Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for Halloween Ends.Throughout David Gordon Green's entire new Halloween trilogy, we are regularly reminded that it has been forty years since Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney/Nick Castle) first came home. The 2018 reboot that followed decades of remakes and reboots would go on to embrace John Carpenter’s original vision. It’s a solid story with bits about grief and trauma sprinkled in, but more than anything, Green set out to make the truest sequel to the original. Its sequel, Halloween Kills, is a total cheesefest that ramps the goof factor up to eleven. Sure, the story beats are pretty ridiculous and its script goes from heavy McBridian comedy to overly pretentious monologues about hope, but it’s much more entertaining than many of the other sequels. Now, we’re thirteen movies deep. With all of this history taken into account, audiences have no reason to go into the newly released Halloween Ends expecting anything other than what we’ve always gotten. This is not the film we were marketed though, and that is something to be grateful for. Halloween Ends is easily the franchise’s most emotional movie yet, one that fans should embrace.
The film opens in a way that feels right for the franchise. Exactly one year after Kills, it’s Halloween night yet again, and an early 20s babysitter, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), is watching a bratty kid named Jeremy (Jaxon Goldenberg) while his parents go out to party. The way that everything plays out in the first few minutes feels deeply rooted in what has come before, even down to The Thing playing on TV. Things go bad after a prank by Jeremy goes wrong and Corey accidentally kills him. We are sent straight into the credits left scratching our heads and wondering what in the world this might have to do with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), but are quickly ushered into her storyline. This is when the familiar begins to fade. Haddonfield is in the worst shape that it’s ever been in. A montage detailing the town’s dark state puts the audience in the right headspace for what’s to come, showing people still reeling from the damage that Michael has inflicted. The killer has gone missing and people are anxiously anticipating his return at any moment. While everybody else is grieving, strangely enough, Laurie Strode has finally moved on and is enjoying life. Occasionally, her newfound optimism bursts when she is blamed by people across town for pushing Myers to act out in violence. It is this early point in the movie where Laurie and Corey’s stories show their similarities and things really take off.
Three years after the film’s opening, Corey’s life has spiraled out of control. Despite being cleared for the accident, the townspeople now treat him like a freak who got away with murder. Much like Laurie, he can’t go anywhere without being associated with his traumatic past. About twenty minutes in, now that audiences have been introduced to Corey’s current situation, and Laurie’s happiness is mostly reflected in private, Halloween Ends really shows its true colors. The film moves away from the series’ typical spooky-yet-fun charm and dives head first into the sobering and depressing. Now that Michael is nowhere to be found, the citizens of Haddonfield would rather point to anyone that they can and frame them as a monster, than try to move on.
No One Can Catch a Break
Throughout the film, Corey continues to run into highschoolers, adults, and even Jeremy’s mother (Candice Rose), all of whom will not let him outlive the film’s opening set piece. It would be one thing if Corey was a total jerk, but instead he’s a down-in-the-dumps bookworm who’s hung up his dreams of going to college for engineering and resorted to work at his family-owned junkyard. At home, his mother (Joanne Baron) is abusive, and his father (Rick Moose) half-heartedly does what he can for his son, but more than anything shows a total indifference to everything around him. He’s a character that has checked out from life, avoiding home whenever he can by staying late at the junkyard. The usual humor that David Gordon Green and Danny McBride have brought to this trilogy is absent from Corey’s scenes. There is never any levity; the audience is forced to soak in his state. Initially, you might think that his eventual romantic involvement with Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) would bring the film a greater sense of optimism. Soon after, Corey starts embracing his dark side, and you feel like absolutely nobody in Haddonfield will ever be able to overcome their bleakest hardships. By positioning Corey as an extremely down-on-his-luck protagonist-turned-villain, the filmmakers provide the saddest lead that any Halloween film has had by a long shot.
