Halloween Ends - Review Thread

The criticisms of this movie remind me of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Both (presumably) feel like the writers were shooting from the hip when anyone would think 'wait, if you were going to write a self-contained trilogy wouldn't you write THE TRILOGY and not one installment completely separate from another with no plan for the next film?' Which is what they admit to doing with Star Wars and what it sounds like they did here.

Halloween Ends(10/14/2022)
Following the success of David Gordon Green’s blockbuster 2018 Halloween reboot Blumhouse issued a press release that announced that there would be two sequels made, one called Halloween Kills and another that would boldly be called Halloween Ends, which would act as a definitive ending. I personally wasn’t the biggest fan of that initial Halloween reboot to begin with but this “back to back” sequel announcement intrigued me, it made it seem like they had some kind of master plan. Then Halloween Kills kind of came and went, I kind of liked it out of a mixture of low expectations and just appreciation for the filmmaking, but critics mostly saw it as a shallow exercise and I don’t necessarily disagree with that. One year later and now we get the final movie of this trilogy and it… is not what I think anyone was expecting. You won’t see much of anything about this in the film’s kind of misleading trailers, but the movie actually revolves in large part around a character (who had not been introduced in either of the previous films) named Corey Cunningham played by Rohan Campbell; a guy in his twenties who has become a town pariah after he’s involved in an accident that leaves a child dead. Corey has a chance encounter with Michael Myers (who is hiding in the sewers and seems a shell of his former self) and the two form some kind of psychic bond and Myers’ murderousness seems to transfer into Corey.

Needless to say this is not what most people are expecting from this movie, and I think some people are going to be downright angry about it. If David Gordon Green had a master plan for this trilogy at all I highly doubt that this one stuck to that script because it doesn’t feel like it’s part and parcel with the previous movies at all and actively contradicts them in some ways, almost like they originally wanted things to end with Kills but got some studio mandate to make a third film and scrabbled to come up with this idea. In a lot of ways this is sort of a subversion of how these kinds of trilogies usually function. Usually it’s the second film where people try to test out new ideas and the third movie where they go back to what they know works in order to cruise to an audience pleasing finale but this seemed to do the opposite. I don’t want to be the guy who lashes out at a franchise for trying something different instead of just making a cookie cutter sequel but… they just don’t pull this off. This character comes out of nowhere, the actor doesn’t do much with him and his connection with Myers seems rooted in some weird mysticism that’s unclear and doesn’t fit with much of how Myers has functioned in this series. The film also probably isn’t going to appeal that much to people who just want their scares and their gore; there are some kills here but it’s kind of tame compared to the last two films. Jamie Lee Curtis is back and the film tries to give her character some closure, but it doesn’t really do so in a way that’s all that novel or interesting really. That’s not to say that the movie is completely unenjoyable, I was mostly sticking with it, but I don’t understand what they were going for and they certainly didn’t make it work.
** out of Five

Spoilers for Kills and Ends throughout:


I'm looking forward to the eventual behind-the-scenes story on the modern Halloween movies because, despite being made by largely the same creative time basically back-to-back, this trilogy does not hold together at all. Halloween (2018) was a fairly self-contained soft reboot, one that certainly left things open for a potential sequel (like most slashers do) but it did not feel like a "Part One". Halloween Kills stumbled as a direct follow-up with little to follow up on, but it did provide a much clearer hook for the end of the trilogy, with Michael killing Laurie's daughter, Karen, and Laurie swearing she will hunt down Myers herself. And now we come to Halloween Ends, which ignores that cliffhanger entirely, along with most of what happened in Kills apart from the fact that Karen is indeed still dead.

To be clear, I'm not complaining that Halloween Ends doesn't address the loose plot threads of the last movie. I thought Halloween Kills sucked and I certainly wasn't clamoring to see a feature-length showdown between Michael and Laurie again, I just find it interesting how incohesive these three movies are and I'm genuinely curious to know why. As for the film itself, the focus has shifted pretty abruptly to a new character named Corey Cunningham, a young man whose become a pariah in Haddonfield after being involved in the accidental death of a child. Corey starts to bond with Laurie's granddaughter Allyson over their shared trauma and sense of outsiderness, but no sooner does Corey encounter a weakened Michael Myers, whose evil begins to transfer into Corey. That's a neat idea that both taps into the series roots while also expanding, but I don't think the film ever really pulls it off. Both the script and Rohan Campbell's performance are a little too one-note and I would have liked to see more torment or complexity in the face of his transformation. I also never fully bought Corey and Allyson's relationship, which needed more time to breathe and develop.

Despite these reservations, I was at least intrigued by where Halloween Ends was going, and the third act starts off very well, with a really strong set-piece which firmly establishes Corey's shift into being the new vessel for Michael's evil. But then, Corey just kills himself, and while the movie does briefly tease the possibility of conflict between Allyson and Laurie, that pretty quickly fizzles as Halloween Ends conclude with yet another final battle between Laurie and Michael. What was the point of building up this new character and concept all movie if you were just gonna throw him away and go back to basics? Why not at least see this idea through to the end? The climax we do get feels completely random for this movie, and even if it didn't, it's still a lesser retread of what Halloween (2018) and H20 did. The power of longtime enemies finally squaring off really starts to waver when they don't stop squaring off.

So in sum, what is there to say about Halloween Ends? Well, it has a new idea, which doesn't fully work but is at least interesting, until the end when it isn't. There is a part of me that wants to get behind this movie for taking a chance, but it's hard to do so when the film cops out so hard in its final moments. I'm not sure if studio interference forced a Strode vs. Myers climax because "it's what fans want", but in trying to split the difference between fan service and experimentation, the movie fails to do either. That's not to say it's an unpleasant watch, exactly. There are a couple of good scenes and the film is at least engaging in the moment, but like the trilogy as a whole, Halloween Ends does not hold together.

D+

I'll buy the rights just so that no more of these movies can be made.

But... but... but... Halloween ended. It was right in the title that it "ends." Did... did they lie to us?

No one's ever really gone.