-the-top comment on its own ridiculousness. But it’s too half-assed for that. It’s not funny enough to be an in-joke, and it’s not sincere enough to support any of its bigger conceits.

Still, I do hope Green gets to finish his trilogy. I assume he will, since Blumhouse Productions tends not to spend too much money on these films and doesn’t need a gargantuan hit to make its money back. (Besides, a bad horror sequel never stopped anyone from making another.) There’s a dithering, in-between quality to this entry that makes it feel like it’s primarily passing the time until a big, as-yet-unfilmed climax arrives; surely Curtis won’t spend most of the next movie in a hospital bed. For all its great, genre-transcending aspirations, Halloween Kills is a great big nothing that’s just waiting for something.

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Everything We Know

Everything we know about halloween kills, with the first official trailer promising a bloody and brutal return to haddonfield, we're breaking down who's who, how it fits into the ever-confusing timeline, and why halloween kills is a slasher movie for our time..

TAGGED AS: Film , films , halloween , Horror , movie , movies , slashers

If you really thought Michael Myers burned to death in Laurie Strode’s rat-trap basement bunker at the end of Halloween (2018), all we can say is we envy you in what is clearly your first slasher franchise experience. Not to stomp all over your new snow, but the Man in the William Shatner Mask is very much coming back again, along with ultimate Final Woman (c’mon, you’re not calling the incomparable Jamie Lee Curtis a “girl”) in Halloween Kills . 

With our full first glimpse at Part Two –  P art 2 Vol. 2? Part 2B? –  in the   form of a just-released full trailer , this franchise has gotten extremely messy with its timelines and continuity. To help, we have gathered up everything we know so far about Haddonfield’s favorite son and his refusal to retire gracefully.

This Is the Middle Chapter of a New – and Likely Final – Trilogy

Right from the start, director David Gordon Green ( Our Brand is Crisis , Pineapple Express ) and writer Danny McBride (yes, that Danny McBride) planned their return to the Halloween franchise as a trilogy. In fact, they intended to shoot all three back-to-back-to-back but decided to pause in between: First to gauge the response to Halloween (2018) and make sure fans and new audiences were down with their franchise-course-correcting efforts, and second, because, reportedly, Halloween Kills was a really intense shoot. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter , actress Andi Matichak (who plays Laurie Strode’s granddaughter, Allyson) explains, “They thought about doing them back to back. But Halloween Kills was just so ambitious. It was such an intense shooting schedule that it would have been a bit much to try to do them at the same time.” The final installment, bluntly titled Halloween Ends , is slated for a 2022 release.

The Intention Is to Establish a Definitive “Story”

(Photo by )

Perhaps no horror franchise is messier than Halloween. You’ve got reboots, remakes, disowned sequels, and warring continuity all jumbled together into a hodgepodge of indecipherable nonsense. There’s the original 1978 Halloween , then the straight sequel Halloween II (which added the “huh?” element of Laurie being Michael’s sister), and then things get really nutty. Halloween III: Season of the Witch takes a hard left turn by having nothing at all to do with Michael Myers or Laurie Strode. (It’s a standalone story about a sinister corporation making killer Halloween masks.) The franchise then spiraled into increasingly silly and more generic cash-ins like Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (which added the “huh?” of Laurie having a daughter named Jamie out of nowhere);  Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers   (said daughter shares a psychic link with Michael? Because, sure, why not?);  Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers   (Um, Michael was “created” by a Druid cult?); then Halloween H20 (which sees Curtis return as Laurie because this movie pretends that Halloween 4, 5, and 6 didn’t happen – the first but not last instance of selective memory); and then Halloween: Resurrection (also known as the one where Michael fights Busta Rhymes ). Exhausted? We’re not even done.

After all this, Rob Zombie decided to do a complete reboot with Halloween (2007) that starts from scratch with new actors, and then he followed it up in 2009 with a second Halloween II . And finally, in 2018, Green and McBride gave us their own Halloween , which is actually a  third  try at  Halloween II , since it’s meant to be a direct sequel to the original 1978  Halloween and ignores everything that came after it. Whew. It’s a lot, but streamlining and focusing the main storyline is exactly what this franchise needs – especially since it looks like the events of Halloween, Halloween Kills , and Halloween Ends will all take place in a relatively short period of time.

There Is No Time for Downtime

The Gang’s (Almost) All Here…

Although it’s a shame the late Donald Pleasence won’t be able to join in as indomitable Myers hunter Dr. Loomis, Halloween Kills is taking a page from Cobra Kai and bringing back all of the familiar faces (or at least character names) that it can. Actress Nancy Stephens will reprise her role as Marion Chambers, a nurse and colleague of Dr. Loomis who appears in the original Halloween (and the original Halloween II  and is actually killed off in the opening of now-retconned  Halloween H20 ) – which seems especially appropriate given that the trailer suggests Halloween Kills could heavily reference the original Halloween II with some hospital-based horror. Kyle Richards (of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fame) will return as Lindsey, one of the two kids Laurie babysat in the original 1978 film, and Charles Cyphers , who played Haddonfield sheriff Leigh Brackett (whose daughter Annie was one of the original film’s victims), will also be back. A grown-up Lonnie , who is name-checked in the 2018 movie, will actually show up too. And finally, the character of Tommy Doyle (the other kid Laurie babysat in 1978) will be back as well… for the second time.

…But Some Will Have New Faces

Yes, Tommy actually returned once before, in 1995’s Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers , where he was played by none other than Paul Rudd ( Ant-Man ). Read that again: Yes, it’s 100% true. Although it would be absolutely show-stopping if Rudd reprised his role in Halloween Kills , it’s just not happening. But Tommy will be played in Halloween Kills by another cult icon: Anthony Michael Hall .

Halloween Kills  Is About Haddonfield

The 2018  Halloween  dealt primarily with Laurie’s trauma, and how it shaped her life and turned her into a paranoid, bunker-dwelling alcoholic. But there is more than nostalgia behind bringing back so many old characters – Laurie wasn’t the only one traumatized by Halloween night, 1978. The trailer shows glimpses of the town’s collective angst, and the movie was filmed under the working title “MOB RULES.” This installment is about  all  of Michael’s victims facing unstoppable evil once again and confronting their own traumas and scars – from the nurse who treated Michael in the sanitarium to the sheriff who couldn’t protect his own daughter, much less the town. It may be The Town of Haddonfield vs. Michael Myers.

