Halloween Kills

Ein vielversprechender Anfang und ein saublödes "Ende"! Das Potenzial des vorigen, vernünftigen und für die Fans befriedigend gestalteten Neustarts der Reihe wurde total verpatzt! (17.10.2021)

A film as pointless as Mynář's press conference. It doesn't bring anything new to the genre, a soup reheated so many times that it’s inedible, and when it does come up with something unusual, which I consider to be the "popular uprising" of Haddonfield residents, it's as silly as Ovčáček's tweets. And Michael Myers here strikes me as an immortal cyber version of the T-1000 from Terminator and not a flesh-and-blood creature. (19.10.2021)

I was looking forward to the new Halloween even after the mixed reviews from Venice. I thought the attendees of that festival just couldn't appreciate a simple, blunt, but fun, brutal and atmospheric slasher ride. The whole campaign, after all, had been hyping that Halloween Kills would be mean and evil; the biggest Halloween ever with a massive body count. And that’s what dominates even in the responses here: that it's decent carnage and that the main problem is the illogical behaviour of the characters. That, for me, it’s just the bullshit that the campaign has drilled into our heads. Halloween Kills is awfully boring and very poorly constructed conceptually. It tries to psychologise the collective trauma of Haddonfield and spends an incredible amount of time with annoying characters that no one has ever cared about or can care about. And Laurie is stuck in the hospital the whole time, doing nothing. The kills are fine, but they don't take up much screen time, and I certainly don't think Myers is on screen more than in other instalments of the series. If only! At the expense of Tommy, Lonnie and those other annoyances. With each successive "Evil dies tonight!" I wanted to throw the monitor out the window more and more. (16.10.2021)

Michael Myers escapes a fiery inferno and goes back to mowing people down. This time, however, he is confronted not by Jamie Lee Curtis, but by a town full of people who have suddenly remembered that this serial killer exists and has somehow hurt them all. And so Myers mows down one anonymous person after another, only to have it all come to an end. And the film leaves a rather uncomfortable feeling that David Gordon Green and Danny McBride may have meant well, but unfortunately in execution they negated the entirety of the previous installment and made a mediocre at best murder mystery built on an ambitious but completely misguided idea. This franchise can do better than that. And so do these filmmakers. (19.10.2021)

Evil is not dying Tonight. I'm not as pissed off as others, but I definitely expected more. The Halloween from 2018 was a level above in almost every way. When Michael Myers is on set the film is an effective horror slasher with cool kills and decent gore, a 4 star flick, but when he's not on set, which unfortunately is most of the time, it's pretty boring for and 2-star worthy. There are lots of uninteresting and weird characters dealing with some kind of urban trauma which I was absolutely not interested in, I'd rather watch young teenagers going house to house and Myers killing them one by one than watching this bunch of grown ups dealing with boring adult stuff, oh yeah drama is already here too! We've known for 40 years that, Myers comes back to life and it's a wonder anyone is surprised about it today, it's like walking into a strip club and being surprised there are strippers. Also illogical character behaviour has always been a part of slashers. The original movie from 1978 wasn't some deep story mindfuck with philosophical overtones and abstract thinking either, after all there's a woman screaming before Michael even pulls a knife out of his pocket, so Jokes on you Bitches! I, on the other hand, will complain about the lack of murders and Myers, who spends maybe 30 minutes on his rampage, and the downright unsatisfying finale that lacks atmosphere and suspense. I can still remember the atmospheric finale in the house. Ironically the best gore scene of the film is from a dude who jumps out the window by himself, and the firemen had bigger balls in the trailer. So Malignant is unthreatened so far this year, maybe Antlers or Last Night in Soho? Story 2/5, Action 3/5, Humour 2/5, Violence 4/5, Fun 3/5 Music 4/5, Visuals 4/5, Atmosphere 3/5, Suspense 3/5, Emotion 1/5, Actors 2/5. 6/10. (16.10.2021)

