Michael Myers is back once again to wreak havoc on Haddonfield, Illinois in Halloween Kills - here are five reasons why you'll love this blood-splattered horror sequel...
More than 40 years since first making his big-screen debut in John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher film Halloween, Michael Myers, the film’s unstoppable killing machine, remains stubbornly undead.
After 10 films in which Myers had repeatedly terrorised the residents of Haddonfield, Illinois, 2018 saw director David Gordon Green take the helm of the long-running horror franchise, essentially consigning all of the sequels since Carpenter’s 1978 film to the dustbin of history and picking up the story where the original left off in his series reboot - simply titled, once again, Halloween.
Green’s 2018 incarnation ended with Laurie Strode – played as ever by Jamie Lee Curtis – and her daughter trapping Myers in a burning basement and leaving him to die. But as we should all know by now, dying isn’t really something that Michael Myers does.
Now Myers is back again and, unsurprisingly, he wants revenge. Curtis returns in Halloween Kills alongside a cast that also includes James Jude Courtney, Anthony Michael Hall, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak and Will Patton, with David Gordon Green back once again to direct the action.
With the film availble in stores from Monday (January 17), we rounded up five reasons why we think you’ll love the return of Michael Myers in this blood-splattered sequel…
Michael Myers is as relentless as ever…
Over the years since that first fateful Halloween night, Myers has been stabbed, shot, battered and subjected to all manner of restraints, but his inhuman ability to pick himself up and carry on killing remains undiminished. Even if, by the film’s own timeline, he’s pushing 50, there are still no signs of weakness on show.
The body count piles up pretty fast…
Anyone who has seen Michael Myers in action should probably know better than to get too attached to any of the peripheral characters, but even by Halloween standards, this is an absolute bloodbath. If gore is your thing, there’s plenty of it on offer here.
The filmmakers are getting very creative with the kills…
Rapper Mos Def once pronounced on his 1999 hit ‘Mathematics’ that “there are six million ways to die”, and while there might not be quite that many variations over the course of the film’s 105-minute runtime, there are myriad ways in which Haddonfield’s hapless residents meet their untimely ends, from knives and axes to buzzsaws and bullets (one, in particular, is pure slapstick genius).
Myers isn’t the film’s only threat…
In amidst all the blood, guts and general silliness, there’s a serious point being made here about the nature of fear and how it can lead to dangerous panic and mob mentality, as becomes evident as the residents of Haddonfield whip themselves into a terror-fuelled frenzy, with tragic results. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous assertion that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” feels as true here as it ever did.
The film sets things up nicely for a grand finale…
Halloween Kills does, at times, have that slightly awkward second-film-in-a-trilogy kind of thing where it’s doing a fair bit of heavy lifting to set up the final chapter, but it still manages to be entertaining in its own right and with Halloween Ends due to arrive next year, it’ll leave you gasping to see the big showdown that you just know is coming next…
Halloween Kills is available in hmv stores now - you can grab your copy on Blu-ray, DVD and 4K UHD here in our online store.
