Worth: $6.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak, Rohan Campbell, James Jude Courtney, Will Patton, Kyle Richards
Intro:
… a half baked, half arsed waste of time and a rotten way to conclude a beloved, if beleaguered, franchise.
When Halloween (2018) released, it felt like a dose of new blood was being injected into the much abused franchise. Director David Gordon Green’s insistence that it was a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s iconic 1978 original (effectively removing the many sequels that followed from continuity), certainly raised eyebrows, but it was hard to argue with the slick direction, effective tension building and stellar central performance from Jamie Lee Curtis who wanted to give her iconic Laurie Strode character a proper send off (one without an assist from Busta Rhymes like 2002’s regrettable Halloween: Resurrection).
The film was a huge hit, with both audiences and critics alike, and so the legacy sequel became a legacy trilogy, which was an odd choice, but hey, with a starting point this strong what could possibly go wrong?
Answering that question with an emphatic “quite a bit, actually” was 2021’s Halloween Kills, a messy bitch of a sequel that inexplicably sidelined Laurie Strode for most of the run time in favour of a rather tortured narrative involving the citizens of Haddonfield rising up and trying to kill their Shatner-masked oppressor, Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney). It was a tonally inconsistent, inessential middle chapter of a film that just managed to scrape by, by providing a lot of creative gore and fitfully entertaining moments of humour. But make no mistake, it was a mess. Still, we ever hopeful horror fans reasoned, they’ll get it together for the finale. They certainly wouldn’t muck up the final round between Michael Myers and Laurie Strode, right?
Right?
Well, Halloween Ends is finally here, and the third entry of this retconned trilogy is not only the worst of the three by a fairly huge margin, it is also one of the entire series’ weakest entries. And friends, that’s saying something. Because if Halloween Kills asked “would you enjoy a Halloween movie without Laurie Strode?”, then Halloween Ends asks “how about one with fuck all Michael Myers?”
Halloween Ends takes place four years after the events of Halloween and Halloween Kills. Laurie Strode and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) are still living in Haddonfield, trying their best to move on with their lives and actually be happy. Hell, Laurie is writing a book about everything that’s happened and it appears to be helping her work through the trauma. And what of Michael Myers? There hasn’t been a peep. Joining this cast of characters is Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a troubled young man who was responsible for a child’s death in a terrible accident that took place in 2019 and consequently is the town pariah. Laurie somewhat inexplicably thinks the young man will be a good match for Allyson and introduces the pair, but what happens next is… well, we’ll try to tread lightly but some STUFF happens that features one of the Halloween series’ most bizarre, leftfield ideas and it doesn’t work at all. Like, not even a little bit. Point of fact, it’s a shocker.
Now, it’s not like the Halloween franchise is unfamiliar with big weird swings. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) was about a pagan cult using Halloween masks to turn children into piles of insects and snakes. Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (2009) prominently features heavy handed white horse imagery to represent… um, something? And Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) posited that Michael was the creation of a Druid curse. So, you know, this series has seen some bullshit.
However, what Halloween Ends pulls – and we’ll stay vague to avoid spoilers – is so awkward, unmotivated and heavy-handed it almost defies belief. The notion that evil and violence have a quasi-spiritual influence on otherwise innocent people was dealt with a bit dubiously in Halloween Kills, but here it takes on a far more literal dimension and results in a film that never seems to quite know what it is. What’s worse is that this new wrinkle that no one was asking for takes up the lion’s share of the runtime, making the central conflict of Laurie vs. Michael feel like an afterthought that’s dealt with in an almost insultingly perfunctory way.
Worse still, the tone has gone full bull goose loony, with every single character screamingly over-the-top and unpleasant. Sure, Halloween (2018) and Halloween Kills had some broad comic moments with various side characters, but in Halloween Ends, we’re forced to endure a cavalcade of gurning sideshow freaks, capering and gibbering like manic fiends from a circa 1970s anti drug PSA.
Amidst this sanity-badgering tsunami of grotesques, Jamie Lee Curtis and Andi Matichak do solid work as the last vestiges of their family, and Rohan Campbell is clearly a fine actor. The problem is, all three characters are forced to act in bizarre, senseless ways in service of a premise that barely achieves coherence and is eventually left behind like a guilty train fart.
It truly hurts to write these words, but Halloween Ends is a half baked, half arsed waste of time and a rotten way to conclude a beloved, if beleaguered, franchise. You’re probably going to watch it anyway, which is totally understandable, but maybe afterwards we could all just agree to ignore Halloween Kills and this and pretend the story ended on that surprisingly strong note back in 2018.
