‘Time for Haddonfield to start healing…’
For all the thousands of hours I’ve spent watching horror films, for the hundreds of thousands of words that I’ve written about horror films and the even greater number of words I’ve uttered aloud on the genre, really it all comes down to three names. Freddy, Jason and Michael. Sure, I love Candyman and The Evil Dead. I adore the Hellraiser franchise and I have a newfound respect for Chucky. But Freddy, Jason and Michael will always be the big three for me.
Now, I’ve never had the chance to be disappointed by A Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th. I went to see Freddy vs Jason at the cinema (I snuck in as I was too young) and absolutely loved it. I thoroughly enjoyed the Friday the 13th remake too. But Michael Myers has been a constant throughout my life. There was a new Halloween film in 1998, 2002, 2007, 2009, 2018 and 2021, and I saw all bar one of them in the cinema. And apart from Halloween Resurrection (starring Busta Rhymes) I’ve pretty much loved all of them. David Gordon Green’s 2018 remake was probably the best of the lot, and while Halloween Kills, Gordon Green’s 2021 follow up to that film, had a number of well intentioned missteps, I was still banking on him to get it right with this, surely the final film in the Halloween franchise. And so, it was to my huge disappointment that what he actually served up was a steaming pile of dog turd…
A year on from the events of Halloween Kills and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) has learnt to move on from the past. She is living a seemingly idyllic life with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), and all is well in Haddonfield. That is until Corey (Rohan Campbell), a troubled young man with a dark past, enters their lives.
Warning – spoilers ahead.
We need to talk about Corey. Despite the pretty awesome cold open that begins the film, everything Corey does after that single headedly dismantles the Michael Myers myth piece by piece. Instead of the killing machine to which we have become accustomed, this piece of shit kid pretty much overpowers our anti-hero and is the main focus of this film for an entire two thirds of the movie. Let me make this abundantly clear. This character is horrible. Horribly written. Horribly performed. Just utterly ghastly in every way. Why Allyson would choose to forsake Laurie to shack up of with this piece of shit we will never know. And we’ll never know because like so much in this film, it is never explained. Every new character we are introduced to is cartoonish and badly written. Corey’s mother is a preposterous cliché who deserves to be in one of the lesser Elm Street sequels. Corey himself seems to have walked straight out of Arkham Asylum such is his lack of an actual personality. Staring a lot and whining the whole time is not a personality. The gossipy nurse who works with Allyson is an insult to slasher bimbos everywhere, and I was glad when Michael pinned her against the wall with a kitchen knife. This film is also somehow boring. It doesn’t even have the decency to be so bad it’s good. It’s just plain bad. Honestly? This is probably the least enjoyable entry in the whole franchise and that really is saying something.
Sure, the last 20 minutes have some nice touches, and Lee Curtis is great throughout, but by then, it really is too little too late. This film shits on the Halloween legacy and is an insult to long term fans everywhere. Michael Myers deserves better.