Halloween Kills
Halloween Kills
Directed by David Gordon Green
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, James Jude Courtney , Nick Castle, Airon Armstrong, Will Patton, Thomas Mann, Jim Cummings, Dylan Arnold, Robert Longstreet, Anthony Michael Hall, Charles Cyphers, Scott MacArthur, Michael McDonald, Ross Bacon, Kyle Richards, Nancy Stephens, Diva Tyler, Lenny Clarke, Brian Mays, Michael Smallwood, Carmela McNeal, Omar J. Dorsey, Salem Collins, Giselle Witt, J. Gaven Wilde, Tom Jones Jr.
Country: UK, USA
Year 2021
Click Here for Italian Version
“He needs to die.“
The Halloween holiday has ancient traditions, perhaps from the Celts. On the same celebrations, Christianity has also built festivities linked to respect for the deceased and visits to cemeteries. From Irish immigrants, Halloween arrived in the United States. There is something macabre about the procession of unknown masked kids as they knock on all doors, threatening tricks in exchange for sweets. In 1978, John Carpenter with Halloween directs a story mixing the characteristic elements of Halloween and those of horror films. Children, masks, sex, rebirth, macabre solemnity, sensual babysitters, disappearance, together with the location in a fictional invented city Haddonfield, are the peculiarities of the film. In these arguments, the psychopathic killer finds his amniotic fluid. The killer is Michael Myers. He is the Boogeyman, a child became an adult. In the Halloween series, there is the basis of the horror genre: a person, first a kid, later a teenager, makes gestures out of all rationality and logic. The disgust of his actions, of his violence, prevails. In addition, the physical repulsion in watching the behaviour of a madman causes anguish and trepidation. This case cannot be solved by a policeman. It needs a psychoanalyst, or rather, a modern exorcist. The nightmares of our unconscious never end. The Boogeyman assails dreams and daily fears.
Halloween Kills is the new episode, directed by David Gordon Green and presented at the 78th Venice Film Festival. The screening was the occasion of the awarding of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to the creative actress Jamie Lee Curtis. Her first film was her role as Laurie in John Carpenter's 1978 Halloween. Laurie returns to Halloween Kills as a mother, again haunted by Michael but relentless: “I'm coming for you, Michael.”
The plot is not important, it is not essential. There are no innovative or curious ideas, except for the maturity of the characters of the first Halloween. Still in Haddonfield. In 2018, they are all still there, new and old protagonists talking about past times and, waiting for yet another carnage. And indeed, Michael Myers reappears, more aggressive and more abominable. Blood flows in infinite quantities. The bloodiest scene in history, the transformation into the blood of the water of the second-longest river in the world, the Nile, now it is overcome. Exodus, 7: 20-21 "Moses and Aaron did as the LORD had commanded. Aaron raised his staff and struck the waters of the river in full view of Pharaoh and his servants, and all the water of the river was changed into blood. The fish in the river died, and the river itself became so polluted that the Egyptians could not drink its water. There was blood throughout the land of Egypt." Michael not only assassinates, but he dismembers, slaughters, massacres, cuts, butchers, tears, slices, guts, everyone, women, men, elderly, straight, homosexuals, firefighters; Haddonfield becomes a Nile of blood.
It is a Slasher film about closed localization, the presence of a cruel maniac and countless edged weapons. The author confirms this:
“... Halloween I just wanted to go in and make a full-on Slasher movie and so the executives at blumhouse which are all just huge horror fans and brilliant academic minds at the same time we get together and we come up with ideas of things that we've never seen in a Slasher movie or inspiration from the greats and how we can reapply those and be inspired by those and so it's really fun popcorn slasher horror movie ...” (1)
The main theme is obviously the feeling of fear. The spectator must be terrified, intimidated, scared, disgusted. The strangers represent terror. The result may be the persecution of an innocent as in the confusing sequence of the manhunt in the hospital. Fear is not extinguished by suppressing the villain, it persists. The director follows this path:
“We have to find new contexts to understand what generates fear, we can kill the villain whenever we want but the fear remains there. In all horror films, we have to deal with a compromise between resolving a conflict and leaving open opportunity for a possible sequel." (2)
Michael Myers is the villain par excellence. He is impious, sacrilegious, disrespectful, merciless. Still, Michael is a human being. Why does a human being kill without heart, without sanity?
The terrible peculiarity of Michael is the impossibility of understanding him reasonably or with logic. It is the effect of sociology fanatically, ready to justify, to decriminalize even the most heinous crimes, Michael uninterruptedly destabilizes the audience. This makes him invincible. Besides, why, nowadays, is he still vengeful and ruthless? Michael is the real Boogeyman. David Gordon Green represents him without any motivation, without any known purpose:
“I feel like Michael Myers connects with an audience in a way is infinite and universale because it's so simple and unexplained there's not a lot of mythology about Michael, we've never heard why he does what he does and is who he is he's he really is a personified boogeyman ...” (3)
The consequence is a Michael's psychological predominance. The camera follows the movements and thoughts of many other characters. However, when Michael appears, under the mask, in a physicality repugnant but power, everything goes behind him indeed, everyone is eager to be killed by him:
“All the actors raise their hand and say I want a death scene because everybody wants to be killed by Michael Myers and in a legacy of cinematic death scenes he's the one you want to murder you”.(4)
Michael Myers is metempsychosis, the reincarnation of the evil soul.
The setting is classic. The rhythm is constant. It begins with an intense bloody shot in a quiet town. Michael annihilates a fire brigade. He enters the house and slaughters a romantic old couple and then two married gays. The action in the movie sequences alternates with those at the pub party, with the stories of the witnesses for the first Halloween, with children engaged in their impressive wandering.
The funny moments are in the weapons used by Michael. They are provided by the victims themselves or by exciting pursuers. In the beginning, there are some quick frames of the various blunt objects, as the big baseball bat, such asthe electric saw (citation of another historical serial killer like Leatherface?) Then, Michael takes possession of them and use to kill.
The environmental introduction and presentation of the characters are minimal. On the other hand, there is no need, as Halloween is a series. The conflict is one against all. Michael must exterminate everyone, and everyone has to survive him. How could the fool inhabitants of Haddonfield kill the sly Michael, is the question.
The twist should be another disappearance of Michael, but it is not.
The director creates the expectations with long and meaningless sequences. He uses the hospital's innocent pursuit to open a different possibility of filming, but completely out of the subject. The scream "Evil dies tonight" accompanies it like a soundtrack.
A horror movie should be rapid and concise, the suspension phases more highlighted, but in Halloween Kills, the script is not finalized. The subject has repetitive and exaggerated writing. The jumping the shark has already been overcome, and the unstoppable decline is irreversible. The scenes are well-done. There is no harmony, there is no identification, there is no development, there is no surprise because the pauses are diluted and irrelevant. The spectator's anxiety is not how to kill Michael, but when the saga will end.
David Gordon Green focuses on the most macabre details of the slashed bodies, on the wounded and sutures. There is a long first part, with a pre-title of almost fifteen minutes, with deaths popping up everywhere. A boy's head is lit up in red as if it were a pumpkin, which is the same colour. Like space, even time is compressed into a single night, with pulsating music.
Perhaps the director is right. Underlining the protagonists is useless, they are all joyfully predestined.