Like many slasher films, most of Ends’ easier scenes to watch come at the beginning when the audience is meeting or catching up with characters. Laurie enters the film writing a memoir, baking pies, and goofing around with Allyson. Life seems, for the most part, easier than it has been in a long time. Laurie’s dealings with her trauma comes to a head when she is leaving a grocery store and is blamed for having provoked Michael into his recent killings. This is done in the presence of an old neighbor (Diva Taylor) of Laurie’s that we saw get stabbed in the throat in Halloween Kills, now unable to speak. It’s a brutal scene in a way that the Halloween movies have not aspired to before. Laurie is made to feel guilty for the woman’s current position, as well as the death of her husband, topped off by not being able to name her old neighbor. After 43 years and a mostly surface level series of movies, it’s astounding to see such an emotionally charged scene pulled off so well. This is the same series where Michael Myers rams a shotgun through somebody’s body and pins them to a wall! It’s not that Halloween Ends is some sort of masterpiece in dramatic storytelling, but this parking lot scene works better than any of this recent trilogy’s ham-fisted serious moments. Where Green’s other Halloween films aim for drama by means of overly written monologues and themes that don’t work as well as they think, this new film keeps things simple. No matter how well she is doing, Laurie cannot escape her past. And even when it seems that a good match for Allyson has come along, things have to take a turn for the worst, eventually leading back to The Shape himself.
A Slasher at Heart
As the film moves further along in its plot, its slasher elements begin to become more prominent. Whether Corey is teaming up with Michael, leading people to him, or taking matters into his own hands, the fallen protagonist starts picking people off that have either hurt or gotten in the way of both Allyson and himself. These recent Halloween movies have all been pretty savage in their kill scenes, but there’s still usually that blockbuster slasher sensibility at play that keeps you cringing in fear and laughing in shock. Here, almost any time that Corey kills somebody, it’s just a humongous downer. There’s no fun to be had. You just want to shake him and make him see the downward spiral that his life is heading towards. This feeling persists, only getting worse and worse until Michael eventually kills Corey. Soon after, Laurie and Allyson kill Michael and the town destroys his body in a car compactor. Having just sat through the most depressing Halloween movie yet, it would be hard to bring yourself to jump up in excitement over Michael’s ultimate demise, but it does make for a pretty cathartic ending. Michael might be at his most brutal in this trilogy, so it’s nice to see the iconic killer finally go down.
Almost all the Halloween movies are perfect for throwing on in the background while carving up jack-o-lanterns and getting in the October spirit. By and large, whether good or bad, they are fun movies that are spooky enough to build this month’s atmosphere, while not being so scary that they put a cloud over the rest of your day. Halloween Ends is the exception to that rule. This entire new trilogy has had ideas here and there about the ramifications of Michael Myers’ actions, but never before has this been the focus of an entire film. It’s a film that has much more in common thematically with a movie like Joker than it does something like The Curse of Michael Myers. So far, reactions have been split. It’s a real love-it-or-hate-it type of movie. Out of every franchise, Halloween fans have a greater reason than anyone to be more open-minded towards new entries that take such a huge, risky swing. Back in 1982, Carpenter and co. had the idea to ditch Michael Myers and make the series an anthology, with a new Halloween-themed Halloween movie to be released every year. This gamble resulted in the controversial Halloween III: Season of the Witch, a movie that people initially hated, but has since grown a massive cult-following and is a beloved October staple. Fast-forward to 2022 and Halloween Ends opens with credits in the Season of the Witch font. It’s a choice that all but confirms that Green had to know how divisive this final film would be.
Films in massive franchises that go for it as much as this one did should be encouraged. The more we get the same predictable movie, the more stale a series becomes, ultimately resulting in a total disinterest from fans and non-fans. That’s not what we want! A film within a genre series such as this that aims to make you feel more than the popcorn in your stomach should at least be respected. But like Season of the Witch and pretty much every other Halloween film, time will likely be on this film’s side, one bound to grow a cult following in the years to come. In the meantime, for those that did not like the film and are worried about Ends truly being the last film in the series, take two seconds to think about it. Much like his own franchise, just when you thought it was all over, did you ever really think that Michael was dead?