Synopsis:

Upon finally being released, Halloween Kills was met with a lukewarm response from both critics and fans. The film's themes were thrown at you without at ounce of subtlety, characters were incredibly melodramatic, and at times it felt more like a Friday the 13th movie. This edit trims out a lot of the melodrama and gore and strengthens some of the character work which helps to strengthen the overall narrative making things seem a bit more natural and logical.

Intentions:

Initially I was pleasantly surprised with Halloween Kills. I think I had had such low expectations for it that at first I was just happy I didn't hate every second of it. It was my second viewing that really opened my eyes to a lot of its failings. Halloween Kills oozes melodrama starting simply with the fact that there's no way an entire town would be haunted by 3 murders that happened 4 decades prior. So much of the dialogue was hammy and over the top and there were tons of callbacks unnaturally inserted. Unnecessarily lingering on gore made this at times feel like more of a Friday the 13th ripoff. Anything that Halloween 2018 did right felt undone very quickly. I still felt that buried down somewhere in the (mostly) great cinematography, AMAZING score, and wonderful production design was a pretty solid Halloween sequel. Just wanted to give the fans of the Halloween franchise another solid entry to revisit every October.

Change List:

1. Trimmed Lonnie getting bullied. 2. Added scene of Lonnie seeing Michael behind the bush from extended cut. 3. Lonnie no longer mentions being sorry for bullying Tommy Doyle to Michael. 4. Trimmed Lonnie's responses to the cops. 5. Cut cops dialogue right before Michael attacks him. Shot cropped to maintain continuity. 6. Cut Loomis talking to Hawkins. 7. Replaced music in the opening credits with "Halloween Kills End Credits." 8. Heavily recut and restructured Tommy's Speech at the bar for less melodrama and a more logical flow. 9. Trimmed flashbacks during Tommy's speech. 10. Two trims to Michael attacking the firefighters. 11. No longer see the glass go through the elderly man's throat. 12. Attack on elderly woman attacked to be slightly less gory. 13. Cut Julian from Halloween 2018 from the TV newscast. 14. Cut Marion saying "evil dies tonight" in the bar. 15. Trimmed hallway conversation between Allyson, Cameron, and Karen. 16. Cut Allyson saying "Michael Myers has haunted this town for 40 years. Tonight we hunt him down" after she grabs the shotgun. 17. Cut Marion saying "this is for Dr. Loomis" before she tries to shoot Michael. 18. Trimmed scene of Michael stabbing Marcus in the eye. 19. Cut Laurie calling her knife wound a paper cut. 20. Cut scene with Lonnie, Tommy, and Lindsay talking about trying to sneak in the Myers house when they were kids. 21. Cut random woman and Brackett saying "evil dies tonight" in the hospital entrance. 22. Lots of cuts to Laurie and Karen talking in the hospital room. We no longer see Laurie stab herself with the needle. 23. Lots of cuts to the crowd chasing Tivoli. Many "evil dies tonight" chants cut. 24. Cut Oscar's mom seeing her son's body. 25. Trimmed Laurie and Hawkins talking. 26. Reframed two shots of Laurie in the corridor. 27. No longer see the aftermath of Tivoli jumping. 28. Cut Brackett's line "now he's turning us into monsters." 29. Young Hawkins scene with cop switching guns with him is cut. 30. Big John and Little John now die off screen. Entire second scene with them is cut. 31. Michael storms out of the closet earlier now. 32. Cut Allyson yelling "DO IT!" when Michael is trying to stab her in the chest. Restructured the track "Unkillable" to accomplish this. 33. Trimmed Karen's dialogue goading Michael. 34. Cut Karen saying "gotcha." Too repetitive especially if you go right to watching this after Halloween 2018. Clips reordered to make this possible. 35. Cut Brackett's "everyone deserves one good scare line." 36. Entirety of Laurie's final monologue cut. 37. Restructured version of "Michael's Legacy" used. 38. Ending restructured so that we see how Michael escaped the mob at the same time we're seeing Karen be attacked by him. Several clips from extended cut used. 39. Michael seeing his reflection used as the final shot.

Additional Notes:

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Other Sources:

Special Thanks:

Thanks to ArtisDead for the amazing cover art as well as both ArtisDead and emh for previewing this edit before release.