Tim Waggoner's Halloween Kills - Review

Halloween Kills: The Official Movie Novelization by Tim Waggoner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Michael Myers wreaks havoc on Haddonfield once more.

Michael has finally been trapped and left to burn; the horror is finally over. But he rises from his fiery grave to relentlessly continue his massacre.

The town of Haddonfield remains scarred by Myers' brutal murders forty years before, those he came into contact with still haunted by his legacy. They are shocked to discover he has once again escaped and left a trail of corpses in his wake.

Meanwhile, Laurie Strode, believing her plan to have worked, soon realises that Michael still stalks amongst them and that the streets will run with more blood before Hallowe'en night ends.

'Halloween Kills' is Tim Waggoner's novelisation of the second film in the legacy sequel trilogy, that follows only the original film and none of the intervening sequels, based on the screenplay by Scott Teems, Danny McBride, and David Gordon Green.

Picking up directly after the events of 'Halloween' (2018), Michael is trapped in the basement as the inferno rages throughout Laurie’s house, while Laurie, Karen and Allyson are journeying to the hospital, having left Michael for dead. But the Shape isn't so easy to kill, his escape from the flames as thrilling on the page as it is on the screen. Including flashbacks to 1978, we also discover what happened in the aftermath to Michael’s attack on Laurie and her rescue by Dr. Loomis, with Michael’s recapture before he is returned to Smith’s Grove.

Not only does the story of Laurie’s family and her trauma continue and the novel detail the ensuing bloodshed of Michael's massacre - this is also a story about Haddonfield itself, and the effect Michael’s dark legacy has had on the town and other survivors. Other characters make a return, including Tommy and Lindsey. The trauma of the town and its reaction to Michael’s evil escalates into a volatile cocktail of fear and vengeance, a tale of mob violence and the darkness of humanity, as dangerous as the almost supernatural essence that Michael embodies beneath the mask.

Tim Waggoner has done a marvellous job of translating screen to page; 'Halloween Kills', as both a companion to the film and a novel in its own right, is a delight for Michael Myers fans, lovers of Hallowe'en itself, and readers of slasher horror and dark thrillers. A highly recommended novel.



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