Halloween Kills | 2021 | R | – 5.10.8

Why is “Halloween Kills” rated R? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “strong bloody violence throughout, grisly images, language and some drug use.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes full male nudity in a couple of morgue scenes, many scenes of people being attacked and brutally murdered by a man using knives, guns, bats, axes, and a rope, with a lot of blood and gore shown throughout the movie, a couple of scenes of a man smoking marijuana, and over 30 F-words and other strong language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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The saga of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) continues: After recovering from injuries in a hospital, Strode is convinced that the killer that’s been haunting her is dead. When she finds out that he survived and is heading her way, she joins a mob determined to end the murderous saga. Also with Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Thomas Mann, Jim Cummings, Dylan Arnold, Robert Longstreet, Anthony Michael Hall, Charles Cyphers, Scott MacArthur, Michael McDonald, Kyle Richards and Nancy Stephens. Directed by David Gordon Green. [Running Time: 1:46]

Halloween Kills SEX/NUDITY 5

 – A fully nude dead body is shown in a morgue a couple of times and we see his bare chest, abdomen, genitals and legs. A woman wears a low-cut and short “sexy nurse” costume (cleavage and stocking-clad legs to the hips are seen). Three women wearing mermaid costumes sing onstage in a bar (cleavage and bare abdomens are seen). A young man wears women’s clothing (a skirt and sweater) as a Halloween costume. A man wears a tank T-shirt and boxer shorts (we see his bare shoulders and legs to the upper thighs). A dead man is shown with his head resting in the lap of another dead man (emulating a photo of the couple in the same position).
► A man describes a time when he and a friend used Peyote and the friend was so alarmed by his own reflection in a lake that he took off his pants and jumped in the water. A man talks about a night when he kissed a woman and that she held his hand and he hoped for more.

