Halloween Kills review: Michael is back with more gory, violent kills

The slasher film franchise that started all slasher film franchises is back with Halloween Kills, the sequel to 2018's Halloween. This planned trilogy (Halloween Ends is already scheduled for a 2022 release), made with the backing of the original 1978 film's director John Carpenter, ignores all the previous numerous sequels that attempted to provide a backstory for Michael Myers, returning him to his roots as an inscrutable, faceless evil with no discernible motivation who kills just for the heck of it.

Jamie Lee Curtis reprises her role as Laurie Strode, as do Judy Greer and Andi Matichak from the 2018 film as Laurie's daughter Karen and granddaughter Allyson. This instalment also includes some actors from the first 1978 film, playing the same characters, only older by 42 years – Kyle Richards returns as Lindsey Wallace, one of the children Laurie babysat in 1978, and Nancy Stephens as Marion Chambers, the retired former assistant to Dr. Samuel Loomis.

Laurie, seriously wounded by Michael in the previous film, spends most of her time in hospital and out of action, the action driven mainly by Karen and Allyson as well as Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), another of the kids Laurie babysat in 1978. Tommy, determined to rid Haddonfield of the scourge of Michael, forms a civilian vigilante group to hunt down the marauding menace as the town loses faith in law enforcement.

Fans of the genre should be pleased with Michael's understated, terrifying creepiness and his gory kills. He stalks the town dispatching its hapless denizens in the most painful ways, this time using more instruments of violent murder at his disposal besides his customary knife. Unlike other horror films, Halloween relies not on jump scares but on gore porn and the chilling terror induced by the relentless, inevitable, seemingly unstoppable force of nature that is Michael. It was disappointing that Curtis, arguably the main star of the franchise, had so little to do, but hopefully she'll rejoin the action in Halloween Ends.

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