Horror Movie Review: Helloween (2025)

Written and directed by Phil Claydon, Helloween is a film without an identity, desperately hoping that it can find one by aping other, more well known, films and acting like it has something smart to say. Imagine Halloween (1978) crossed with Joker (2019) except it’s Jared Leto’s Joker in the role and the fanbase is even more obnoxious.

There’s a decent premise here, but it’s a film that prefers to tease, resulting in it going absolutely nowhere.

Egregiously ripping off Halloween from the start, the film opens on Halloween night in 1996 where a young boy murders his support worker with an axe before going on rampage through the town. He was caught and incarcerated in a maximum-security prison. This is Carl Cane, aka Cane the Killer Clown, and under the care of Dr Ellen Marks (Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott), he has remained locked away for twenty years. Ten of which Dr Marks spent trying to understand him and ten of which she has spent making him suffer as she came to realise that he is pure evil.

Sounds familiar, right?

It’s been twenty years since Cane went on his rampage, Halloween is fast approaching, and across the UK, instances of creepy clown sightings have been reported. As October 31st gets closer, the sightings are become more commonplace and even though the authorities say there is nothing to worry about, it’s clear something is going on. Especially as these mysterious clowns are all wearing the same makeup as Cane.

It seems obvious that Cane (now played by Ronan Summers) is involved in co-ordinating these events and that something big is going to happen, but the question is how and what? It’s up to investigative reporter John Parker (Michael Paré) and Dr Marks to find out, but to do so, they’re going to have to play Cane’s game.

Which involves a lot of talking. A lot of talking.

Any sense of mystery is lost in a haze of meandering conversations that repeat over and over again, dialogue that is very pretentious, dark rooms lit by red lights, and slasher aspects that come far too late in an eighty-minute film. I found it a chore to get through, even if I can see talent within. Claydon is a decent director and wrings the most out of a nothing budget.

Ronan Summers is good as Cane, but his creep factor is diminished by his non-stop yammering on about how clever he is. By the end, I just wanted him to shut up. Sothcott has a go at being her own Dr Loomis and delivers plenty of passable scenes, whereas Paré isn’t exactly turning in a career best performance here.

For me, it’s not a great film and all because it lacks anything notable outside of its attempt to ‘pay homage’ to other properties.