Being Film #30 for Hooptober 2022
And so at last we come to the end of Michael Myers. No more will we have to deal with his nasty shenanigans, as I am sure this is without a doubt the definitive end of this storied franchise. HA! I kid – where there’s money to be made a reboot can’t be far behind. But Halloween Ends is certainly the end of what David Gordon Green wanted to explore with his trilogy of films following up John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, and despite some weird gaps and logic breaks from his earlier films, I really admired the huge swings the film takes to makes it (beaten to death) point, and came away sheepishly admitting I liked it.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: It’s been five years. No one in Haddonfield has seen The Shape since the events of the previous film, and Laurie Strode along with her granddaughter Allyson are trying to move on with their lives. The town, though, has other plans and if they can’t direct their venom at Michael Myers, they’ll find other targets, among them young Corey, who accidentally killed a young child while babysitting on Halloween Night four years previously. That event, and the town’s explosive PTSD trigger an evil long thought gone, and before you know it Laurie, Allyson, and Corey are drawn into a horrific night of terror…one more time.
***HERE THERE BE SPOILERS, SO BEWARE***
I understand this is a divisive film, in that for much of the runtime the horror isn’t Michael, but Corey, who after being bullied and harassed for so long finally breaks and after a crazy sequence where he discovers Myers has been in hiding in a sewer tunnel all this time becomes somewhat of a protege for the legendary shape, even going so far as to adopt his own mask. So you still have your grotesque kills, your lumbering silent killer…is it just that it’s a different person?
I don’t get that. It’s been clear since Green’s 2018 Halloween that we were taking a journey starting with how the events of the original traumatize the characters years later, and then in the (to me) lackluster Halloween Kills how that evil seeps into the town itself. It feels natural to conclude with that evil coming full circle and starting the cycle again. The violence and inventive kills are still there, and in fact I’ll go so far as to say with the hilarious DJ scene (featuring everyone’s favorite beautiful horror co-host Darcy the Mail Girl) we have the best kill in the trilogy. And Rohan Campbell’s portrayal of Corey is fantastic, showing someone whose entire life inevitably led to the path he arrives at.
If there’s somewhat short shrift paid to the actual Michael Myers and Laurie Strode, it’s because really the story is no longer there. Nothing is really left to show or tell, except to ultimately end it. Ad we get that ending, pretty definitively. The actual climactic fight itself is just okay: I’m still trying to reconcile Laurie’s abrupt suicide ploy, which makes no sense. Neither does her weird whiplash from being the person who brings Corey and Allyson together to suddenly deciding nope: he’s pure evil and needs to stay away. There’s also the continuing issue of Michael Myer’s varying power level – he’s as strong as he needs to be for any given scene, meaning that sure, he can lift a fully grown woman up with one hand and then pin to her to the wall with a steak knife, but can’t push a refrigerator off of during his fight with Laurie.
But I’m nit-picking here. Horror has the advantage of being able to suspend logic provided the tone and mood are upheld. I’ve seen a lot of lesser films held up as brilliant simply for being excessively violent and gory when they absolutely no sense and look like garbage. Halloween Ends looks fantastic, has some really fun kills, and manages in its weird and offbeat way to keep some thematic consistency with Green’s previous entries in the series.
All that and we do get a hilariously over the top ending where we see Michael Myers finally put to rest. For that alone I have to give Halloween Ends an enthusiastic thumbs up.
Cinema Dual 
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