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New Escapist Column! On the Meanness and Meaninglessness of “Halloween Kills”…

Posted on October 10, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the upcoming release of Halloween Ends, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at the last entry in the horror franchise.

Halloween Kills is a divisive addition to the slasher movie canon, a grubby and nihilistic horror movie that completely lacks a central ordering principle. Halloween Kills is a movie without a hero. Instead, it is just a monster and his victims. The result is a surprisingly brutaly and bloody slasher movie from a major studio, at a point in time where these films are becoming increasingly homogenised by the logic of intellectual property brand management. Halloween Kills is a film in which there is no reason or logic for the horror that unfolds, and that only serves to make it more scary.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

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New Escapist Column! On The Enduring Appeal of Michael Myers…

Posted on October 18, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Halloween Kills, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the larger Halloween franchise.

What is it that makes Michael Myers such an enduring and unsettling figure? Why has the character remained so popular and iconic across four decades? Why are audiences constantly drawn to the serial killer, who is remarkably straightforward in many ways? Indeed, it seems like the relative simplicity of Michael Myers is part of the appeal. Myers is somewhat uncomplicated as far as slasher movie antagonists go. However, he is also fundamentally unknowable, and all the more effective for that.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

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New Escapist Video! “Halloween Kills is a Bloody (and Ambitious) Mess – Review”

Posted on October 17, 2021 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be launching movie reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a three-minute film review of Halloween Kills, which released theatrically and on Peacock this weekend.

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Non-Review Review: Halloween Kills

Posted on October 15, 2021 by Darren

Halloween Kills is an ambitious sequel, if a little messy – and not just in the way that one expects a slasher movie to be messy.

Halloween Kills is a direct sequel to David Gordon Green’s Halloween. It picks up in a very similar place to where the two other direct sequels to a movie named Halloween start. Like Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween II and Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, the film follows Laurie Strode to hospital as Michael Myers continues his rampage through Haddonfield, Illinois. Although Zombie’s Halloween II takes a sharp turn in its second act, all three direct sequels extend the eponymous night into the early morning that follows.

Gripping stuff.

There is a lot going on in Halloween Kills. The film effectively splits across three main plot threads that only intermittently overlap with one another. One of these threads centres on Laurie’s recovery in the hospital, while the second follows the reaction of the local community to the carnage, and and the third focuses on Myers’ continuing rampage through an Illinois suburb. The film is disjointed, with Green inheriting a lot of continuity and character baggage from his previous film while heaping even more connections back to the original film upon it.

Still, perhaps the best and worst thing that can be said about Halloween Kills is that it marks a return to the grim nihilism that defined John Carpenter’s original.

Continue reading →

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