The Collective Anger Will Be Intentionally Timely

In a recent interview, Curtis explained more about  the “mob rule”  theme behind  Halloween Kills  and how it was influenced by the politics of the past four years. She says the movie will deal with “what happens when trauma infects an entire community, and we’re seeing it everywhere, with the Black Lives Matter movement. We’re seeing it in action, and  Halloween Kills , weirdly enough, dovetails onto that.” Speaking with  NME , director Green added, “it’s one thing to be afraid of the Bogey Man, to have someone who might be in the closet, under the bed, creeping around your house, but what we wanted to explore next was confusion, misinformation, and paranoia. What happens when fear goes viral? You can’t stick your head under the covers anymore.”

Only COVID-19 Could Stop Michael Myers

Halloween Kills  has been in the can for a while now. It was originally due to come out in October 2020 but was held back due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the mass closure of theaters.

The Other Big Man Is Back, Too

One of the reasons fans were excited about the 2018  Halloween  wasn’t just because it meant a proper return for Laurie Strode/ Jamie Lee Curtis (can you believe they tried to kill her off – via an  off-screen car accident , no less – in  Halloween 4 ? Put some respect on her name), there was another monumental reunion to celebrate. For the first time since the disastrous  Halloween III , John Carpenter agreed to lend his name to a  Halloween  project not only as a producer but also to retool and revamp his classic score alongside his son (with  The Fog  actress Adrienne Barbeau) Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies (son of The Kinks’ Dave Davies). The trio will be back for  Halloween Kills  (and  Halloween Ends ).

It’s Going to Be Very Bloody… Even Carpenter Was Shocked

When asked by MovieWeb about Halloween Kills , new writer Scott Teems – who came on to collaborate with Green and McBride on the sequels – called it “like the first one on steroids, I guess. It really is the bigger, badder, meaner version of the first one.” If that’s enough to make horror hounds howl, even Carpenter himself was taken aback by the new film’s bloodlust. Speaking to IndieWire , Carpenter mentions seeing an early cut of the movie and describes it as “fun, intense, and brutal, a slasher movie times one hundred, big time. It’s huge. I’ve never seen anything like this. The kill count!” When a Master of Horror is that impressed, you know you’re onto something…

Halloween Kills  opens in theaters on October 15, 2021.

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‘Halloween Kills’ Review: There Will Be (Copious Amounts of) Blood

The newest installment of the “Halloween” franchise, starring Jamie Lee Curtis, is a murderous mess that substitutes corpses for characters.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

After a dozen movies — and a 13th on the horizon — the once-monstrous Michael Myers shuffles into theaters this weekend as exhausted as the 43-year-old franchise that indulges his blood lust. “ Halloween Kills ,” the middle film of a reboot trilogy started in 2018 by the director David Gordon Green, is an indolent, narratively impoverished mess that substitutes corpses for characters and slogans for dialogue.

What Green appears to be killing here is time. While his previous installment cannily reimagined Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), the plucky babysitter who bested Myers in John Carpenter’s original film, as a trauma-toughened grandmother, this latest exhumation turns her into a virtual bystander. We find her, mere minutes after the ending of the last chapter, bleeding profusely in the back of a truck, barreling away from her burning home and believing her nemesis vanquished once and for all.

“Let it burn!” she screams at the firefighters, perhaps aware that the body count of emergency workers is about to soar. Thereafter, she will mostly languish in a hospital bed in the hapless burgh of Haddonfield, Ill., while her daughter and granddaughter (Judy Greer and Andi Matichak) are left to hold the bag — or, in this case, pitchfork — when Myers, inevitably, returns.

Plagued by idiotic pronouncements (“He is an apex predator!”) and moronic behavior (doors are left unlocked, an unloaded gun is brandished), “ Halloween Kills ” plays at times like an exceptionally gory comedy routine. (I dare you not to laugh out loud when one character bemoans the rising number of slayings by declaring, “This was a safe place and now it’s not anymore!”) And if Haddonfield seems significantly more diverse this time out, it’s to no apparent purpose other than to vary the appearances and sexual orientations of its victims. That’s a shame, because the only characters I missed when the picture was over were the gay partners planning a pleasant evening with Mary Jane and “Minnie and Moskowitz” (1971) . I hope they already knew the ending.

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‘Halloween Kills’ Review: It Will Feed Your Nostalgia…for Mediocre Slasher Sequels

After his clever 2018 reboot, director David Gordon Green fumbles the ball in a follow-up that falls back into the numbing forgettability of sequel formula.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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In 2018, when David Gordon Green was given the hallowed mission of rebooting the “Halloween” series (that the director of “All the Real Girls” would embrace becoming the showrunner of a slasher franchise says a lot about the 21st century, but let’s leave that for another time), his job was to wipe away 40 years of bad sequels and to restore the lurchy cinematic gamesmanship, the perfectly-timed-shock-cut ingenuity, and the scary-classic mystique of the 1978 “Halloween.” (That the original was, itself, a mayhem-by-the-numbers knockoff of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” says a lot about the state of horror movies back then, but let’s leave that for another time.)

The mission was accomplished. “Halloween: The Reboot That We Promise, This Time, Is Actually Good and Not Just a Cheap Ripoff Imitation” had the same relation to the 1978 “Halloween” that “The Force Awakens” did to “Star Wars.” It wasn’t the real thing but an incredible simulation. Green had the craft and spirit to mimic John Carpenter’s elemental midnight B-movie canniness. The movie was just diverting and scary enough, and it got to remind the whole world of how cool, in her stalwart fear and fight, Jamie Lee Curtis always was.

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Set 40 years after the first film, the 2018 “Halloween” took us back, in spirit, to the innocent garishness of the late ’70s, and that was a (minor) triumph. But in “ Halloween Kills ,” which picks up immediately after the last film, with Curtis’s Laurie Strode being rushed to the hospital after having trapped Michael Myers in her trick basement and burned him alive, Green more or less abandons the previous film’s enjoyable retro flavor. Michael, who was no more killed by Laurie than he was in all the other “Halloween” installments (“Halloween Kills” is the 12th), proceeds to go on his latest kitchen-blade stalker rampage, and the new movie becomes all about fusing the “Halloween” formula with the tropes and obsessions of today. Which turns out to be a real fear-killer.

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The damage caused by Michael is now spoken of in the language of recovery. This starts when Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), who was one of the two kids Laurie was babysitting on that fateful 1978 Halloween night, stands up before the costumed crowd at a bar and, in between talent-show acts that are more terrifying than anything else in the movie, he says, in solemn tones of sharing, “Please join me in commemorating the victims, and the survivors, of that Halloween.” The victims this time include a middle-aged biracial couple and also a gay couple, named Big John and Little John (really?), who live in Michael Myers’ old house, which they’ve renovated to within an inch of its dark polished floorboards. That these two treat Halloween night as an occasion to eat fancy hors d’ouevres and watch “Minnie and Moskowitz” makes one realize there are clichés you wish Michael Myers could kill off.