Halloween Kills VIOLENCE/GORE 10

 – Firefighters enter a burning house and spray flames with hoses, one firefighter falls through a floor and is attacked by a man using a pick, who breaks his helmet visor with the pointed end (we see the bloody wound); the man pulls another firefighter into the hole in the floor when he reaches to help him out, we hear a scream from outside, the man exits the flaming house carrying the pick and fights several others outside striking them with the pick and he cuts one with a power saw (blood sprays and gushes and we see bodies later with the top of one man’s head cut off). A man and a woman hear a noise in their house and the man goes to investigate; he finds an intruder in a room and slams and locks the door, the intruder grabs the man by the head through a shattering window pane and slams him against a wall repeatedly; he then uses a shard of glass to stab the man in the neck, the woman holds a knife and tries to stab the intruder but he stabs her through the throat with a broken florescent light tube (we hear gushing, gurgling and see a lot of blood), and she lays back against a table and watches as the intruder lays the man over a table and stabs him through the back with many kitchen knives (we hear squishing and crunching). A man chases a woman into a house and stabs her repeatedly as she thrashes (we see a lot of blood and she falls dead). Someone knocks at the back door of a house and when a man goes to answer it there is no one there; then there’s a knock at the front door and when the man returns to the back door he sees it open and there is a bloody smear on the door jamb; two men holding knives search the house and one man is attacked by an intruder, he is stabbed under the arm and the intruder presses his thumbs into the man’s eyes (blood and matter squish out) and he screams, while the other man is confronted by the intruder and we hear him also scream (we see him dead later with a knife in his chest and bloody wounds are seen).
► A woman goes to a playground to tell two children to go home at night; a man holding a bloody knife and a blood-soaked Halloween mask stands near her car, where three people wait for her and the attacker stabs through the car and a woman inside is wounded (we see blood); another woman inside the car shoots at the attacker breaking out the windows and the attacker climbs into the car and stabs her several times, and then stabs a man in the backseat through the eye (we see bloody wound as he falls back dying), and the first woman shoots at the attacker and when he kicks the door open, it hits her hand causing her to shoot herself in the head (blood sprays). Two police officers enter a boarded up house and one finds a dead dog (we see a bloody abdominal wound and hear flies buzzing); a man attacks and the officer, slams him against a wall, wraps a rope around his neck and strangles him as his partner enters pointing a gun at the attacker, and when he shoots he hits the first officer in the neck; the attacker drops the wounded man and runs (the officer bleeds profusely and dies).
► A woman with a pillowcase filled with bricks swings it and hits a man a couple of times, and then runs away and hides; the man chases her, cannot find her and leaves. A woman locks fire doors to protect a man from a violent mob that try to break in the doors; the man uses a fire extinguisher to break a window, climbs onto a ledge outside and jumps off as people get through the doors (we hear a squish and crack and we see his twisted body with his head smashed and blood and matter on the ground; his leg and arm are twisted with bones sticking out of them). A young man and young woman with guns go into a house, the young woman shoots a pumpkin inside a closet and it splatters, they walk through the house and find two dead men with bloody wounds (the young woman pulls a knife out of the chest of one man and blood pours), and the young man finds a body in an attic access when blood drips from the ceiling onto his arm; the young man is attacked by a man, stabbed a few times and slammed into a railing repeatedly before his neck is snapped, the young woman stabs the attacker a couple of times and he throws her down a flight of stairs (we hear a loud crack and he holds her leg while screaming); the man walks toward her and she holds a knife on him as someone else stabs him in the back with a pitchfork and stomps on his head when he falls. A man is surrounded by many people with weapons and they beat, stab and shoot him repeatedly; he slashes someone on the arm and we see blood and tissue as he falls to the ground, he revives and slashes and stabs many more people (a lot of blood sprays and pours). A man relates a story about a murder that he witnessed as a child and says that his babysitter was murdered that night; the attacks are shown and we see a young woman murdered by stabbing and another woman is attacked but not killed (both have bloody wounds).
► A young man is shown impaled on a fence post with blood dripping from his head and neck. A police officer lies on the ground with a bloody wound on his neck (blood gushes from the wound) as a young man presses a cloth against the wound. A woman is shown with a deep abdominal wound and we see a lot of blood on her, her clothing and two women helping her. A woman on an operating table is shown during surgery and we see her open abdomen with flaps of flesh and bloody tissue being manipulated and a stapler is used to close the wound. Many police arrive at a scene where numerous firefighters lie dead on the ground in front of a burning house (we see bloody wounds). A man is shown locked in a cage as flames burn around him. A man and a woman are shown dead with bloody wounds and masks over their heads spinning around on a merry-go-round in a playground. A dead woman is shown hanging from a swing set with very bloody wounds and blood drips from her fingertips.
► Many armed police officers surround a man outside a boarded up house and a man with a gun stands behind him preparing to shoot him. A police officer chases a person wearing a mask and shoots at him; the officer finds blood on the ground but not the person. A man with a gun goes into a house and we hear a gunshot (we do not see what happened). A man stirs up a crowd of people talking about an “apex predator,” and that “evil dies tonight,” and the people search through a hospital for the person they think is killing people in their town; they push up flights of stairs knocking other people down and we see some people tumble down the stairs.
► A boy stumbles and falls on the sidewalk as a man wearing a mask approaches him; the boy curls into a ball and covers his face while crying, “Don’t kill me,” as two police officers arrive and the boy runs away. We hear news reports of multiple murders and a few patients from a mental facility having escaped. A young woman wraps a bloody knife in a shirt and puts it next to the pillow of an unconscious woman in a hospital bed. A woman gets into her car alone in a dark parking lot and sees a man in the back seat, she screams and runs into a bar telling people there is someone in her car and several people with bats and sticks move toward the vehicle; one man hits the window of the car and the person inside speeds away, nearly hits an oncoming vehicle in the road and crashes into a power pole (live wires pop and spark) and the men open the car and find blood on the arm rest but no one inside (the driver runs away with a bloody head wound). An unconscious man with bloody wounds is wheeled through a hospital corridor on a stretcher. We see a few dead bodies in a morgue (one has a bloody wound under the chin). A woman in a hospital bed unplugs herself from an IV and monitors and stabs herself in the leg with a hypodermic needle and yells.
► A woman talks about someone having killed her husband and that he waited 40 years to try to kill her mother. A woman tells another woman, “We shot him in the face and burned him alive.” A man feels guilty for not putting a bullet in a man’s brain. We hear yelling and a woman screams from off-screen. Three teenagers tease and bully a younger boy, they call him names and shove him and one teen girl slaps him hard in the face. A police officer says that three teens were murdered down the street sending four other children home. Teens and children chant, “He’s gonna get you,” in a few scenes. A man asks another man if the person they are chasing (a killer) used to pull the wings off bugs when he was a child. A man describes a time when he and a friend used Peyote and the friend was so alarmed by his own reflection in a lake that he took off his pants and jumped in the water.
► A girl rings a doorbell and asks for help saying that her friend ate a piece of candy with a razor blade in it; another girl lies on the sidewalk with blood on her face and a pile of what is identified as vomit with a blade in it, is next to her; when the two men from the house approach and another child goes inside the house to steal their candy, the children yell to scare the men; the men tell the children a scary story that sends them away screaming. A man spits on the ground (we see saliva).
► Jack-O-Lanterns are shown with flames burning inside them accompanying opening credits. A man opens a tackle box in the back of his car and we see several guns that he hands to other people.

Halloween Kills LANGUAGE 8

 – About 34 F-words and its derivatives, 1 obscene hand gesture, 15 scatological terms, 5 anatomical terms, 13 mild obscenities, name-calling (easy kill, bad guy, weirdo, freaks, scrawny, vulgar, belly of the beast, honey, baby, crazy, sassy tackle, monsters, pervert, goblins, nut bag, cheap, madman, stalker, dummy, creeps, bogeyman, inappropriate, paranoid), 6 religious profanities (GD), 7 religious exclamations (e.g. Jesus, oh my God, Christ, my God, oh God, Holy [scatological term deleted]). | profanity glossary |

Halloween Kills SUBSTANCE USE

 – A man smokes a marijuana cigarette in a couple of scenes, a man talks about another man selling him Peyote and that he never did drugs with the man after an incident (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details), a nurse prepares an injection of pain meds for a man in a hospital bed, and a woman says that she is “geeked out” on pain meds. People drink beer and champagne and cocktails in a bar scene, a man pours two glasses of wine, and a man drinks a glass of liquor.

Halloween Kills DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Fear, guilt, Halloween, murder, revenge, grief, mob mentality, regret, mental illness, obsession, good intentions.

Halloween Kills MESSAGE

 – Evil never really dies.