After watching this film I needed a good 24 hours to process what I had watched before getting too critical and writing this. I love the Halloween franchise. Sure, like any of the horror franchises there are some duds, but it doesn’t take away the fun these films can bring, especially during the month of October. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is definitely an icon of horror and for many will be seen as the genres ultimate “Final Girl”, so when Curtis said that Halloween Ends was really going to be her last time stepping into the role of Laurie Strode, well, it gave the film a bit more meaning for fans. It’s not just the end of the trilogy that director David Gordon Green kicked off in 2018, but this film is the final chapter of Laurie Strode, the babysitter horror fans first fell in love with back in 1978 with John Carpenter’s Halloween. You look at the trailers for this new film and you think that this third installment is going to be the final showdown between Michael Myers and Laurie Strode we’ve all waited for, a film that could possibly end this franchise on a high note. Even I was optimistic. Halloween (2018) was a fun reboot of the franchise and made Michael Myers a brutal force to be reckoned with, and Halloween Kills in my opinion was a great follow-up on how dangerous things can get when a town is in a panic. So how does it all end? In a spectacular failure, if I’m being honest.
The film opens up on Halloween night in Haddonfield in 2019, a year after the events of Halloween Kills. Corey (Rohan Campbell) is going to be spending his night babysitting. It should come as no surprise that things don’t go as planned and the night ends in tragedy. The opening definitely subverts expectations, which is fine at first, but this was honestly the first clue that things were not going to go as expected with this film. The film then jumps ahead four years, and Haddonfield continues to be haunted by the ghost of Michael Myers since that tragic night back in 2018. Well, except Laurie; this film gives us a Laurie we haven’t seen before, at least not since her friends died back in 1978. She’s actually happy, and she’s moved on from the past and has taken on the role of the parental figure to Allyson (Andi Matichak), who seems to be grieving the death of her parents fairly well, considering. The relationship between Laurie and Allyson is honestly my favorite aspect of this film, everything from Laurie trying to celebrate Halloween with her granddaughter, to Laurie attempting to set Allyson up on a date are kind of the sweet moments I didn’t realize I wanted till I saw them in the film. The chemistry just jumps off the screen with these “final girls” so much that I hope we’ll get to see another film with these actresses at some point.
Getting more into Corey, the town views him as sort of a psycho who somehow got away with murder, and he’s been forced to take on the role as a loner. The loner aspect makes him a prime target for ridicule, but also easy prey for bullies … cue the most absurd thing about this film …The bullies are high school band kids. I mean, in what bizarro world is Haddonfield in where the major town bullies are band geeks? (I say this with love, being a kid who was in band). Laurie rescues Corey from being bullied and for some reason decides Corey would be a perfect fit to date Allyson. Laurie’s actions are sweet, though a little absurd, but believe me that is easy to overlook when considering the rest of the film. The relationship between Corey and Allyson does make sense and does work over the course of the film, but it doesn’t belong in a film called Halloween Ends. When you pair it next to the previous two films this storyline feels off, and most importantly you’ll be asking yourself just where the hell is Michael during all this? While I’m not going to spoil it, all I’ll say is it is a bit underwhelming.
Where this film really goes off the rails is when Corey encounters Michael and manages to survive his encounter. His survival ignites a change in Corey where he seems to be becoming Michael Myers. The only person who seems to see this change is Laurie. At this point I feel like the movie becomes more so a spiritual sequel to John Carpenter’s Christine than anything in the Halloween series. Everything from the outcast kid becoming a badass, instead of a beat up car he gets a beat up motorcycle that he fixes up at an auto junk yard, and there are more comparisons, but that also gets into spoiler territory. Remember how in Halloween Kills how Michael seemed to always be looking out the window to the radio tower? Well, we get to the radio station in this film, but if you want answers to how it connects to Michael, well, sorry to disappoint, though I was excited that a scene at the radio station had a cameo of Darcy “The Mail Girl” from the Joe Bob Briggs & The Last Drive-In.
There is a lot going on in this film and most of it has nothing to do with the previous two films. It’s one thing to subvert expectations and it’s another to promise the audience one film and never deliver on that promise. By the time Michael Myers does decide to make an appearance and things finally start to feel like a Halloween film I was simply too
annoyed to care. This is a film that should have been either part 2 or part 4 as a way to relaunch the series, not as a way to wrap it up. If this was called anything else but Halloween Ends I would have liked it more but when this was marketed as the final showdown between Laurie and Michael Myers that’s what I came to the theater to see and they barely delivered, seriously the final 15 minutes feel like an after thought not the momentous occasion we anticipated.
Maybe it’s because the film had such a quick turnaround that it just falls flat. The script just didn’t work, and it seems like it wanted to just be a different movie than what it was intended to be. Even the cinematography just felt a little flat this time around. Honestly I felt this one didn’t even have a quality jump scare. I still feel the biggest crime is just how poorly Michael Myers was treated in this film.
If you wanted to see Michael Myers at his most vicious, if you wanted answers to why Michael is the way he is, if you wanted an explanation to the meaning behind the shape, or if you just simply wanted a fun and exciting conclusion to this franchise you’ve stuck with for all these years, you will be disappointed. If Jamie Lee Curtis never comes back to play Laurie, I’m fine with that, I appreciate what she did with the role, but for the love of Samhain, this can not be how the franchise ends. Thankfully this is a successful series, and studios will never object to the chance to make more money, but Michael Myers deserves a better end.
