Halloween Kills (2021) is a middle chapter that really, really wants to be a middle chapter. In an era of major franchises and event releases, you can almost forgive the writers and producers for milking as much money as they can out of a reliable IP, but too few interesting things happen to our leads—namely Jamie Lee Curtis—to give it the momentum a Chapter 2 requires leading into Chapter 3. 

Historically, the Halloween franchise has been at its best when it bills itself in duologies: the original 1978 and 1981 films, H20 and its sequel, Rob Zombie’s remake and its own take on Halloween II. An argument could be made that Halloween 4 and 5 are their own one-two punch, though the less is said about those installments the better. Halloween Kills sets out to be both a sequel to 2018’s Halloween while honoring the forty-year legacy of 1978’s Halloween (see where the titling gets exhausting?) and only succeeds at the latter, undermining its predecessor’s interpretation of Michael Meyers’ own legacy. 

At times, it reminded me of the polarizing eighth mainline Star Wars film, The Last Jedi, which ambitiously set out to reexamine the franchise’s mythos while accomplishing surprisingly little plot-wise in a nearly three-hour runtime. In 2018, Meyers’ return is written off as a nonevent in an era of true crime and mass shootings. Kills attempts to make the series villain much more threatening by having the entire town of Haddonfield shaken by Meyers’ killing spree, frenzied into an angry mob and ready to take the masked murderer down once and for all. Of course, we the audience know that Laurie Strode is the only one who can kill Michael Meyers—anything else would be anticlimactic, and there’s a third film planned—so this middle entry just feels like a way to kill time until the original scream queen is back on her feet. 

Like The Last Jedi so desperately wanted to avoid retreading Empire Strikes Back’s plot points, Halloween Kills knows it can’t spend too much time either with Laurie or in the hospital where she’s recovering, lest it draw unfair comparisons to Halloween II. The 1981 sequel is my personal favorite in the series, and its finality so that the franchise could move on to an anthology format (which would be quickly ditched after the lukewarm reception Season of the Witch perhaps unfairly received) is a major part of what makes it so great. Laurie Strode and Michael Meyers enter a hospital—and only one will leave alive! Sidestepping this plot, and sidestepping Jamie Lee Curtis almost entirely so that Meyers can kill underdeveloped side characters, is a misstep necessitated by Halloween Ends: coming 2022!

With all that said: there’s a lot of fun to be had in Halloween Kills. I loved the 1978 sequences that mimicked the filmic look of the original. The music is great as always, and some of the kills are as creative as they are brutal. The filmmakers play with several interpretations of Meyers as a villain, having demystified the character as a boogeyman exclusively haunting an older, tougher Laurie Strode’s nightmares in Halloween (2018). In Kills, he’s an unbeatable force of nature, the embodiment of evil, and, when he’s at his best, just a plain old (literally now) psychopath. In one scene, Meyers tests the resistance of a series of knives on a victim’s back with a cold deliberation reminiscent of Ex Machina’s unfeeling killer robot. The mob stuff is fun, though it requires a whole lot of tedious world-building and half-assed character development considering most if not all of the characters present lack franchise staying power. Judy Greer carries every scene she’s in as the daughter of Laurie Strode, nearly making up for the lack of Jamie Lee Curtis. Overall, Halloween Kills is a disappointing second act that nevertheless introduces some cool concepts and memorable setpieces—much like The Last Jedi.