Nachtfalke reviewed Halloween Kills by Tim Waggoner
Review of 'Halloween Kills' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Like all of the previous Halloween movie series novelizations, a pleasant surprise. I'm not sure I agree with all the creative decisions that were made - especially when it comes to Michael Myers' motivation and self-explanations. But overall, it's a solid read for the material it tries to tackle.
The core problems I have with the story are not the writer's fault:
First, working with the original (1978) story has to be a mess, because it's not very deep to begin with. In the 1970s, the story going back to some pagan ritual made sense among a trend of books and movies that played with the same topics. It doesn't seem to have been a background that was supposed be used for the kind of in-depth development that modern writers would perhaps like to give it.
Second, retconning the second movie is certainly possible - but it creates a lot …
Like all of the previous Halloween movie series novelizations, a pleasant surprise. I'm not sure I agree with all the creative decisions that were made - especially when it comes to Michael Myers' motivation and self-explanations. But overall, it's a solid read for the material it tries to tackle.
The core problems I have with the story are not the writer's fault:
First, working with the original (1978) story has to be a mess, because it's not very deep to begin with. In the 1970s, the story going back to some pagan ritual made sense among a trend of books and movies that played with the same topics. It doesn't seem to have been a background that was supposed be used for the kind of in-depth development that modern writers would perhaps like to give it.
Second, retconning the second movie is certainly possible - but it creates a lot of difficulties for the story that one might consider unnecessary, especially since the town's collective trauma makes more sense with Myers indeed taking down the hospital, back in the day. Having him (partially) blinded and disfigured through the burns would have created a different kind of villain, but one that the creators of this movie could well have worked with in other ways - just sayin'.
Third, the notion of Michael Myers as this Jason-esque juggernaut was already something that I didn't like much about the first part. This is a guy who acts with stealth and cunning, not with excessive force. Yet, the story uses him almost entirely in combat-like scenes. In my mind, that's a waste.
--- That said, Waggoner does his level best to make a mediocre story entertaining, and he brings in many elements that I felt were missing from the movie - mainly, that sense of creepiness and tension. In the movie, lamentably, Myers is just a big dude that's ridiculously fit and hard to kill. In Waggoner's book, Myers' returns to be what he was in the original story - his powers are mainly that he gets into people's heads. (Figuratively, not literally.) I liked that, and I liked this book enough to recommend it to others.