Universal Pictures
It’s been 44 years now since we first visited the town of Haddonfield and met Laurie Strode, Michael Myers, Dr. Loomis, Lindsey, et al. And over those past four-and-a-half decades, there have been countless sequels (well, you can count them), one reboot, and now this three-part revival and basically ignored everything that came between 2018’s Halloween and the 1978 original. The first film in this trilogy was decent enough, and smart enough to cash in on the nostalgia of the original. The second, Halloween Kills, was a mess and gave us too little of Laurie while sacrificing beloved characters who returned from 1978. And now we have the concluding chapter, Halloween Ends, and it is already dividing the fandom. So is it as terrible as some would have you believe, or is it one of the best of the series as some would have you believe?
Halloween Ends picks up some time after Halloween Kills as Laurie and her granddaughter have moved out of their cabin the woods and back into Haddonfield society, no longer willing to be afraid of the boogeyman. Life back among the living isn’t the best because everyone in Haddonfield holds Laurie responsible for the actions of Michael Myers, so try as she might to fit in, it seems the life of a reclusive writer is what she’s best suited for (yes, she is writing a book about her experiences with The Shape). Granddaughter Allyson works at a medical clinic and is eying a promotion, unwilling to leave the town that holds all of her memories. Enter young man Corey, an awkward 21-year-old who seems to be mentally much younger, but he’s actually a severe introvert who ends up being bullied verbally and physically by a group of teenagers, not to mention the amount of abuse he experiences at home courtesy of his mother (his henpecked dad does nothing to stop her). After being assaulted by the teens at a convenience store, witnessed by Laurie, she tries to help the young man but he goes on his way.
A chance meeting with Allyson, and he notices her muffler is rattling and it’s an easy fix he can take car of at his father body shop/junk yard. Corey is drawn in by Laurie and Allyson, the only two people in town who have experienced the amount of trauma he has. While Laurie is infamous as the one babysitter Michael Myers failed to kill, Corey is even more infamous as the babysitter who killed a child in his care. It doesn’t matter that the kid was bullying Corey, and that his death was a result of him locking Corey in a dark room and taunting him by invoking the name of Michael Myers, which caused Corey to panic and kick the door open, hitting the brat and knocking him over the railing, falling who knows how many floors down, landing right in front of his parents as they opened the front door … Corey is just the freak who killed that kid. And after another encounter with the teens that leaves him being tossed off a bridge, only to be dragged into a sewer pipe, it’s there he wakes up and encounters Michael Myers. Nearly killing the boy, Michael sees something in the kid’s eyes, something familiar, and he allows him to leave. But the encounter with the town boogeyman has empowered Corey, who almost immediately becomes a different, more bold, more violent person, which frightens Laurie and makes him even more attractive to Allyson. Corey becomes Michael’s protege, with the pair going on a killing spree, culminating on the one night the people of Haddonfield dread the most — Halloween — in the home of Laurie Stroud. And only one of them is coming out of it alive.
So, I’m going to state what seems to be an unpopular opinion — but I didn’t hate it. It certainly wasn’t what I was expecting and maybe that’s for the better. I also did not expect the final film in the franchise (yeah, sure) to introduce this new character and make him the focal point of the film — not bringing Michael into the picture until 40 minutes in, with no kills until nearly an hour into the film’s 1 hour 50 minute run time — but they also did not leave Jamie Lee Curtis hanging out to dry like they did with Halloween Kills. This Laurie is a more mature, more realistic person, just living her life, trying to manage the animosity from the town, and basically giving them all a big ‘fuck you’. The fact that she’s channeled her experiences and emotions into a book has certainly helped her cope, and living with Allyson has also been a help even if they are a bit too co-dependent on each other (Allyson won’t even go to a Halloween party if she’s going alone). So the arrival of Corey into their lives seems like a step in the right direction. Laurie can help him cope with being a town pariah, and he can be the one person who understands Allyson enough to enjoy a healthy relationship. But it isn’t that simple because Corey is damaged goods, suppressing the rage that has been building inside of him. Surviving his encounter with Michael Myers in the sewer only emboldens him, the simple touch, or perhaps the psychic connection between the two igniting a fire inside of Corey that he doesn’t want to put out. (And the film cleverly foreshadows Corey’s ‘possession’ by Michael Myers by showing him watching John Carpenter’s The Thing while babysitting that brat.) Laurie can see in Corey’s eyes after that encounter that he is no longer the meek person he was when they first met.
