Halloween Kills Should Have Cut Its Funniest Scene (To Save Michael)

The most blackly comic death scene in Halloween Kills does the character of Michael Myers a disservice by turning the people he is up against into comically incompetent figures. Ever since John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 horror Halloween introduced Michael Myers, many of the murderer’s victims have been laughably inept characters. Although the characters of the Halloween franchise were generally not quite as over-the-top as the sex-crazed teens killed by Jason Voorhees, they were typically not the most resourceful and quick-thinking people (except each movie’s final girl).

While the disposable victims existed to run upstairs when they should have gone out the front door, as Scream helpfully noted, the final girl was a voice of reason who served as an audience insertion persona. Viewers could watch Laurie Strode’s friends unknowingly walk into their demises safe in the certainty that they would never fall victim to Michael Myers. Instead, most fans felt they would be as resilient and clever as Jamie Lee Curtis’ heroine.

However, one of the funniest scenes in Halloween Kills takes this slasher tradition a bit too far and harms masked murderer Michael Myers’ effectiveness as a villain in the process. Vanessa’s death is very funny (and an atypically responsible depiction of gun safety for Hollywood horror), but making Michael’s victims so hopelessly incompetent at hunting him down does defang the killer. When all it takes is him sitting placidly and eventually aiming a well-timed kick at a car door to kill someone, the Halloween villain’s threat level is dented by how silly his victims act. Even though the Michael Myers of Halloween Kills is all-but-indestructible, it is still frustrating to see him up against characters who make the original movie’s Lynda look like a hardened survivalist.

It is almost impossible to watch Lynda talk to Michael while assuming he is her boyfriend in the original Halloween since the audience is uncomfortably aware that the mute killer has PJ Soles’ doomed character trapped unbeknownst to her. However, when the sequel to Halloween‘s 2018 reboot brings back Vanessa only to have her wield a handgun so incompetently that she shoots herself in the head at close range, it is far harder for viewers to relate to her plight. It is admittedly tricky to put oneself in the shoes of a character like Lynda, who can mistake Michael’s looming, wordless presence for her boyfriend. However, it is impossible to put oneself in the shoes of Vanessa when she not only doesn’t run from Michael or take a moment to improve her aim but walks toward the killer while firing blindly.

Vanessa’s death makes it clear that many of the victims in Halloween Kills would never have survived a much less dangerous killer, meaning Michael no longer needs to be particularly lethal to fall these characters. In another cliche called out in one of the Scream movie franchise’s sequels, Judy Greer’s Karen has an opportunity to shoot Michael in the head after impaling him on a pitchfork and fails to do so, a choice that eventually leads to her death in the movie’s closing moments. It is these frustrating and hard-to-believe character choices that make the heroes of Halloween Kills hard to root for, and the once-terrifying effectiveness of Michael Myers is less impressive as he is essentially shooting fish in a barrel in the sequel.

About The Author

Cathal Gunning
(1446 Articles Published)

Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies and TV online since 2020. His obsessions include The Simpsons, Stephen King, the Scream series, and the horror genre in general. He has spent more time thinking about Stranger Things than the writers of Stranger Things, and he has never seen a Star War.

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