Halloween Kills sees Michael Myers rampaging his way across Haddonfield - and it's essentially Dr. Loomis' biggest nightmare come to life. When horror luminary Christopher Lee passed on the role, Donald Pleasence was famously hired to loan some star power to Halloween's low-budget horror movie. Pleasence was cast as Dr. Sam Loomis, the psychiatrist to Michael Myers, who believes his patient is evil incarnate and tries to keep him locked away. When Michael escapes, Loomis follows him to his hometown of Haddonfield, desperate to stop what he knows will be a bloodbath.
Donald Pleasence loaned a gravitas to Dr. Loomis that helped ground Halloween, with the character soon becoming the de-facto Van Helsing figure of the franchise. Pleasence would return for Halloween 2, 4, 5 and 6, with the latter being one of his final movies before his passing in 1995. When Rob Zombie rebooted the Halloween franchise with his 2007 remake, he cast the irrepressible Malcolm McDowell in the role. His portrait of Loomis was more sleazy, detailing an opportunistic character who, nonetheless, still feels affection for Michael and genuinely tries to help him.
Halloween 2018 may have been the eleventh film in the series, but its ambitious rebooting of the franchise ignored every other entry bar the 1978 original. That means no actors were hired to step in and replace the irreplaceable Donald Pleasence in the role. Halloween Kills' story picks up from the ending of the previous entry, with Michael escaping the fiery deathtrap Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) set for him and massacring his way through the town. It's probably a good thing Dr. Loomis isn't alive to see this particular Halloween night, as it's everything he feared.
Loomis recounts in the original Halloween that he spent years trying to psychologically reach a young Michael Myers before investing just as much time trying to keep him locked away after realizing Myers was "pure evil." None of Loomis' colleagues take these fears seriously, leading to Michael's eventual escape and the massacre of several innocents before his capture, as told by Halloween 2018. In the now non-canon Halloween 2 to 6, Loomis is forced live through several grueling Michael Myers massacres, with each one compounding his personal sense of failure.
Halloween Kills unequivocally holds the biggest body count of the whole franchise, with the film's iconic fire-fighting scene just the tip of the iceberg. Given that Michael already killed around seventeen people in the previous sequel, Halloween Kills doubles down on Myers' brutality and delivers a hatful of murders that dwarf all of his past killing sprees combined. Myers' unstoppable rampage in Halloween Kills confirms Dr. Loomis' worst fears about his ethereal patient come to life, as Myers blows through Haddonfield like a hurricane and leaves a trail of bodies and destruction in his wake. Like Loomis stated in the original Halloween, "Death" has come to town, but in Halloween Kills' case, everyone - even Laurie - is ultimately powerless to stop it.
