Halloween Kills fails to resurrect the franchise. But that was as predictable as the fact that Michael Myers is indestructible, no? Instead, it takes ambitious, sometimes even admirable, swings in various directions, but the majority of them don’t hit on anything good. Picking up minutes after David Gordon Green’s previous entry, 2018’s Halloween, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) are in the hospital after leaving the boogeyman for dead. He’s not dead, though, and as always, Laurie is convinced she’ll be able to defeat him this time around. Joining with other survivors from previous films (Kyle Richards reprises her role as Lindsey Wallace, for example) and inspiring the Haddonfield townspeople to fight back, Laurie does have numbers on her side. But that’s part of the issue. The amount of subplots bury the Strode women in their own film, which leaves it gasping for air as Michael Myers remains alive. R, 106 min.
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