Much like this year’s Candyman I went into Halloween Kills very excited and poised to enjoy myself.

Sadly, much like Candyman, I didn’t enjoy this film. Gone is the interesting plot brought on in the 2018 sequel to the original Halloween with Jamie Lee Curtis’ character of Laurie Strode now a doomsday prepper suffering PTSD, and instead we get a typical horror sequel: up the body count, have the characters make infuriatingly stupid decisions, and gloss over any explanations that might prove detrimental to the already limited scope of the plot.

As shown in the previews for the film, Michael Myers survives the house fire where he was left in the previous installment by attacking the fire fighters who show up. While many of the fire fighters try to fight back and are armed with axes and power saws and other such paraphernalia, apparently their will to survive is overridden by their inability to attack the serial killer in any way other than one-on-one. After dispatching the fire crew Michael makes his way once more across the town of Haddonfield killing everyone in his path in gruesome ways. The locals — including a handful of actors from the original 1978 film reprising their characters — decide their mantra for the evening is “Evil dies tonight,” a phrase that gets repeated frequently, as mob mentality takes over and the residents try to hunt the hunter. Do they succeed? Well, there is another sequel already in the works…

With the 2018 flick and this continuation taking place over the same October night (mostly), I don’t think the Haddonfield morgue can handle this many bodies. Likewise, the police in town seem to be oblivious when someone is being murdered just a short distance away, and can’t be bothered to secure a crime scene. Get introduced to a character we haven’t seen before? Forget it, you can bet death is certain for them. Returning characters who showed some intelligence in the previous film are now reduced to horror movie cliches. Previous heroine Laurie Strode spends the bulk of the movie spouting monologues in a hospital room (she is recovering from surgery to repair the damage Michael did to her). In her place we get her daughter and granddaughter being ludicrously inept members of the aforementioned mob, despite their previous actions.

Overall, this movie was just a disappointment, particularly after the promising 2018 film.

The next installment is reportedly titled Halloween Ends, but I suspect if it and Halloween Kills make their own killings at the box office, Michael Myers will keep on being greenlit to do his.