Summary
Blumhouse doesn’t have enough original ideas so needs to ruin a horror classic.
I liked Halloween Ends, that was an incredibly controversial statement once upon a time, but I absolutely hated Halloween Kills and you best believe me that this is far more of the latter than the former.
I think that David Gordon Green is a hack horror director, he can’t seem to come up with anything new or interesting to say so instead says: ‘what has been in the news’ and forces that in in some contrived way. This is no different.
There was potential for this film to be like the recent Scream films in bringing back the original actors, those who are still alive, and mix in some new faces to try and shake things up. However, here they bring back the mother from the original film, Ellen Burstyn, for exposition and to be like see remember her, they give her nothing to do she isn’t there for the actual Exorcism and she has one line that ruins both this film and the original, she says she was not allowed in the room when Regan, Linda Blair, was being exorcised. This line almost made me get up and leave, it is the most lazy trash I have ever seen so in a contrived effort to be like we are cool and progressive we hate the patriarchy, despite being a group of male writers, they force this in. In the first film Karris, Jason Alexander, literally dies to save her daughter you would think she would be a bit more grateful for that, but no a dumb men bad comment. Again the lack of diversity in the writing pool makes these comment seem almost like they are trying to cover themselves.
Finally, the actual exorcism scene itself, because the standard stuff with the priests probably isn’t PC anymore, they have multiple different faiths all working together, is the message well enough down your throat yet? Personally, I wouldn’t have minded this approach if they did something with it, I agree that the standard priest or demonologist cleansing the unclean spirits out of the girl is a little done to death, but here again it just feels like they are ticking a box, it feels like diversity for the sake of it rather than for a valid reason which is never good.
Overall, this film made me angry, it made me dislike Blumhouse, David Gordon Green, and just the state of modern Hollywood where reaffirming a certain political viewpoint is more important than actually making a good film. Hopefully, now that Gordon Green has left they can actually get in a talented writer to do something better than this. A good example of a possession series that has an interesting an evolving story throughout a trilogy is the Hell House LLC films so check those out and give this a miss.
1/5
Pros.
A good twist ending
Cons.
It brings characters back for the sake of cheap nostalgia
It is lazy
It cares more about its message then actually being good
It ruins the original
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Another Millennial Reviewer 