If I’m going to be honest, the Halloween franchise is a series of slasher films I never cared for. Until this week, I hadn’t seen any of the films starring the notorious (fictional) killing machine that is Michael Myers. But with the latest installment, Halloween Kills, out this week, I figured I’d give it a shot. And thank god I didn’t have to watch all eleven previous films to understand it!

The original Halloween was released in 1978, directed and co-created by John Carpenter (The Fog & The Thing), who is considered one of the greatest horror filmmakers. The legacy of this film can’t be overstated, popularizing the slasher genre, inspiring new horror icons like Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and Jason Vorhees in the Friday the 13th franchise, and even being selected for preservation by the U.S. Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” My favorite film critic, the late Roger Ebert, praised it as a “visceral” and “frightening” experience. He gave the film a full four out of four stars!

Seeing the original Halloween for the first time in 2021, however, was a different experience for me. Instead of a visceral, frightening, or even thrilling experience, I found myself mostly bored. The dialogue was laughably awful, characters incredibly stupid, and the scares rarely, if ever, there. If there’s one thing I can praise it’s Carpenter’s excellent establishment of atmosphere—a creepy and chilling tone when the infamous Michael Myers is, or maybe isn’t, on screen.

Over the last four decades the film has inspired nearly a dozen sequels, all with superfluous subtitles like “the Return of Michael Myers,” “the Revenge of Michael Myers,” and “the Curse of Michael Myers.” The series was rebooted in 2007, with the film also named Halloween, by director Rob Zombie, and a sequel to this reboot followed before the series was once again revitalized with the 2018 installment that’s… also named Halloween. It’s an SEO nightmare!

What’s intriguing about the 2018 film is that it wasn’t so much another reboot, but, rather, a “legacyquel,” one that honors and takes place canonically after the original, but isn’t exactly a reboot that wipes the slate clean—think Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Blade Runner 2049, Creed, or the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The 2018 Halloween ignored all of the films that came out after the 1978 original and also brought back scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis, who starred as Michael Myers’s most famous survivor, Laurie Strode.

Also intriguing is that this legacyquel was the brainchild of comedy filmmakers David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express & Your Highness) and Danny McBride (Tropic Thunder & This is the End), both of whom co-wrote the script with Jeff Fradley. While hiring comedians to take over one of the most successful horror franchises of all time may initially inspire skepticism, it kinda made a lot of sense. Both comedies and horrors live and die by the execution (no pun intended) of their timing; the scares and punchlines need to be properly set up in order to effectively land. The experiment paid off, with the legacyquel becoming the highest-grossing slasher film in history ($255 million worldwide on a $10 million budget), and earning positive reviews from critics (a rarity for Hollywood slashers). Soon after, two followup films were announced, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, which will supposedly conclude the conflict between Michael Myers and Laurie Strode.

The 2018 Halloween was a decent film in that it successfully brought back Jamie Lee Curtis as a PTSD-stricken Laurie Strode, and had an interesting point of contention in her relationship with estranged daughter Karen (Judy Greer). Michael Myers was also back as an efficient killing machine. But the film was tonally inconsistent, going back and forth between jokes, super seriousness, and scares, most of which don’t land. But at least there were likable characters, mainly Andi Matichak as Allyson, Laurie’s granddaughter, and the film was more competently made than many other forgettable slashers.

Halloween Kills is set immediately after the 2018 film (literally the same night), on Halloween night forty years after Michael’s murders, in which we saw the Strode family driving away from Laurie’s burning home with Michael trapped inside. It’s to no one’s surprise that Michael survives. Back are characters from the 1978 film, some of whom are played by the original actors, including Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), assistant to Dr. Loomis; Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards), one of the kids Laurie was babysitting the night Michael murdered her friends; Tommy Doyle (The Breakfast Club’s Anthony Michael Hall, replacing original actor Brian Andrews), another kid Laurie babysat in the original film; and Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet, replacing original actor Brent Le Page), who bullied Tommy in the original film. Upon finding out Michael is back, Tommy inspires the town to hunt down and kill Michael Myers once and for all.

The idea of legacy characters taking back their lives and seeking out Michael so that the predator becomes the prey is such an interesting and refreshing premise that it’s even more disappointing that writers Green, McBride, and Scott Teems never live up to this great potential. I was excited when the citizens of Haddonfield were forming a lynch mob for Michael because they seemed smarter and more capable than usual horror movie victims who make stupid decisions. Alas, my excitement was short-lived because, despite their strength in numbers, these characters still make the dumbest of dumb decisions and wind up dead. Certain legacy characters are killed off so swiftly I wondered what was the point of even bringing them back.

The film also gave me hope that newcomers Karen and Allyson would be given more to do than before, but nope. Karen spends most of the time in a hospital waiting for Michael’s likely arrival, whereas Allyson goes off to hunt Michael but we barely see her until the third act. The biggest sin of all is the film sidelining Laurie by keeping her bed-ridden at a hospital, recovering from her wounds from the previous film. I’m sorry but making your most important character the least interesting is a grave error. The crutch of the series should be its human characters because there’s little to be interested with in a character like Michael Myers, who seems almost supernatural in his ability to survive everything, from being shot or stabbed in the head to being burned alive.

Halloween Kills feels even more tonally-inconsistent this time, with more jokes that don’t land, and almost no scares despite the high kill count. The film is a little more ambitious than the previous film as it introduces ideas like Michael not being interested in Laurie at all, the townspeople suffering from their own form of trauma, or that the evils caused by the townspeople are just as horrifying as Michael’s murders. But these ideas are given little depth, introduced too late, and never expanded upon. Perhaps Halloween Ends can stick the landing, but this film killed any hope I had for the franchise.

Two and a half out of four Kents.

‘Halloween Kills’ is now playing in theatres and streaming on Peacock (for paid users).