Auf der einen Seite ist es insgesamt furchtbar dämlich, in zwei Szenen sogar ungewollt lustig und als mittlerer Teil der Trilogie bewegt es die Hauptgeschichte überhaupt nicht voran (mit Ausnahme der allerletzten Minute, in der einer der Hauptcharaktere endlich schreit). Aber auf der anderen Seite... da ist Meister Carpenter mit einem kraftvollen Soundtrack, einem absolut luxuriösen Retro-Intro, das uns ins Jahr 1978 zurückversetzt, und vor allem dem unsterblichen Myers, der wie der Terminator ein Drittel von Haddonfield auslöscht, ohne dabei auch nur einen Schweißtropfen zu vergießen. Der größte Fehler des Films liegt eindeutig in der Umsetzung der viel diskutierten Lynchmob-Szene. Dieser entgleitet der Kontrolle und für die ersehnte Rache geht er über die Leichen weiterer unschuldiger Menschen. Ich verstehe, was Green erreichen wollte und diese Idee wird im Film deutlich, aber warum so viel Aufmerksamkeit den Nebencharakteren widmen, nur um am Ende als unfähiges Pack dazustehen, ist mir ein Rätsel. Die Zurückstellung von Laurie Strode auf die Nebenrolle hat mich überraschenderweise nicht sonderlich gestört, etwas Ähnliches gab es bereits in Halloween 1981. Es gibt immer noch Mike - das furchteinflößende und respektbietende Monster, die unaufhaltsame Mordmaschine, bei der man einfach weiß, dass es für die Betroffenen nicht gut ausgehen wird, wenn sie auftaucht. Aber als Ganzes hat dieser Halloween einfach viel zu viele Schlachthöfe, die es mir unmöglich machen, meine Bewertung über Durchschnittsniveau zu heben. Das ist so ungefähr. P.S. Eine Kampfaufgabe für Fans von hohen Todeszahlen. Kann mir einer von euch die Gesamtzahl der Tötungen ausrechnen? Ich könnte falsch liegen, aber bei einer klassischen Vorgehensweise habe ich 10 Tote gezählt, plus 12 Feuerwehrleute und mindestens 10 weitere während der abschließenden Schlägerei, das heißt mindestens 32 Tote. Aber wahrscheinlich sind es etwas mehr. Einfach ein Gemetzel! :) (31.10.2021)

How is it even possible that the same people who thrilled me so much with the previous film three years ago, this time shot something this... Strange and bad. About half of the runtime is taken up by unintentional jokes, a few intentional jokes, the rest is carnage, because Myers is raving nonstop this time and soon it starts to get old and annoying. The very beginning was great, and yes, the retro atmosphere was successful and the (quite one-sided) fight with the firefighters was good, but then it started to get worse and worse. I didn't care about the new characters and I was sorry for Jamie Lee Curtis getting pushed to the sidelines. In the end, I almost lost my head. A pity. (29.10.2021)

The worst Terminator sequel ever. Slashers have always flirted with a certain supernaturalness to their evil, and Carpenter's first Halloween was a pioneer in this regard. But he used the apparent inscrutability of Myers as a mysterious framework to which he cleverly subordinated the style, staging and behaviour of the desperate characters. In Halloween Kills, everything is turned upside down, the mysterious killer becomes nothing but a ripoff of Terminator, the focus is on brutality instead of atmosphere, and the story of vulnerable teenage girls is turned into a community-wide uprising, ending with a twist straight out of old sci-fi. If you don't look at it as just another Halloween, you're at least left with a fairly brisk and bloody slasher that occasionally tries to stylistically reference the classics, but even then it's no picnic. Laurie is just a number and the attempt to spread attention among a dozen characters fails miserably. 45 (19.10.2021)

Halloween Kills ist ein problematischer Film, der sowohl unter dem Mittelfilm-Syndrom der Trilogie leidet (es fehlt ihm sowohl der Anfang als auch das Ende), als auch unter dem gewählten Schema, bei dem die Handlung zwischen vielen Nebencharakteren aufgeteilt wird, die im vorherigen Film leider nicht vorgestellt wurden, und es wirkt auch etwas "aufgebläht". Darüber hinaus haben die Macher es mit dem enormen Fanservice und den zahlreichen (unnötigen) Rückblenden übertrieben. Mit anderen Worten, es ist ein bisschen chaotisch. Ich möchte nicht böse klingen, ich habe den Film durchaus genossen, aber ich habe Bedenken, ob das kreative Team um David Gordon Green überhaupt weiß, wohin (abgesehen von ihrer eigenen Brieftasche) die ganze Trilogie eigentlich führt. (19.10.2021)