Jamie Lee Curtis doesn’t have much of a role in this morally charged sequel that was warmly received at the Sitges Film Festival
The sequel to ‘Halloween’, a direct sequel to the 1978 original, smashed box office records in its first weekend on the US billboard. Never before has a horror movie starring a woman sold so many tickets upon release. It was the most successful premiere led by an actress over 55 years of age. Jamie Lee Curtis took the medals, present in the executive production, as did John Carpenter, who signed the soundtrack with his son Cody, based on the mythical chords of the iconic film with which it all began.
Released in 2018, David Gordon Green, the artisan director of ‘Superfumados’, complied with the record and now repeats behind the camera with the new installment of the saga, ‘Halloween Kills’, seen last week at the festival of Sitges, where she was warmly welcomed. Michael Myers, an unstoppable monster representing absolute evil, continues to stab staff four decades later, with a testosterone bloodbath that this time contains traces of moraline. With a broad brush ideological message that recovers the spirit of the best Carpenter with less elegance, the crowd goes crazy in its total dedication to the persecution of the cursed psychokiller, proving that some human beings can be as violent, or more, than the popular murderer serially. Paranoia spreads and the enraged crowd makes those who should not pay the duck, while fear continues to establish itself in a decadent society.
Maestro Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’ tune sounds like a ringtone on many latest-generation smartphones. The music conceived by the director of the cult film himself is part of the collective memory, as is the villain of the show, an indomitable murderer who, unlike other similar icons of modern horror cinema, has not fallen into a parody of himself. Obsessed with cruelly exterminating every horny teenager who comes his way, the character dressed in his ghostly white mask and ham-slicing knife has inspired numerous films. Shot to death since its launch in 1978, the film that was the starting point for the franchise has one of the most chilling – and original at the time – beginnings in the history of dark celluloid.
An image from ‘Halloween Kills’.
A subjective shot, as if it were the gaze of the main character, takes us to a house in a typically American neighborhood where a series of murders take place at dusk. Of course, October 31st. The camera captures the crimes and the viewer is a participant in the macabre game: he shares the eyes of Mike Myers. In ‘Halloween Kills’ the presence of Jamie Lee Curtis is scarce, it is reserved for ‘Halloween Ends’, the supposed conclusion of the latest batch of trilogy, soon to be released. His daughter and granddaughter take center stage, as well as the maddened neighbors, a mob that can remember in action the famous torchlight chase of ‘Frankenstein’.
‘Halloween Kills’ begins where the previous installment ended, all at once, resurrecting the beast, as expected. The succession of deaths complies with the canons of the average slasher, without surprises, with a scene of tension that skids bordering on the ridiculous, something that is forgiven for a film that does not pretend to be a milestone in the history of the genre, rather to perpetuate the bloody tribulations of a character whose mutilations, and their consequences, can give rise to a highly contradictory double political reading. Altogether it surpasses its previous chapter, with better sequences and planning, with some apparent tragic twist. Blood is not lacking for the rejoicing of the audience delivered.
.