Laurie, confined to her hospital bed, gets up out of it by giving herself a double injection of opioids. “It’s all happening,” says Laurie. “Michael’s masterpiece!” What she means is that Michael isn’t just a mad killer anymore — he’s an orchestrator of chaos, a terrorist . His intent is not simply to murder but to cause ripples of fear (you know, like ISIS and Al Qaeda!).

And then there’s the mob that forms. Anthony Michael Hall, who in his crewcut looks like the kind of Middle American lout who cheered on the Capitol Riot, picks up a baseball bat out of the bar and heads after Michael. A crowd forms behind him, and by the time Hall gets to the hospital the crowd has swelled to a furious, surging, unruly metaphor for The Angry America Of Today. Everyone starts to chant “Evil dies tonight!” And as a demonstration of how this kind of thing can go awry, they target the wrong killer, thinking that Michael, unmasked, is the other crazy dude who just escaped from the local mental institution. That’s a twist so preposterous it’s high camp, since the guy who isn’t the killer is a homunculus who looks like Danny DeVito in a hospital gown. (Did they forget that Michael Myers is six-foot-five?)

Halloween night may be Michael Myers’ masterpiece, but “Halloween Kills” is no masterpiece. It’s a mess — a slasher movie that‘s almost never scary, slathered with “topical” pablum and with too many parallel plot strands that don’t go anywhere. Green, as clever a job as he did on the first film, wastes no time cutting back to where the “Halloween” series ultimately landed: in a swamp of luridly repetitive and empty sequels, with Michael turned into such an omnipresent icon that his image gets drained of any nightmare quality. He’s more like someone who belongs on a lunchbox. Curtis, so good in the last one, is mostly wasted this time (you can feel the film trying to think up things for her to do), as Laurie’s daughter (Judy Greer) and granddaughter (Andi Matichak) do most of the heavy lifting.

The relentless nattering about the past — Michael is evil! And evil can never be killed! — is the sure sign of a desperate, bottom-line-fixated sequel. The other sign is that Michael Myers, stabbing knives and broken light fixtures into people’s faces, may not be scary anymore, but he’s still a charismatic figure of darkness. You’re relieved every time he shows up, and it’s all about that doleful, rubbery-gray, Hamlet-of-psychos mask. After 40 years, that mask is more expressive than any of the actors in “Halloween Kills.”

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition), Sept. 8, 2021. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 105 MIN.

• Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Miramax, Blumhouse Productions production. Producers: Malek Akkad, Jason Blum, Bill Block. Executive producers: John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis, David Gordon Green, Ryan Friedman, Danny McBride, Couper Samuelson, Jeanette Volturno.
• Crew: Director: David Gordon Green. Screenplay: David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, Scott Teems. Camera: Michael Simmonds. Editor: Tim Alverson. Music: John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, Daniel Davies.  
• With: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Anthony Michael Hall, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Thomas Mann, Kyle Richards, Nancy Stephens, Robert Longstreet, Charles Cyphers, James Jude Courtney, Nick Castle.

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First Halloween Kills reviews brutally split over 'darker, meaner, disturbing' sequel

Reactions to the long-awaited Jamie Lee Curtis film are divided over the "brutal" sequel's disturbing content and massive kill count.

Critics are hacking and slashing away at the long-awaited horror sequel Halloween Kills .

The Jamie Lee Curtis -starring film debuted Wednesday at the Venice International Film Festival , and initial reactions appear to be finely spliced into two categories: Those who are giddy over iconic killer Michael Myers' latest onslaught of gore, and others who are downright disgusted.

" Halloween Kills is a darker, meaner, more disturbing entry in the franchise. The kills are absolutely brutal and shocking in the best way," tweeted Collider's Rafael Motomayor, though he took issue with the film's abrupt ending (a final franchise entry, Halloween Ends , is slated for release next year). "It was great seeing old characters again, and there is a flashback that blew my mind. Sadly, this is 100% half a film."

Discussing Film critic Ben Rolph similarly called the movie "one of the most brutal films ever made," and The Wrap's Asher Luberto takes his analysis of director David Gordon Green 's intense depiction of violence one step further.

"It's about the generational trauma bestowed upon Haddonfield. The action sequences are more than just action sequences; in Green's social allegory, they are a way for citizens to confront their trauma, their rage, their oppression, and to reclaim their power and agency through revenge," he wrote , referencing the film's plot that sees Laurie Strode (Curtis) and her family ( Judy Greer , Andi Matichak) uniting the town's residents (including classic, returning actors like Kyle Richards and Nancy Stephens) in an all-out hunt for Myers. "We see Haddonfield not just as a victim of a masked assailant, but also a victim of larger forces who will stop at nothing to dehumanize their community."

Others were let down by the bloodletting, like The Hollywood Reporter 's David Rooney, who called the film a "latex ghoul mask so stretched and shapeless it no longer fits" that plays as wafer-thin as "exactly the kind of witless, worthless sequel that bled the franchise dry in the 1980s and '90s."

The Playlist 's Jessica Kiang agreed, taking issue with the frustrating logic of the film's characters as it "doubles the body count of the previous installment while roughly halving its IQ" in the process: "Honestly, in the name of evolutionary natural selection," she finished, "maybe a town this dumb deserves Michael Myers."

See more Halloween Kills reviews below.

Asher Luberto ( The Wrap ) " Halloween Kills is no mere gore-fest — it's about the generational trauma bestowed upon Haddonfield. The action sequences are more than just action sequences; in Green's social allegory, they are a way for citizens to confront their trauma, their rage, their oppression, and to reclaim their power and agency through revenge. We see Haddonfield not just as a victim of a masked assailant, but also a victim of larger forces who will stop at nothing to dehumanize their community."

Jessica Kiang ( The Playlist ) "What tension can there be when there's a killer who is virtually unkillable and absolutely ubiquitous? It's genuinely striking how few fake-outs or red herrings or surprises there are. Whenever someone hears a floorboard creak, Michael's in the house. No matter which car they get into, Michael's in the back seat. The shadow at the window? That'll be Michael. Every door that's mysteriously ajar? Why, hey there, Michael. Green's tactic in 2018 was to make a sequel to the 1978 film that simply ignored the fact that nine other Halloween films happened in the meantime. This was the best choice he, along with co-writers Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride, could have made because all of those films are, to use the correct critical term, shite. But out with the bathwater, this time has gone the baby; in an effort to remake and refresh the mythology of the franchise, the writers (this time minus Fradley and plus Scott Teems) have strayed dangerously close to getting rid of it altogether, virtually destroying the one relationship of any substance at all, and the only one we really give a damn about: that semi-mystical, weirdly symbiotic link between Laurie Strode and her eternal faceless nemesis. Of all the things Halloween Kills had to kill, why that?"

