Any trilogy that gets announced ahead of time has to work extra hard when it comes to the middle chapter, because audiences know going in that there isn’t going to be a clear resolution to the story. Unfortunately, Halloween Kills falls into a lot of those traps, and it often feels like the narrative is spinning its wheels.
It doesn’t help that Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode, the linchpin of the entire franchise and undoubted highlight of 2018’s Halloween, is barely in the movie at all. Instead, she’s confined mostly to a hospital bed while Michael Myers continues dispatching the residents of Haddonfield with complete and unobstructed ease.
However, the final scene of the film at least sets the stage for the titanic showdown to come in Halloween Ends, when a recuperating Laurie mounts one final stand against her arch-nemesis. She’s even got an extra personal stake following the shocking murder of Judy Greer’s Karen Nelson, but Laurie doesn’t know her daughter is dead when the credits roll.
Michael has murdered his way back to his childhood home, and Halloween Kills ends with him staring at his reflection in his sister’s bedroom window, just as he did 40 years previously, this time with Karen’s body at his feet. The serial killer is virtually indestructible, Laurie is recovering from life-threatening injuries, and her granddaughter Allyson is in pretty bad shape herself. So the odds are stacked against the Strode clan.
Curtis has already teased that the conclusion of Halloween Ends is going to make a lot of people angry, so let’s just hope the journey to that point is more reminiscent of the opener than the disappointing Halloween Kills.
