67
Metascore
51 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 91The PlaylistVictor StiffThe PlaylistVictor StiffHalloween is a love letter to the original picture and entertaining on its own terms. Thrilling, atmospheric, and brutally violent, Green delivers exactly what fans want from the series and then some.
- 90IGNJim VejvodaIGNJim VejvodaWhile no entry in the franchise has surpassed the original film, this Halloween sequel is truly a cut above the rest and a great piece of horror entertainment even for those unfamiliar with the series.
- 83Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattEntertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattLong live Michael Myers, so maybe someone can finally kill him — in a big, funny, scary, squishy, super-meta sequel that brings it all back to the iconic 1978 original.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeThe Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeThe picture has a good shock or two up its sleeve before getting to Laurie's armored, booby-trapped home, and once it's there, it surprises us again.
- 70VarietyPeter DebrugeVarietyPeter DebrugeBy contemporary horror standards, the original “Halloween” was actually quite tame, featuring just five (human) deaths, whereas this one more than triples the body count — and it does so with style, borrowing several of Carpenter’s classic devices...before getting into the more prosthetic-heavy mayhem that follows.
- 58ConsequenceSarah KurchakConsequenceSarah KurchakHalloween deserves credit for its efforts to balance old and new, for taking us back to Haddonfield in a way that isn’t purely for cheap nostalgia, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that there’s something more that it could have been achieved.
- 50The A.V. ClubA.A. DowdThe A.V. ClubA.A. DowdHalloween isn’t explicitly a horror-comedy, but it does have the destructive habit of undercutting its scares with broad laughs, Green and McBride deflating the tension at every turn with goofball asides.
- 40The GuardianBenjamin LeeThe GuardianBenjamin LeeThere are some effectively nasty kills (this is no PG-13 reboot) and Green’s visual eye often results in some impressive imagery but both the look of the film and the script feel confused. Green can’t seem to decide whether he wants it to be gritty and lo-fi or slick and cinematic and so ends up awkwardly between the two, anything resembling an atmosphere sorely missing.
- 38Slant MagazineKeith UhlichSlant MagazineKeith UhlichFor all of the film’s attempts to get back to the sinisterly sidling Michael of the first Halloween, his stealth movements no longer terrify because his fixations are less unthinkingly instinctual, more compulsively mortal.