David Rooney ( The Hollywood Reporter ) "Green has made exactly the kind of witless, worthless sequel that bled the franchise dry in the 1980s and '90s.... What's most disappointing is that after reimagining Curtis' Laurie as a fierce warrior grandmother, hardened by PTSD into a tough customer at considerable cost to her personal relationships, here she's basically sidelined in post-surgery recovery. She gets to spout some wobbly Halloween lore, about Michael transcending mortality to become a superhuman disseminator of fear. But mostly she's just killing time waiting for the inevitable showdown in the closing chapter."

Ben Rolph ( Discussing Film ) " Halloween Kills is a non-stop, blood-rushing blast. David Gordon Green takes the brutality of his 2018 film and amps it up, breaking the dial in the process. Michael literally mows his way through the entire town of Haddonfield, no character, big or small, is ever safe. There are some absolutely gnarly kills that will become ingrained in spectators' minds. It's shocking to the highest degree. In terms of the film's scare factor, audiences will be undoubtedly biting their nails in anxiety. Green successfully keeps the viewer on edge as one anticipates the sudden arrival of Michael's cold knife piercing through his next victim."

Ben Croll ( IndieWire ) "Green has money to burn and time to kill, and the town of Haddonfield is right there waiting. And if this bloody entr'acte, whose title addition works as both noun and verb, has little to offer but a jacked up body count on a bed of fan service, it serves both with panache, charging forward as an almost elemental slasher outing unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality. To paraphrase Ian Holm in that other late '70s touchstone that spawned an unkillable franchise, you do have to admire its purity. That would be purity of purpose, mind you, and not quite of theme. On that front, Halloween Kills is more than a bit muddled..."

Savina Petkova ( AwardsWatch ) " Halloween Kills swaps the personified cyclical trauma of Laurie for an angry, multitudinous crowd but what it achieves has little to do with communal kinship. In fact, only if read as a social critique on mob mentality, the film can amend its ambiguous political stance. But whenever Haddonfield citizens regurgitate stock-like ultimatums about the end of their suffering as a society, these words are nothing more than a testament to how much of a projection Michael Myers's evil nature can be. No doubt, it's not up to slasher films to dissect the killer's psychology but the ones who attempt to do it without holding off its resourcefully choreographed killings make the most thrilling watch. And here Green's outdone himself: Michael's nimble use of pipes, torches, lamps, and all other household items when stabbing or suffocating his victims elevates the horrific experience to an uncanny degree, almost as if people are being butchered by their own homes. Yes, the massacres will live up to the expectations of a blood-thirsty audience, but their intellectual cravings couldn't possibly be quenched by a simplistic delineation between 'only good' and 'only evil'. Or should we say, 'only Laurie', or 'only Michael'?"

Halloween Kills premieres Oct. 15.

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‘Halloween Kills’: Release date, reviews and everything we know about the horror sequel

Michael Myers returns in the latest entry of the ‘Halloween’ franchise.

It’s almost time for Halloween, or the latest entry in the classic horror franchise, Halloween Kills , to be more precise. 

Halloween Kills is the 12th film for Michael Myers, 43 years after he first started terrorizing his old neighborhood in that creepy William Shatner mask. Things have gotten a little jumbled over the years though with who’s dead and what Michael has been up to. In the case of Halloween Kills , it is the direct sequel to the 2018 Halloween directed by David Gordon Green that rebooted the story of Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Green returns to the director’s chair again for this film.

What’s in store for Mr. Myers and the rest of the town of Haddonfield, Illinois? Well here’s everything we know about the film so far.

What is the plot of ‘Halloween Kills’?

Halloween Kills picks up almost immediately after the events of 2018’s Halloween , with Laurie Strode, her daughter and her granddaughter leaving Michael Myers to burn in their house. However, Michael Myers manages to escape and sets out once again on his killing spree.

Laurie, injured from her encounter with Michael, attempts to mend herself enough to face him once again, while also rallying the other residents of Haddonfield to vanquish the ghoul once and for all. But the more Michael murders the more difficult he becomes to kill.

Who is in the ‘Halloween Kills’ cast?

Once again reprising her role as Laurie Strode will be Jamie Lee Curtis. This will mark the fifth time that Curtis has played the role of Laurie Strode, though the character has changed dramatically throughout her time playing the role. The original line of sequels featuring Curtis ( Halloween II , Halloween H20: 20 Years Later ) revealed Laurie to actually be Michael’s sister. These films from David Gordon Green nix that plotline as they follow just the story of the original 1978 Halloween .

Reprising their roles from 2018’s Halloween will be Judy Greer as Laurie Strode’s daughter Karen and Andi Matichak as her granddaughter Allyson. Also returning are Will Patton as Frank Hawkins and Nick Castle as Michael Myers (aka the Shape).

Others joining the cast are Anthony Michael Hall, Kyle Richards, Thomas Mann, Scott McArthur, Dylan Arnold, Charles Cyphers, Robert Longstreet, Niko El Santo Zavero, James Jude Courtney, Omar J. Dorsey, Nancy Stephens, Jibrail Nantambu and Brian F. Durkin.

Who is director David Gordon Green?

David Gordon Green serves as the director and writer for Halloween Kills , after having also served in both roles in Halloween . However, prior to the 2018 movie, Green was better known for his broad comedies and indies.

Green’s past directing credits include Pineapple Express , Your Highness , Prince Avalanche , Joe , Our Brand is Crisis and Stronger .

However, he may be entering another act of his career where horror is his go to. After he wraps up with the Halloween franchise, he has been tapped to direct new versions of The Exorcist and Hellraiser .

When is the ‘Halloween Kills’ release date?

Halloween Kills will come out in the heart of spooky season, with its release date set for Oct. 15. However, it was reported by Deadline and others that Universal has decided to give Halloween Kills a hybrid release, having it premiere in theaters and launch on the Peacock streaming service the same day.

This is the second film that Universal has done this with in 2021, the other one being Boss Baby: Family Business .

Of course Universal isn’t the first to make such a move. Warner Bros. has been releasing all of its 2021 movies the same day in theaters and on its HBO Max streaming service, including its own horror film Malignant . Disney has also experimented with the strategy with Disney Plus Premier Access , though that required subscribers to pay a $30 fee to purchase the movie; Halloween Kills will be free to stream for Peacock Premium subscribers.

Is there a ‘Halloween Kills’ trailer?

But of course there is. What is being dubbed the final trailer for Halloween Kills, the trailer shows Michael Myers on a unstoppable rampage back to his childhood home, while Laurie, her family and the town rally to stop him.

