Halloween Ends
Jamie Lee Curtis fights bad writing and a killer in the lackluster Halloween Ends.
Evil doesn’t die tonight, but hopefully this franchise will.
Four years after Michael Myers escaped a mental institution and stalked the streets of Haddonfield, Illinois again, the town is still reeling in the aftershocks. Mob justice failed and Michael escaped into the night. Discouraged that they couldn’t defeat Michael, the town turned their ire to the woman who survived him twice, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).
Why does the town that rallied around the idea that Michael Myers was a great evil that needed to be put down by people wielding irons and baseball bats now blame Laurie for his crimes? Shut up, that’s why.
For her part, Laurie has tried to Eat, Pray, Love her way out of her trauma. Gone is the Sarah Connor-esque prepper who’s obsessed with killing Michael. Four years later, and with Michael (who killed her daughter in the last film) still in the wind, Laurie is decorating for Halloween, baking pies, and pushing her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) to go alone to a costume party. Laurie’s new obsession is moving on, and she offers up weird platitudes about grief and healing every time she opens her mouth.
…actually, maybe I do understand why the town’s annoyed with her.
But while everyone pretends they’re moving on, the evil that infected the town still looms large. People kill themselves every Halloween. Others are just more violent and mistrusting. Michael Myers lurks in every conversation. Which is why it’s pretty weird that the police and the town in general seem to not care about where Michael is.
But don’t worry, Michael’s still about, and he’s been reading Stephen King in his downtime! He’s now lurking in the sewers and dragging people into drainpipes like Pennywise the Clown. When he drags one unfortunate soul into the sewers, Michael decides not to kill them, because he sees evil potential.
Evidently, Michael is as obsessed with his legacy as the Halloween franchise is, and wants to build up the next generation of unstoppable killing machines. To wit, Michael decides to start up a murder internship for at-risk youths. Gone is the Laurie Strode obsessed maniac that can take a bullet and keep moving. Michael’s a mentor now, and needs to focus on that. He teaches his little protégé how to murder and stalk, content to take a supervisory role. And Michael is quite the mentor, his new minion flourishes, murdering half the town while Michael…checks his 401K?
Apparently, director David Gordon Green really dedicated himself to mimicking the original three Halloween movies (check out the fonts for the title cards if you need more proof): The first was promising, the second took place the same night with a drastic dip in quality, and the third features no Michael Myers at all.
That last bit is an exaggeration, but not by much. If you’re buying a ticket to watch Michael slash his way through Haddonfield, you might be upset to learn that Michael probably has 10 minutes of screen time in the whole movie and two kills. Unlike Halloween III Season of the Witch, Green doesn’t really offer us anything narratively different in Halloween Ends. Instead of a totally new story, Green is content to serve a rebranded New Coke version of Michael Myers when the people buying the tickets most definitely want Coke Classic.
For a franchise reboot that keeps beleaguering the point that these movies are all about Laurie vs Michael, Halloween Ends spends an awful lot of time on Allyson willfully ignoring red flags the size of Michael Myers and a new killer that absolutely no one cares about. By the time Laurie and Michael get to hash out their differences, it feels like a tacked-on end to a different film. The ending of 2018’s Halloween was much more narratively and viscerally satisfying.
That isn’t to say there’s nothing good about Halloween Ends. The opening of the film is brilliant. It sets the tone, has a gruesome kill, and delivers an unexpected twist. It would be a great short film, which would have spared us all from the 90 minutes of gobbledygook to follow. The kills in this movie are also gnarly and creative. If you choose to see this in a crowded theater, be prepared for screams and shouts when bodies drop. Green has a great sense of slasher gore, if only he had a coherent script to work with.
And that leads us to the real villains of the Halloween reboot trilogy: writers Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier, Danny McBride, and David Gordon Green. While the first film was brimming with potential, the writers have slid down into a pit of half-formed metaphors and downright stupidity that there was no escaping. Nothing makes sense. The police show up to hit on Laurie and her granddaughter, but seem absolutely non-existent throughout the rest of the film. The town hates Laurie because now they feel she taunted Michael, who was a murderer and escaped mental patient long before Laurie even crossed his path. Evil infected the town, except when it didn’t. The town has learned that mob justice is bad…unless it’s the ending of this film where the equivalent of a town hanging is held up as pinnacle of healing triumph. The writers even dip back into the utterly trash Rob Zombie Halloween remakes, to explore why sad homelives make people tragic murderers. Honestly this franchise would have been better off if it was just a supercut of the kills.
If you’re a completist, or just enjoy seeing scary movies for the kills, Halloween Ends might be a fun, superficial romp. But if you care about a satisfying ending for Laurie Strode, or Michael Myers, I’d recommend checking out Halloween: H20 or re-watching the 2018 film again and just pretending their were no sequels. Hopefully this franchise keeps its word, because after this mess, Halloween needs to end.
Verdict: Unless you’re a sucker for gore, or a sucker in general, I wouldn’t pay box office prices to see this unsatisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Stream it on Peacock if you must.
