Halloween Kills enters an overloaded pool of terrible sequels to John Carpenter’s 1978 classic. It’s the twelfth entry in a franchise with more bad entries than good. David Gordon Green’s 2018 remake represented a return to form for the slasher series, but its first sequel felt like a step back. Halloween Ends offered a controversial new direction, but Kills remains the unwanted transition between old and new ideas. Despite the film’s critical failure, Halloween fans on Netflix have flocked to the awful entry.
Halloween Kills Almost Killed the Franchise
The 2018 reboot of Halloween felt like a rare successful experiment in the world of Hollywood dredging up old properties. Horror movies are particularly susceptible to never-ending sequels, remakes, and ripoffs. Carpenter’s classic inspired enough also-ran attempts to fill several old-fashioned video stores, as well as a few well-received outings like Friday the 13th. The longest gap between Halloween entries since the original in 1978 came between Rob Zombie’s second attempt and Green’s first outing. Halloween Kills decisively executed the excitement around the new take on the material. Seeing a franchise boldly declare itself a fresh start is amazing, only to fall flat with its follow-up. The franchise remains financially successful, but critics and audiences despised the last two entries. That considerable $133.4 million box office take guarantees another crack at Michael Myers in the next few years. It’s a microcosm of the industry, in a way.
Halloween Kills reached Netflix’s international top ten through a considerable effort from Central and South America. Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, The Bahamas, and the Dominican Republic also boast top ten positions for the film. Brazil pushed the poorly-received sequel to its second-place spot, while countries like Columbia and Argentina gave it a bronze medal. Kills earned a 39% approval rating from 278 critics on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s widely considered the worst of the modern slasher genre. Halloween Ends defeated its predecessor with a resounding 40%, while the 2018 entry claimed a 79% score. Netflix users in the United States will find the Halloween franchise unavailable. There are few explanations for the film’s spike in popularity, as temporary as it will almost certainly be. Everyone likes a good horror movie, and a bad horror movie can often be even more enjoyable. I sincerely hope Latin America enjoys the unintentional comedy.
Halloween Kills earned notoriety for its terrible dialogue. Several characters blurt out variations on “evil dies tonight.” At one point, an old man delivers the on-the-nose line: “Now he’s turning us into monsters.” It feels like a parody of a slasher film, but a newcomer to the genre might enjoy the simplicity. The perfect audience for Halloween Kills has never seen another movie in the franchise. Halloween Ends pointedly ignores most of the second film’s events, rendering it pointless. If you’re looking for a laugh and live in the right region, you can’t go wrong watching evil survive another night.