What's the buzz on 'Halloween Kills'?

It's still early days for Halloween Kills (the first reviews came in a month before the film releases in theaters), but it's been a much more muted response to the sequel to 2018's Halloween than that film received.

Right now the film sits at a 53% on Rotten Tomatoes, though with only 15 critics having given their thoughts the jury is still out.

How to watch ‘Halloween Kills’

With the new hybrid strategy will give horror fans options to enjoy Halloween Kills when it is released. The first is of course to head to a local theater that is playing it and enjoy it on the big screen. The other is to stream it on Peacock, but there’s a couple of other details that you need to know about that.

While Peacock does offer a completely free version that lets you watch classic TV shows and movies, that version will not be offering Halloween Kills when it is first released. Instead, to watch it as soon as possible, you will need to sign up for either the $4.99 (ad-supported) or $9.99 (ad-free) version of Peacock Premium.

However, once you’re signed up for Peacock Premium you can watch it on your TV, your computer, mobile devices or even PlayStation or Xbox gaming consoles.  

Will there be another ‘Halloween’ movie?

Of course we don’t know what happens in Halloween Kills , but barring the greatest misdirect in movie history, we can bet that Michael Myers and Laurie Strode will tango one more time after this latest film, as Halloween Ends already has an Oct. 14, 2022, release date for U.S. audiences, with Jamie Lee Curtis attached to star.

But what will transpire to set up this presumed final confrontation between the two foes?

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Michael Balderston is a DC-based entertainment and assistant managing editor for What to Watch, who has previously written about the TV and movies with TV Technology, Awards Circuit and regional publications. Spending most of his time watching new movies at the theater or classics on TCM, some of Michael's favorite movies include Casablanca , Moulin Rouge! , Silence of the Lambs , Children of Men , One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Star Wars . On the TV side he enjoys Only Murders in the Building, Yellowstone, The Boys, Game of Thrones and is always up for a Seinfeld rerun. Follow on Letterboxd .

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Halloween Kills… The Franchise, To Be Specific: Review

The sequel to the 2018 reboot is a sloppy, blinkered epilogue that wastes everyone's time

Directed by

• David Gordon Green
• Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Anthony Michael Hall, Will Patton, Andi Matichak

Where to Stream

The Pitch:  It’s the late hours of Halloween night 2018, and Laurie Strode’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) house is still aflame from trapping Michael Myers in a flaming prison she’s spent decades building. But even that’s not enough to kill the soulless demon monster with a penchant for homicide; he escapes with nary a scratch on him, save for some scorch marks on his William Shatner mask. As daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) rush an injured Laurie to the hospital, the rest of Haddonfield learns of the asylum bus crash that led to Michael’s escape, and a mob forms to try to catch the killer. But will strength in numbers be enough to vanquish pure evil?

Halloween Persists:  In the age of “legacyquels,” followups to nostalgic hits from the ’70s and ’80s that feature the return of old stars and the sensibilities of new directors, 2018’s Halloween was a qualified success, closer on the  Force Awakens spectrum than it is  Terminator: Dark Fate . David Gordon Green, along with co-screenwriter Danny McBride and returning star Curtis, managed to miraculously revive the old slasher-killer formula into something that, if not entirely successful, at least took the franchise back to basics and treated Laurie Strode with a modicum of respect.

But as with any horror franchise, it’s the sequels you’ve got to worry about, and  Halloween Kills burns away the first film’s goodwill about as quickly as the light leaving the eyes of one of Michael’s victims. Functioning essentially as an extended, episodic epilogue to the 2018 film,  Kills prefers to dance around the periphery of the Laurie/Michael vendetta, offering unsatisfying side stories that also double as ham-fisted political commentary. Laurie, after all, is in critical condition after the events of the first film, so poor Curtis is stuck in a hospital room for the vast majority of the film’s runtime; don’t expect her to be shouting down Michael and pumping shotguns this time around.

Halloween Kills (Universal)

Instead, we revisit some of the  other characters from the first  Halloween , and see how they’ve been dealing with their respective traumas since Michael’s first (and, according to this series’ canon, the only) rampage in 1978. Tommy Doyle, all grown up and played by Anthony Michael Hall, leads a group of recovering victims — including Marion Chambers (Nany Stephens) and Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet) — in an annual ritual of telling their harrowing story at the local watering hole. But when they hear that Michael’s back on the loose, they decide (inspired by Laurie’s example) to stand up to Michael as a community. “Evil dies tonight!” they chant, grabbing baseball bats and guns and all manner of implements to hunt down their invincible tormentor.

It’s a move patently intended to Say Something about Our Present Moment; the hordes of mostly white Haddonfieldians, screaming and shouting while waving guns around, harkens back to a certain fateful day in January at the Capitol. But it’s a messy, hamfisted story beat, especially since it fits particularly poorly in this particular genre — in slashers, you want the townspeople to band together to stop the bad guy, since he relies on fear and division to stalk his prey.

Instead, Tommy’s posse turns into an idiotic mob that, at one point, chases down the wrong person, another escapee from the bus crash that set Michael free last movie. More than a hokey, obvious metaphor for vigilante violence, it takes leaps so preposterous that even the most slasher-jaded would roll their eyes. (Not even after it’s too late do the townspeople stop to think whether the elderly, 5-foot-nothing schlub in hospital scrubs and no Michael Myers mask looks anything like their 6’5″ target.)

Halloween Thrills:  That said, there are some isolated thrills to be found in  Kills ‘ still-torturous 100 minute runtime. The fringe benefit of having zero characters to care about in this thing is that you can delight in their dispatching, and Green and Co. find nifty new ways to kill off Haddonfield’s dead-eyed residents. An entire firefighter team is taken out by Halligan bars and rotary saws, Green shooting much of the scene through the bloodied goggles of an already-dead victim.

One poor victim finds themselves on the business end of a broken fluorescent light tube (though it’s troubling how the kill they linger on the most is that of an elderly Black woman). John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies’ throwback synth score is still thrilling, though it plays the same beats as last time and doesn’t offer much appeal beyond the nostalgic.

Halloween Shrugs:  Apart from the grisly viscera and ooey-gooey sound design, though, there’s not much appeal in Halloween Kills . It’s violent, visceral, and deeply nihilistic, like so many good horror movies are. But it forgets to actually be  scary . And if you’re not going to spook us, at least keep us centered on characters we care about or build up the new ones to give us something to root for.

As is, Kills ‘s structure is a mess, tossing us from one small set of Michael-bait to the next, occasionally checking in with a near-comatose Laurie to bask in the bitter irony of her presumed victory. (Guess what, Will Patton’s grown-up Sherriff Hawkins is alive too; too bad he does literally nothing for the rest of the movie.)

