Halloween Kills

By eschewing imaginative thought with their Halloween (2018) reboot, writer/director David Gordon Green and co-writers Danny McBride and Scott Teems set a low bar for delivering anything of note with their direct sequel Halloween Kills — and promptly fail to clear it.

Featuring human behavior that’s idiotic even by horror movie standards, this homage-o-rama is so focused on looping in references and actors from past series installments that it forgets to tell its own story.

With a wounded Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) on their way to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, convinced that they’ve burned Michael Myers to a crisp, the mass murderer naturally wiggles out of his would-be crematorium and goes on a grisly rampage.

But while Halloween Kills ramps up the body count and mixes in a few creative deaths, its makers sweep aside Halloween’s promising character development and meditations on generational trauma. That’s an impressive feat, considering the writers include an entire subplot involving adult survivors of past Michael attacks, including Nancy Stephens and Kyle Richards reprising their roles from Halloween (1978), and a borderline unrecognizable Anthony Michael Hall as Tommy Doyle, the boy Laurie babysat and protected on that fateful night 40 years ago.

Instead of giving a damn about these people, the filmmakers leave them as either easy targets for Michael or players in a moronic, overlong, wannabe-Halloween II stretch at the hospital in which townsfolk — including Asheville-based actor Jennifer Trudrung — turn into a Frankenstein-esque mob in their blind pursuit of Michael.

Though “The Shape” crosses paths with a few amusing side players — namely a foul-mouthed interracial couple and gay partners who renovated the old Myers house — Laurie is largely sidelined and restricted to cornily reminiscing with fellow intensive care patient Officer Hawkins (Will Patton).

The rag-tag band of vengeful neighbors proves a poor substitute for arguably cinema’s ultimate Final Girl, and Green again never quite seems to know what to do with Michael, rarely framing or directing the monster in ways that amplify his menace. It’s a forgettable chapter in a saga full of them — and somehow we still have one more movie to go with this team of bozos.

Grade: D-plus. Rated R. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: Universal Pictures)