***SPOILERS AHEAD***
If you're a fan of horror movies, October holidays, and inside-out Captain Kirk masks, chances are you've seen the entire Halloween canon and, like my partner and I, you've been looking forward to the new release, Halloween Kills. Hopefully you're also a fan of laughing at cheesy horror tropes, because I'm here to tell you, Halloween Kills may be the most unintentionally hilarious slasher fic I've ever seen.
Don't get me wrong—it was a fun movie to see with my special someone on a spooky October date night, for sure. If you enjoy Halloween, Friday the 13th, and other paranormal slasher thrillers, you'll probably like this one. But I went into this movie having read reviews that called it the goriest and most disturbing installment in the series. A film elevating the scares far beyond its predecessors, and bringing Halloween into the realm of true, gritty, shock thrillers.
And... it's not. It's just not. I enjoyed the movie mostly because it made me laugh so hard, and I'm pretty sure that's not what the filmmakers intended.
So slip on those Kirk masks and beware, for HERE THERE BE SPOILERS! These are the top 10 reasons Halloween Kills is the most unintentionally hilarious horror movie I've ever seen.
1. The totally unironic enthusiasm of ill-fated vigilantes
Halloween Kills has been hailed as the Halloween movie in which the citizens of Haddonfield—the town Michael Myers routinely wanders during his holiday murder sprees—finally get fed up and fight back. Survivors from the original attacks are all grown up now, and when they get word that Michael's back and slashing, what do they do? Throw back a round of beer, grab the nearest available object they can wield as a weapon, and head out to... rally every stranger they meet and chant "Evil dies tonight!" without ever actually tracking down Michael.
There's some obligatory property damage, a lot of shouting and waving of pitchforks, and (no surprise) plenty of well-meaning idiots die. But God bless him, the ringleader Tommy is just so goddamned earnest as he vows with all his heart to protect Laurie Strode, who quite frankly can handle Michael way better than any of the randos roped in to this slasher-fic rendition of Kill the Beast.
2. Terminal Bravery
And while our gang of heartfelt heroes are heroically vowing to protect the people of Haddonfield, Michael is happily stabbing his way through... the people of Haddonfield. His victims apparently feel the knife-wielding maniac deserves a Halloween treat and serve themselves up like dishes at a potluck. I mean, what would you do when you see the famed slasher stroll through the flaming doorway of a burning house where the brutal, squishy, wet deaths of two firefighters have just been broadcast over the radio? If you're a Haddonfield firefighter, you grab anything on the truck you can use as a weapon and face off with the killer right then and there. And bravo to the brave men who took up their fire axes, jaws of life, and even the firehose to take the fight directly to Michael! Just pin the badges of honor to their eleven brave, brutally mutilated corpses.
And the firefighters aren't the only ones to get gutsy when Michael comes calling. The delightful couple currently living in the old Myers home (and fully aware of the house's history) take it into their heads that maybe the stranger who's broken into their home on Halloween night, leaving adult-sized bloody handprints in their kitchen, is a problem they can handle themselves. They'll just grab a few tiny cheese knives and split up to hunt through the house. What could go wrong?
Such brave folks. Such stupid, stupid, brave folks.
3. Aim So Bad it Makes Stormtroopers Look Good
Is it not yet common knowledge among the people of Haddonfield that bullets mean nothing to Michael Myers? The cops in the film actually bring it up. Yet while our heroes are whipping up their mob of vigilantes, everyone goes right for the handguns. Which wouldn't be such a problem, if anyone showed any ability to actually use one. Whatever you do, don't go storming up to a jumpsuited masked slasher wildly firing a handgun in every direction except the one he's standing in. If you do, at least don't have the gall to look surprised when you finally get a clear shot, only to find you've run out of bullets. RIP, too many self-appointed Michael Hunters.
4. Cheesy Gore Effects
I almost opted not to see Halloween Kills because a lot of the reviews I read called out the film for a higher-intensity gore factor than any previous film in the series. I was assured that the movie downright mangled the casualties and let the camera linger on their visceral, nausea-inducing remains. It was meant, I guess, to make audiences witness and sit with the awful gruesomeness. Me? I couldn't stop thinking of those wiggly, jiggly, plastic Creepy Crawler toys. All the somber, serious horror of a Rick and Morty gag. I suppose that's a good thing, since I didn't want to get stuck watching anything really gruesome anyway.
5. What's That You Say? Mob Justice Isn't Working Out So Good?
I think the team behind Halloween Kills wanted to take the audience deeper than your typical horror flick and examine the true violence and terror of... something something, mob rule? Vigilantism, bad? If you didn't see it coming that ol' Tommy boy's group of drunken locals was going to end up killing someone who very much wasn't Michael Myers, I don't know what to tell you. And kill a non-Michael, they did. Their hapless victim was, in fact, a different escaped mental patient from the last movie, whom I think we were meant to sympathize with. The only problem was, at no point did we get any information about him, except that he was in inmate at the same mental asylum for the criminally insane where Michael himself had been held for 40 years. So... RIP, unnamed asylum escapee who could have easily been Hannibal Lecter? We (really) barely knew ye?
6. The complete lack of even a single intelligent decision, by anyone
Famed Haddonfield slasher back in town? Let's all roam the streets haphazardly looking for him! Teenage girl gets to make a choice between staying in a well-lit hospital full of people or climbing into a truck with her boyfriend and his dad to go track down the killer she just escaped? Into the truck! Check out a dark, silent house as a group or head in one by one? You know it's gotta be one by one. If two of us simply have to go in together, we'd better split up immediately. Michael's using a cop as a human shield? Shoot the cop!
RIP, anyone who wasn't already dead.
7. Character Motivations that are Straight Non-Sequitur.
For some reason the script writers decided to include a cop who, once upon a time, stopped Dr. Loomis from killing Michael because "in that moment, all I could think was that it was somebody's little boy underneath that mask". Okay, fine... except there was absolutely no lead-up to that or indication of why the cop would have that particular reaction after chasing a killer all over town from bloody crime scene to bloody crime scene, only to watch said killer viciously strangling his partner five minutes prior to this strange moment of mercy. Is that really the right set of circumstances to lead you to believe "that's somebody's little boy under there"?
Convenient how the cop momentarily forgot the very well-known community horror story about how Michael killed his sister when he was a "little boy".
8. Laurie Strode Thinks Morphine Is a Fantastic Pre-Fight Pick-Me-Up
What. The Hell. Laurie, you're supposed to be our hero!
After surviving the last movie with a serious near-disembowelment, it's no surprise Laurie Strode is immediately rushed to the hospital and sent into surgery. I'd even say it's no real surprise when, mere hours later, she's ready to get up out of her hospital bed and try to kick some more ass. It's stupid of her (see #6), but not surprising.
But why in the world would she decide to reach over onto the nurse's medical cart, seize a bottle of post-op opioid painkillers, fill up a syringe and jab herself in the ass with it, heroically muttering "It'll make the pain go away", before suiting up to go fight Michael Myers again? Did the bottle not state clearly enough that one should not drive, operate heavy machinery, or attempt to out-slash a superhuman killing machine while under the effects of narcotics?
9. THAT HAT.
He does know he's in Illinois, right? I can't. I just. Can't.
10. By the End, I Genuinely Wanted Michael to Win I thought this was going to be a film about Michael Myer's victims rising up to take back the night. By the end, I was ready for Michael to put them all out of their misery. This town and all the people in it are apparently too comically stupid to live.