In its sole focus on its tertiary characters,  Halloween Kills feels like the  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Must Die of horror movies. Instead, we get bizarre setpieces featuring bickering old couples who get torn apart by Michael’s blade, or Tommy’s band of day-player survivors from the first film attempting to get their own revenge on Michael without Laurie’s decades of doomsday preparation.

Most bizarrely, a few scenes center around the middle-aged gay couple who’ve bought Michael Myers’ old house (Michael McDonald and Scott MacArthur), who call each other “Big John” and “Little John” for some strange reason. They spend Halloween night eating canapés and watching Minnie and Moskowitz , before Michael naturally comes home to see how they’ve redecorated. If they’re looking to curry favor with The Gays for representation, let’s just say the rest of my community may not be happy with the kill roster by movie’s close.

The Verdict:  I know, horror movies are supposed to be stupid — especially the ones to which Green is clearly paying homage. But here’s the thing: they don’t have to be. You can do throwback nostalgia-bait horror that doesn’t require every character to have the situational awareness of a three-hole punch, I promise you. In trying to play wink-wink with the silliness of horror sequels,  Halloween Kills falls prey to the very tropes they think they’re sending up, which also makes the cringeworthy attempts at being “topical” fall even flatter.

This feels like the dark second chapter to a presumed third film that will close out this erstwhile sequel trilogy. But who’s going to care about how it ends at this point? Decades of cultural osmosis have taught us that Michael Myers can’t be killed, but maybe this film series should suffer a different fate. Tedium dies tonight.

Where’s It Playing?  Halloween Kills drops in theaters and on Peacock October 15th. Bring your mask, your knife, and a barf bag.

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HALLOWEEN KILLS Exclusive Bonus Content Peek! Now On Digital

Last Updated on June 8, 2024 by Topher DeRosia

The never-before-seen extended cut of Halloween Kills is out today on digital and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray. Both the original theatrical cut and extended cut with alternate ending are included, along with loads of exclusive bonus content. We have an exclusive peek at a behind-the-scenes breakdown bringing that epic house fire scene to life, “four hours of prime-inferno”, one house, a lot of moving pieces, and gruesome deaths. David Gordon Green, Ryan Turek, and Christopher Nelson take us on set to witness just how they pulled this off.

Take a look at the full list of bonus features below!

BONUS FEATURES ON 4K ULTRA HD, BLU-RAY, DVD & DIGITAL:

• Deleted/Extended scenes
• HADDONFIELD’S OPEN WOUNDS -Those who die at the hands of Michael Myers are not his only victims. We look at some of the returning characters, and why their past traumatic encounters with The Shape made them natural candidates to try and defend Haddonfield against him.
• THE KILL TEAM-It takes a big team to create a film on the scale of HALLOWEEN KILLS, especially when part of the task is raising the bar for Michael’s gruesome kills. We hear the people behind the mayhem discuss how they continue to push the franchise to new heights.
• STRODE FAMILY VALUES-Filmmakers and cast discuss the three generations of Strode women that have been terrorized by The Shape, and the roles Laurie, Karen, and Allyson play in trying to vanquish his evil.
• 1978 TRANSFORMATIONS -Shooting new footage that matches the feel of the iconic 1978 footage is no easy task, and even takes a little bit of luck. We reveal some of the secrets of how filmmakers achieved these stunning sequences.
• THE POWER OF FEAR-The impact of Michael Myers’ pure evil extends far beyond his victims. We examine how fear of The Shape changed the psychology of the people of Haddonfield.
• •KILL COUNT•FEATURE COMMENTARY -Director/co-writer David Gordon Green and stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Judy Greer

Halloween Kills is now available on digital, purchase here . 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD available January 11, 2022.

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Angel Melanson is the Digital Editor of FANGORIA.com. When she’s not running the website, you can find her being our resident online creep in various capacities. From hosting red carpet interviews and our Convo x Fango interview series, chatting with horror royalty and up-and-coming creators to watch, to moderating live Q&As, and occasionally writing for the magazine.

After sneaking peeks at FANGORIA while hidden in store aisles, she spent a few years running her own website and podcast under the HorrorGirl Problems banners before hosting interviews for Fango and eventually joining the Fango fam full-time. A true nightmare come true.

The Best Horror Movies Streaming Now on Hulu

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Last Updated: June 6, 2024

Hulu and horror go hand in hand every month. For example, they are adding the first 7 Saw films to the platform this June. The streamer also knows genre kids love Nicolas Cage, and they are dropping some of his thrillers like 8 MM and Lord Of War . These movies are nice layovers for those wanting more Cage time after Arcadian and before Longlegs . They also have a few hidden gems and a nice little stack of brand-new titles I cannot wait to get into. However, I easily spotted the five things that will spark the most joy this month.

Check out what titles caught my eye this June below.

It Follows | 2015

A young woman inherits something supernatural after having car sex with her new boyfriend. This premise is scary enough, and this movie did not need to go as hard as it did. It is a creepy, disturbing, and surprising little ride. I love that the movie is making stops on each streamer this year because the sequel has been greenlit. So, we should revisit it before heading out to see what happens next. If you are a Hulu subscriber tired of waiting for it to come to your neighborhood, then now is your time! 

Kill Your Darlings | 2013

When Lucien Carr is found dead, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac are arrested for his murder. This movie is inspired by actual events, which always gives me an extra chill. I do not know how it has flown under my radar this long. This is especially wild because the cast includes Daniel Radcliffe, Dane DeHaan, Ben Foster, Michael C. Hall, and Queen Elizabeth Olsen. This will be one of my first stops on the Hulu train this month.

Silent Hill | 2006

A woman takes her adopted daughter to Silent Hill and finds herself on a terrifying journey. I played a lot of Silent Hill as a kid, so I was so happy to see this movie capture the horrific sights and WTF spirit. This movie was one of the first times a video game adaptation ever worked for me. I am so happy I can make everyone else watch it now. This is also the perfect time to return to this franchise because a new movie is on the horizon by the same filmmaker who made this installment. 

Somewhere Quiet | 2023

A woman having a hard time returning to her life after being kidnapped decides to visit her in-laws’ compound. I have been trying to see this movie forever! I could not get a screener out of Tribeca Film Festival 2023, and I was starting to worry I would never be able to watch it. So, I am excited to see writer and director Olivia West Lloyd’s first feature.

Wreck: Complete Season 2

A young man works on a cruise ship to search for his missing sister. I love that season 2 is coming out this month because it reminds me that I need to finish the first season. It also means I can immediately roll into these new episodes once I catch up. We all want to see where this UK horror comedy goes next, and the wait is almost over! If you have not started the series, June is the month to get aboard. New episodes arrive on Hulu on June 11.

