Halloween Kills: 5 Things It Needs To Improve From The 2018 Reboot (& 5 It Should Keep The Same)

The 2018 Halloween reboot revitalized the franchise, but it was far from perfect. The upcoming sequel Halloween Kills can improve on a few areas.

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In 2018, 40 years after John Carpenter’s horror masterpiece Halloween hit theaters, David Gordon Green rebooted the franchise with a direct sequel to the original, also titled Halloween, that ignored and retconned all the disappointing existing sequels.

While this reboot was praised for revitalizing the franchise – and it was undoubtedly the best of the Halloween sequels – it still failed to live up to Carpenter’s initial 1978 masterpiece. While the upcoming sequel, Halloween Kills, should keep a lot of things about its wildly successful predecessor the same, there’s some areas it can improve on, too.

10 Improve: Keeping Michael’s Mask On

Michael Myers is an iconic villain for one reason: his mask. The faceless, shapeless visage of William Shatner gave Michael an unnerving uncanny-valley look that left an unforgettable impression on audiences. Years later, in Rob Zombie’s reboot, Michael took off his mask and showed his face, which rubbed a lot of Halloween fans the wrong way.

In the 2018 movie, he shows his face yet again. Some podcasters have the mask and an unmasked Michael Myers – who’s really just a guy – has to kill them to get to it. In the sequel, he should keep the mask on the whole time. Unfortunately, based on the trailer, that doesn’t seem to be the case. If anything, he’ll be unmasked for even more of Halloween Kills.

9 Keep The Same: Tons Of Fan Service

David Gordon Green filled his Halloween reboot with fan service – namely, he crammed as many Michael Myers murders into the movie as possible – and since the audience for a Halloween movie is the Halloween fanbase, Halloween Kills should continue this tradition.

If anything, Halloween Kills is set to have even more fan service than its predecessor, because it’s bringing back a bunch of familiar faces: Kyle Richards as Lindsey Wallace, Nancy Stephens as Marion Chambers, and even Tommy Doyle, the kid that Laurie babysat in the 1978 original, who’ll be played by Anthony Michael Hall.

8 Improve: Self-Awareness

These days, when a filmmaker tackles an intellectual property with a huge fan following, they usually include a few meta nods to the audience. This is true of 2018’s Halloween, but it’s always in a painfully on-the-nose way that stops the movie dead.

There’s a self-aware line in the movie about how horror audiences are more desensitized than they were in 1978: “A couple people getting killed by one guy with a knife is not that big of a deal… I’m just saying, like, by today’s standards…” But this doesn’t ring true as something somebody would say to their friend about their grandmother’s near-death experience, so the meta-ness becomes a distraction.

7 Keep The Same: John Carpenter’s Tense Score

In addition to co-writing and directing the original 1978 Halloween, John Carpenter also composed the score, including the iconic creepy theme that the series wouldn’t be the same without. While Carpenter had no involvement in the script for the 2018 reboot, he came back to compose the music with his son Cody Carpenter and his regular collaborator Daniel Davies.

Just like the 1978 original, the score for the 2018 reboot was delightfully foreboding, elevating the on-screen terror. Thankfully, Carpenter is returning to compose the score for Halloween Kills with the younger Carpenter and Davies.

6 Improve: Dialogue

Nobody is going to a slasher movie for the dialogue, and nobody is expecting David Mamet or Aaron Sorkin-level repartee between the characters of slasher movies, but it helps to immerse the audience in the reality of the story if the dialogue is at least naturalistic.

A lot of the dialogue in 2018’s Halloween feels like placeholder lines that the writers intended to change in a later draft, like “I got peanut butter on my penis.”

5 Keep The Same: Allyson’s Characterization

2018’s Halloween introduced audiences to three generations of Strode women: Laurie, the iconic final girl from the original movie; Karen, her daughter; and Allyson, her granddaughter. The latter, played by Andi Matichak, is arguably the movie’s main protagonist.

A lot of horror movie protagonists are characterized as dim-witted because it makes it easier for the screenwriters to get them into dangerous situations. Fortunately, the writers of 2018’s Halloween didn’t take that route. Throughout the reboot, Allyson is shown to have her grandmother’s strength and ability to think on her feet.

4 Improve: Unfamiliar Murder Victims

Slashers are only effective if the audience has an emotional connection to the murderer’s chosen victims. In the original Halloween, Michael goes after Laurie’s friends that we got to know in the first act before coming after Laurie herself.

In the 2018 reboot, he killed a bunch of random people we’ve never seen before on his way to the Strode residence. In Halloween Kills, Michael needs to kill characters that the audience actually cares about.

3 Keep The Same: Laurie Strode’s Badassery

Green’s Halloween reboot perfectly characterized Laurie Strode. Whereas Carpenter’s original movie charted Laurie’s journey from a frightened everywoman to a bona fide badass, Green’s reboot reintroduced us to a paranoid, gun-toting killing machine waiting for Michael’s return.

Jamie Lee Curtis brilliantly leaned into these aspects of the character. Her fierce performance is one of the greatest things about the movie. She needs to bring that same energy to the sequel.

2 Improve: Laurie’s Terrible Decision-Making

In the first half of 2018’s Halloween, Laurie was reintroduced as a hardened badass who’d been waiting for Michael to return for the past four decades, and that was a really cool setup. But the second half revealed her meticulous plan for Michael’s return to be ridiculous and ill-conceived.

She had 40 years to think of what she’d do if Michael ever came back, and all she planned to do was fill her house with mannequins, wander around with a long-range weapon that Michael could easily grab from her, and then trap herself in the basement. Sure, she ended up trapping Michael in the basement, but still, she made a lot of mistakes with this plan. The sequel needs to make her as smart and quick-witted as she was in the 1978 original Halloween.

1 Keep The Same: The Terror Of Michael Myers

Like all the classic slasher villains – Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, etc. – the horror fanbase’s fear of Michael Myers faded away with an onslaught of terrible sequels that failed to do the original menace justice.

In 2018’s Halloween, audiences became terrified of Michael again. When he hid in a closet in a child’s bedroom or beat a couple of true-crime podcasters to death in a public bathroom, viewers were genuinely afraid of Michael for the first time in years.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/halloween-kills-improve-reboot-keep-the-same/