Early on I was enjoying the mindless slasher flick, especially the jaw-droppingly brutal kills. Unfortunately the characters in this movie are all morons. All of them. One more time for emphasis: ALL OF THEM. A hundred moments that make me shake my head or throw my hands up in exasperation. I even had to pause the movie a couple times and close my eyes to comprehend the stupidity.

Other than that, this is a pretty bad movie in general. The acting is poor all around. Cliched lines of dialogue and cookie cutter conversations. And overuse of fan service without serving a purpose. Scream 5 did this the right way. (1 viewing, 3/4/2022)

SPOILERS

There are so many dumb moments I want to talk about but I don't have all night. So I'll only mention a few. Like how the 3 characters from the end of the last movie are all so sure that Michael Myers is dead and are all so shocked when they find out otherwise... but we saw early in the movie all three of them yelling when the fire trucks were heading there. "Don't save him, let him burn." Soooooo why were they so sure???

But the scene that really hurt me in my core is the car scene at the park. How many things can be wrong in 3 minutes? Well start by having the driver be the one to leave the car and check on the kids... why the driver of all people. You know a killer is on the loose.

When he jumps on the roof, they want to get out of the car, but the doors are locked....................

.............

Is this a cop car? No. Child locks? Dunno. Terrible writing. So the wife in the nurse outfit smartly jumps out of the window and she has a gun. But maybe 90 seconds go by and she's nowhere to be found. I wondered if she just ditched her husband. After the husband is killed, the wife now comes back to shoot Michael, but she's like 30 feet away from the car, walking towards it......................................

.........................

What possibly scenario could have cause that to happen. And she shoots multiple times into the car with her husband in it without knowing he's dead. But whatever, you have the jump on Michael, he's in a small space and you have a gun. But of course you walk right up to him and allow him to kill you.

Dumbest. Characters. Ever. I wanted them all to die and I was happy when he killed them all at the end.

God bless these actors...they're all trying so hard with what they have. And there are so many good ideas on display here: a town going mad with bloodthirsty revenge because of what Michael has done, violently coming together to hunt him down? So good on paper.

But I swear...this script was written in two hours...by a group of aliens who have never actually interacted with human beings before or heard real human beings speak. Not a single thing here is believable or genuine in any way.

These characters are all so stupid. 80% of the deaths in this movie would have been avoided if they had just acted like real people. I have no sympathy for anyone who dies. I feel no fear for them. I feel nothing.

The only reason I don't give this a lower rating is because one of the deaths made me laugh so hard I forgot how underwhelming the rest of the movie was.

I've never been the biggest fan of the Halloween franchise, but at the end of the day, I know what feels like a good movie and even if I don't care for a series, if a movie within the series is good, I will gladly acknowledge it. HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021) is most definitely not that! Just like in any movie, what I want is internal logic and character consistency. People always use the excuse that characters in horror movies are supposed to be dumb and make mistakes, but unless it's some parody or spoof, the decisions that characters make should be internally consistent and for them to be relatable to the viewer, externally as well. The character decisions in this film were mind-bogglingly stupid!

Jamie Lee Curtis was barely in this movie and she's the headliner. Laurie was literally in the hospital for the entire movie while most of the action took place in the streets of Haddonfield. And sadly in the little screen time she got, Laurie sounded like a philosophical rambling lunatic! But she wasn't the only character. For some reason, EVERY character spent the bulk of their time pontificating about evil and Michael Myers and when they actually were face-to-face with him, acted like total dummies.

Where to start? First, the character of Tommy (dubiously played by 80s icon Anthony MIchael Hall) is the worst character in this movie! When he gave that incredibly bland and weird monologue at the bar recounting the events of the 1978 movie, I knew that this film was going to be odd. He spends the entire movie playing a fake tough guy wielding a baseball bat and forming and inciting a town mob to track down Michael Myers. Hall's acting is so 1-dimensionally loud and obnoxious and I didn't buy this character for a second. And there were way too many close-ups of him. He was featured so much that he felt more like the main character than Laurie.

Second, the cops were totally useless. Why is the Sheriff even allowing Tommy and this mob to get so out of hand? He literally gave one order at the aftermath of the fire massacre, telling his cops to set up a perimeter around the town, then spent the remainder of the movie doing nothing. For some reason, none of the police in this movie (and there were a bunch of them) ever did anything to try and stop Michael. It was always armed civilians trying to do their job for them. The cops didn't even try to stop the mob at the hospital and were never roaming the streets looking for this serial killer, who was so easy to spot. You had a perimeter set around a small town for a killer who was leaving a trail of blood easy to follow and you couldn't catch him?

This leads to all the dumb actions of the characters in this movie. Why did no one ever just run away when confronted with Michael? Characters could easily just get away from this guy who was WALKING, but instead they opted to stand there and try to fight him. The group in the car could have just driven away, but nope, let's sit here and battle a crazy killer! The gay couple who lived in Michael's old home were cringe. None of their jokes landed and instead of just leaving the house they decide to stay there. Michael was upstairs and they were safe downstairs, so where do they go? Upstairs, of course, and the one guy just stands there and let's Michael mutilate him. Why did no one use a cell phone to call 911 when they were in danger? It's like writers were confusing the 2018 scenes with the 1978 flashbacks and forgot that the modern day characters actually had cell phones.

Other issues. This movie had really bad editing with weird and untimely scene transitions to the point it felt like scenes were interrupted abruptly. Characters spent a bunch of time rambling about evil dying tonight. Moments that should have been sad and heartfelt were incredibly bland and empty. Michael's kills were all dragged out ad nauseum. Characters were obviously dead yet Michael kept on going for like 2 extra minutes after each kill dragging it out unnecessarily. Also, how on Earth did the old lady at the farm survive Michael shoving that glass light bulb through her neck? He almost took her head off yet somehow she was still alive. How did Michael even get by all those people downstairs to Karen in the end? And where were the cops during all of this? This is a murder scene where 4 people got killed and it's a bunch of civilians, yet again, doing their job for them.

What was that weird scene with the 1978 flashback of the young cop stopping Loomis from shooting Michael? He had just accidentally killed his partner so if anything he should want revenge on Michael for forcing him to do that. Why would Loomis give up just because this rookie cop stopped him one time? Why would he care what this kid thinks when he knows the depths of Michael's evil and menace? What were the other cops doing just standing there? Why didn't any of them stop Loomis? Apparently, they were OK with him killing Michael, so how did the rookie grabbing Loomis' hand one time have any effect? Loomis or the other cops could have easily still finished Michael anyway. Made no sense.

Finally, the dialogue and acting in this movie was so bad. Most of the conversations felt unnatural and the tone was inconsistent. No one talks like the characters in this movie. And there are actually several good actors in this movie, but they couldn't overcome the terrible writing. I actually watched the predecessor Halloween movie from 2018 on the same day before watching this sequel to prepare myself and I honestly thought the 2018 film wasn't very good. But Halloween Kills is so bad that I might re-evaluate my opinion of that movie because at least it had a semblance of decent writing and simplicity that Kills completely lacked. Halloween Kills is a contender for worst movie in the entire franchise and that's saying something as there are some real bad ones in the mix.