Everything coming to Hulu In June

Amelia’s Children | 2023 Blue City | 1986 Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown: Complete Limited Series Death on the Nile | 2022 Eight Millimeter | 1999 Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw | 2019 Fight Club | 1999 From Tomorrow: Complete Season 1 Hide and Seek | 2005 In the Fade | 2017 Independence Day | 1996 It Follows | 2015 Joker | 2019 Kill Your Darlings | 2013 Life of Pi | 2012 Lord of War | 2005 Marmalade | 2024 Mirrors | 2008 Money Monster | 2016 Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini: Complete Documentary Series Prey | 2024 Red Right Hand | 2024 Rose’s War | 2023 Saw | 2004 Saw 2 | 2005 Saw 3 | 2006 Saw 4 | 2007 Saw 5 | 2008 Saw 6 | 2009 Saw: The Final Chapter | 2010 Silent Hill | 2006 Skyscraper | 2018 Somewhere Quiet | 2023 Split | 2017 The Day After Tomorrow | 2004 The Invitation | 2022 The Missing | 2003 To Kill a Stepfather | 2023 Trapped in the Farmhouse | 2023 Van Helsing | 2004 Volcano | 1997 Weird Science | 1985 What Comes Around | 2023 Wild Tales | 2015 Wreck: Complete Season 2

Hulu is also giving genre fans 2024 titles like Marmalade , Prey , and Red Right Hand this month . So, if you’re trying to catch up on the bajillion movies that have dropped this year, this streamer is here with the assist. Let me know what titles have your attention this June at @misssharai.

Categorized: Streaming Guides

'In a Violent Nature' Review: Eat Your Heart Out, Jason Voorhees

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The Big Picture

• In a Violent Nature is a unique and gruesome horror film.
• The film's formal approach and creative kills set it apart, with a focus on the killer and visceral moments.
• While it may be exhausting for some, those seeking hyper-violent horror will find it to be a bold and bloody ride.

This review was originally part of our coverage of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

You’ve never seen a horror film like writer-director Chris Nash’s In a Violent Nature . While it perhaps shares an eventually similar sense of madcap energy to other recent Shudder offerings like When Evil Lurks , its unique formal approach and gruesome kills put it in a class all its own. Where 2023 was a strong one for festival horror emerging as the year's best , with everything from birth/rebirth to Talk to Me leaving their mark on the genre long after their Sundance premieres, 2024 now has an early contender of its own with In a Violent Nature .

In a Violent Nature

The horror movie tracks a ravenous zombie creature as it makes its way through a secluded forest.

What Is 'In a Violent Nature' About?

The film opens with an extended shot of a pendant hanging from a pipe of some kind long consumed by rust in the middle of a dilapidated structure in the woods. It is the peaceful quiet before the bloody storm that is coming. We hear voices talking about inane nonsense before a hand reaches in and grabs the pendant. Big mistake. The voices wander away, though a rumbling begins to grow louder and louder under the ground before a hand bursts through. This is Johnny, embodied magnificently by actor Ry Barrett , a killing machine who has been awakened and is now about to tear through any who are unlucky enough to cross his path. Like Jason Vorhees of the Friday the 13th series, though somehow much meaner and smarter, he wanders methodically through the remote area, accumulating weapons that he’ll soon put to bloody use . His main targets end up being, of course, a group of unwitting horny and drunken teens whose vacation is soon to become an unrelenting nightmare.

In case it wasn’t already clear, In a Violent Nature is a slasher film in an almost classical sense . Everything plays out just as expected, with what feels like a bounty of references from Halloween to My Bloody Valentine and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , with a few stumbles near the end. What makes it all hold together even as its characters come apart in bloody pieces is Nash’s commitment to a terrifyingly effective formal approach where we are almost always with the killer himself. Similar in some regards to Steven Soderbergh ’s Presence , even as that remains 100 percent committed to its POV where this switches it up a couple times, it is not about the material as much it is the method of conveying it. Save for some occasionally clunky dialogue that is used to fill in the gaps, which you forgive as almost part of a grand joke, considering how quickly those speaking it get killed, we are almost always with Johnny just unleashing havoc. The kills in this film are some of the most bonkers, bloody, and brutal you’ll ever see. It’s the type of film where you’ll go “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a decapitated head do that before” in both awe and terror. Some of it could seem disposable if you just read a synopsis, but it is the visceral approach that makes it a cut above. Just when you think it's run out of ways to obliterate the characters, it outdoes itself again with fearsome flair.

There is a good chance this could become exhausting to those less interested in hyper-violent horror where the gore is the main draw. However, for those who are looking for something that really pushes itself to bloody new heights, this is a full horror meal worth chowing down on. The narrative might not have much meat on the bone, but the rest of the film is never lacking for moments that get right up into the guts of its potential. There is one character who emerges as a protagonist of sorts in Kris, played by Andrea Pavlovic who has a strong commanding presence when the film needs her to, though she is an outlier. Most everyone else will show up just long enough to be killed. There are moments where it can show more restraint, like one killing in the water where we are tensely waiting in agony for the moment where Johnny will strike. When he does, the most chilling part is how quick and almost completely silent it all is, save for a few screams that are swallowed up by the uncaring sounds of nature echoing through the forest. Nash knows when to be bombastic and when to balance it with a lighter touch, ensuring each cuts deeper. It is grimly funny at times, though no less terrifying because of it. Everything compliments itself as we observe the beautiful forest being made into a hunting ground where there is nowhere you are safe for long .

'In a Violent Nature' Is a Bold and Bloody Ride

Though the ending is a little less confident than all that preceded it, lacking patience and spelling things out a bit too much when Pavlovic already speaks volumes with her focused performance, the overall ride is an enthralling one . The final shots leave a lingering sense of dread that is built upon the foundation that was built from the stacked bodies Johnny accumulated. In many regards, he is the star of the show, with one scene where we finally see his face while characters speculate far out of frame about his origins hammering this home. He never smiles for his closeup, but one can’t help grinning all the way through this gruesome horror picture with its delightfully audacious approach. Jason Voorhees better watch his back.

The latest from Shudder gives new life to the slasher film as writer-director Chris Nash leaves his own distinct mark on the horror genre.

• The film's formal conceit is terrifyingly executed and often grimly funny.
• It strikes a balance between bombast and a lighter touch, with each complimenting the other perfectly.
• Ry Barrett embodies the killer magnificently and Andrea Pavlovic gives the closest person we have to a protagonist some weight in her performance.
• The ending spells things out a bit too much, proving to be not quite as confident and patient as all the preceded it.

