Halloween Kills

Stars: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Will Patton, Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Longstreet, Kyle Richards, P J Soles, Bob Odenkirk, Nicholas Pryor, Jim Cummings, Thomas Mann, James Jude Courtney, Nick Castle

Director: David Gordon Green

Laurie Strode and Co vs Michael Myers, round 12 (Myers doesn't appear in 1982's Halloween III). And this episode is 90 per cent stalk, slash and kill and 10 per cent (the only interesting bit) indictment of mob law.

'This man is a threat,' grates Tommy Doyle (Hall) after Myers has escaped his fiery doom from the previous chapter and already killed 11 people on the 40th anniversary of the original killings. No kidding! Really?

It really is ridiculous, however, that the Haddonfield butcher (Courtney, Castle) could appear from nowhere or in people's houses, without the law tracking him down first.

Director Green, who once made decent stuff, knows this, and tries to make the multiple killings here as violent and sickening as possible, giving Myers a new variety of potentially lethal weapons to hack, gouge and throttle people to death, and supplement the usual fearsome knives.

The carnage at the end makes even less sense than the rest of it; but then we know that the masked murderer can't be killed, so what's the point of just showing us another 20-odd victims in a monotonous procession of senseless slaughter?

A now 60-something Curtis plays Laurie for the sixth time and will presumably still be taking on her arch-enemy when both are in wheelchairs. There's another one next year, but if it's anything like this you can count me out.

David Quinlan

USA 2021. UK Distributor: Universal . Colour by Company 3.
105 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 18.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 3, Drugs 1, Swearing 1.

Review date: 13 Oct 2021