Curtis does a fine job here, making Laurie a fully rounded character who becomes that guy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers trying to warn Allyson and others that Corey is no longer Corey. Even the father of the dead kid Corey babysat saw it when he decided to talk to Corey. When Laurie heard this, she was certain that she was right, and perhaps Corey was going to pick up the mantle of Michael Myers (who apparently hadn’t been seen for four years). She really does give a good performance, and all of her years of playing Laurie finally come to a head in her final battle with Michael … which may take much too long for people who are seeing the film expecting a Godzilla vs Kong-style battle from beginning to end. Andi Matichak’s Allyson is a pretty thankless role because the character is just all over the place. She loves Haddonfield, she like Corey, she’s afraid of Corey, she likes Corey, she wants to burn Haddonfield to the ground with Corey, she can’t leave her grandmother. Matichak does what she can with the part but for me it just wasn’t written with much consistency. She was written for whatever mood the scene required. Will Patton returns, recovered from the last film, ready to learn Japanese and see the world all while obviously carrying a torch for Laurie. It’s cute but he really doesn’t have a lot to do. Sadly, neither does Kyle Richards returning as Lindsey. I really hoped she’d be given more to do as the lone survivor from the original cast outside of Laurie, but she just has a couple of scenes and I don’t even think I saw her in the final moments where everyone in town is gathered.
The real find here is Rohan Campbell as Corey. He really has to carry the film on his shoulders and he pulls it off. Rohan has been around for more than a decade with credits like Supernatural, The 100, iZombie and Snowpiercer, with his most notable credit being the role of Frank Hardy on Hulu’s The Hardy Boys, so it’s impressive that he’s been given such a major role, deftly switching from the awkward Kyle to the killer Kyle with some nice subtlety. He shows us that switch being flipped after his first encounter with Michael, but he manages reveal what’s going on inside over a gradual period of time, to the point that it’s almost too late for Allyson to notice because he’s managed to draw her in to his own madness. The film certainly speaks to how a person can be changed by trauma, how certain things can unleash long buried feelings. Allyson had to deal with seeing Michael Myers kill her mother, watch how the town treats her grandmother, and see someone undeserving get a promotion because she wasn’t willing to fuck her way into it. That’s a lot of anger to hold in. Corey, of course, has that anger as well, brought to a boil by the assault by the teens and more abuse from his mother, and when Allyson sees Corey stand up for her when her ex tries to barge in on their date at the diner, it kind of turns her on and seems to make her feel like she can finally release all of the anger she’s carried, even if it does mean ‘burning it all down’ (perhaps she didn’t mean literally but…). The character arc for Corey is the highlight of the film, and Campbell’s performance makes it all work … but this also makes Halloween Ends not the film most of the fans wanted (granted, they are a notoriously hard to please bunch, wanting something new then complaining that things have strayed too far from what they expect). It certainly was a huge risk for David Gordon Green and company to take, and perhaps some time down the road people will be able to go back and watch all three films together and reassess the story arc. Heck, maybe even Halloween Kills will seem like a better film without a year between it and Halloween Ends.
Green has directed the film more like a psychological thriller, more Hitchcockian in nature, building suspense and character without resulting to cheap scares and loud music cues to make you jump. Green also throws the audience a nice little wink, not letting people forget this is essentially his ‘Halloween III’, by using the font and color of the opening titles from Halloween III: Season of the Witch for the opening titles. (There’s a nifty collection of Jack-O-Lanterns in the opening credits that I want to say are all of the pumpkins used in all of the previous Halloween movie opening credits.) I think I am appreciating the film the more that I think about it, and maybe those who are ripping it to shreds now will also give it a chance at some point. The question now is — is this really the end? It certainly is for some of the characters, but a line in Laurie’s book that says ‘evil never dies, it just takes a new shape’ (get it — Michael Myers is always billed as The Shape in the credits) might seem to suggest we could see more films the series. Or perhaps Green and friends will finally carry out Carpenter’s wishes with a new ‘Halloween’ film every year or two that only carries the title Halloween like Carpenter attempted with his third film in the series. Only time — and box office returns — will tell.
Halloween Ends 1 hour 51 minutes, and is rated R for bloody horror violence and gore, language throughout and some sexual references.
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