In a Violent Nature comes to theaters in the U.S. starting May 31. Click below for showtimes near you.

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Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre deals in gory kills and a messy agenda

No one can control Leatherface, especially sequel directors

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It’s easy to see why filmmakers keep trying to build a franchise around Leatherface, the hulking masked maniac first introduced in the 1974 splatter classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre . Like Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and Chucky — or even like Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula — Leatherface has a familiar name and a ghoulish visage, highly marketable to fright fans. If there were a Mount Rushmore of horror-movie villains, Leatherface would be on it.

Yet for nearly four decades now — from the first Chainsaw sequel in 1986 to Netflix’s new film, confusingly titled Texas Chainsaw Massacre — the idea of a Leatherface series has never really caught on. Every few years, it seems, someone takes a shot at rebooting or restarting the whole Chainsaw cinematic universe, with the intention of making multiple installments. When the whole project inevitably fizzles, another set of writers, directors, and producers comes on board and starts over again.

Netflix’s new Texas Chainsaw Massacre has a large creative team, not all of whom were involved from start to finish. The major names to know are Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, who co-wrote the story and are among the movie’s producers. (Newcomer Chris Thomas Devlin is the credited screenwriter, while David Blue Garcia is the director , having taken over mid-production from Andy and Ryan Tohill.) Álvarez and Sayagues previously collaborated on the well-received 2013 Evil Dead reboot, and on the first two entries in the Don’t Breathe series. If there’s a theme uniting their work — this Chainsaw included — it has to do with broken and abandoned spaces, and the sometimes shifty people who nestle deep within them.

The new film stars Elsie Fisher (best-known as the heartbreakingly optimistic eighth grader in Eighth Grade ) as Lila, a moody teen who joins her sister Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and their foodie friend Dante (Jacob Latimore) on a trip to the dinky, devastated Texas town of Harlow, where these entrepreneurial young folks have purchased some run-down real estate in hopes of establishing an affordable hipster haven. When they arrive, they’re surprised to find that one of the dirt-cheap old homes they thought they bought is still occupied by an addled old lady, who really doesn’t want to leave.

The senior citizen, it turns out, is the mother of Leatherface (Marc Burnham); and when these cocky kids cause his mom’s health to go downhill, the angry lug embarks on a rampage that has him hacking his way through several of Melody and Dante’s visiting West Coast tech bros and influencers. Leatherface’s return also draws one of his old victims out of her seclusion: Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), the lone survivor of the 1974 Massacre , who has been training herself for a rematch ever since. This Texas Chainsaw Massacre is intended as a direct sequel to the first film, set in a world where the massacre itself has become an infamous murder-mystery, covered in a TV true-crime documentary narrated by the original movie’s narrator, John Larroquette.

The 1974 Chain Saw — the only one where “chain” and “saw” are separated in the title — was directed by Tobe Hooper and written by Hooper with Kim Henkel, working with a cast of Austin-area hippies and theater kids. Hooper was looking to break into Hollywood with a cheap drive-in movie that would double as a commentary on how Vietnam-era America had become numb to violence. He and Henkel tell a simple, almost folktale-like story about Sally (played by the late Marilyn Burns) and her friends visiting the old Hardesty family estate and inadvertently stumbling across a nearby house owned by an eccentric clan of cannibals, including the savage Leatherface (the late Gunnar Hansen).

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is grubby, relentless, and genuinely shocking, thanks in part to a few good “trust nobody” twists, akin to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho . (Both Psycho and Chain Saw are very loosely inspired by the real-life crimes of the rural Wisconsin grave-robber and murderer Ed Gein.) Hooper and screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson took a different approach with 1986’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 , making a bigger-budget horror-comedy that amped up both the gore and the social satire. The first sequel offers a wildly imaginative vision of Texas as an anything-goes libertarian wonderland, where dangerous weirdos are largely left alone by their neighbors and allowed to build mini-empires out in the sticks.

The Chainsaw movies since then have been a motley lot. Most of them have continued Hooper and company’s cockeyed commentary on Texas culture, and all have centered Leatherface, a mute man-child wearing a mask made out of human skin. All five of the films made in the 21st century — including the new one — have also followed the modern horror franchise trend of trying to reassemble the fractured narrative pieces of the earlier pictures into something like a mythology.

In the case of the Álvarez/Sayagues Texas Chainsaw Massacre , that means bringing Sally back. That choice ultimately feels tacked-on and unoriginal — and too reminiscent of the recent Halloween movies’ attempts to turn their original Final Girl into the villain’s most formidable opponent . Sally isn’t really a full-fledged character, she’s just a symbol.

A lot about this Chainsaw is under-realized and messy — perhaps because of the project’s convoluted shoot, which saw the original directors axed one week into production in Bulgaria. The final version of the film, directed by Garcia, packs a lot of characters, subplots, and backstory into its 83 minutes, and very few are essential. Beyond Sally’s return, the movie has Lila coping with PTSD from a mass shooting she survived, Moe Dunford playing a local redneck who reluctantly helps out Dante and his team of idealistic gentrifiers, and a busload of visiting Californians who respond to their first glimpse of Leatherface by pulling out their cell phones and live-streaming. None of these ideas stick around long enough to develop into anything meaningful. The film’s social commentary — including a bit where the new kids in Harlow are offended by a prominently displayed Confederate flag — is more glancing than hard-hitting.

To be fair, the cell phone gag is pretty funny, and it’s matched elsewhere by other clever, memorable moments. For gorehounds looking for vicious kills, Texas Chainsaw Massacre has a few good ones, including a bit where Leatherface breaks a man’s arm and then stabs him in the neck with the shattered bone. The filmmakers also ape the original by throwing in a few Psycho -esque curveballs, including one that’s a real doozy.

But to what end, all this mayhem? The idea of young folks buying and renovating a ghost town feels like an extension of what Álvarez and Sayagues did with Don’t Breathe and Don’t Breathe 2 , both of which are set in economically ravaged Detroit neighborhoods where even the heroes were criminals. And the idea that Leatherface would carve up these interlopers is classic Chainsaw , looping back to Hooper’s darkly ironic take on “Don’t Mess with Texas.”

That simple concept, though — blithely arrogant outsiders getting their comeuppance at the hands of lawless yokels — is muddied up by the same tedious world-building agenda that bogs down nearly every post-Hooper Chainsaw movie. Like so many filmmakers before them, the creators behind this Texas Chainsaw Massacre have come into this project intending to build something lasting, something other people can use as a foundation for more movies. And once again, they have found that Leatherface is just too freaky, vicious, and downright cussed to be any team’s franchise player.

The 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre is streaming on Netflix now.

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