Halloween Ends (2022)

5/10

Why, you may ask, would I watch Halloween Ends after slamming Halloween Kills, the middle chapter of David Gordon Green’s revival trilogy? The main answer is because I wanted to watch a Halloween-themed horror movie—which usually means a Halloween movie—and this was the only choice that jumped out from the streaming services I subscribe to. It was either this, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, or Rob Zombie’s 2007 reboot.

There’s also the sunk cost fallacy. When you’ve watched the first two movies in a trilogy, there’s a feeling you’ve invested so much time, you might as well see how it ends. That’s exactly what happened for me with the Hobbit trilogy, which by the third movie felt more like an obligation than anything. Meanwhile, my favourite YouTube reviewers have all given their takes on Halloween Ends. You win this round, Green. But I have no intention of seeing Exorcist: Believer, so good luck with your next trilogy milking and rehashing another classic ’70s horror film.

It took me two tries to watch Halloween Ends. Initially, I had no interest, for reasons I’ve stated before. The first Halloween was a perfect self-contained movie and didn’t need a sequel. I maintain that Halloween III: Season of the Witch is easily the best Halloween sequel because it tried to do something different. Still, admittedly, the reason I keep coming back to this series is because there’s a primal appeal in seeing Michael Myers stalk and kill people on Halloween night. John Carpenter virtually invented the slasher genre with his original Halloween, and no matter how many times they go back to the well, seeing Michael at work retains a horrific fascination.

How odd it is, then, that Halloween Ends features relatively little of Michael. The opening scene presents us instead with Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a 21-year-old babysitter whose role in the accidental death of a child leaves him a pariah in the town of Haddonfield, Ill. The opening sequence is actually phenomenal, visualizing the worst nightmare of any parent, and would work as a short film. A movie entirely focused on Corey could have been interesting. As with I Know What You Did Last Summer, there’s stomach-turning drama in a young person ruining their life by accidentally killing someone.

The problem is this also has to be a Halloween movie. It feels like a bait-and-switch, because little of the marketing for Halloween Ends mentioned Corey at all. The film was sold as the epic conclusion of the fight between Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her arch-nemesis Michael. The first time I tried watching Ends, I turned it off at the 13:12 mark. Not only had I only fallen into the trap of another Halloween sequel, but the movie felt like it had promised one thing and was offering another. If you want to make a movie about an ill-fated babysitter named Corey Cunningham, do that. If you want to make a Halloween sequel that ties up the story of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, do that. But don’t try to mash them together, because the result won’t do either concept justice (shades of Friday the 13th Part VIII in that regard).

Eventually, I sat down and watched the rest of Halloween Ends. To my surprise, I liked it more than I thought I would. It’s certainly a step up from Halloween Kills. The tale of Corey is often compelling. Where Jamie Lee Curtis spent most of Kills in a hospital bed and away from the action, Halloween Ends manages to be her movie, even with much of the focus on Corey. It was a baffling decision of the filmmakers to end Kills with the death of Laurie’s daughter and Michael Myers on the loose, then skip forward three years with Michael having simply “disappeared”.

Maybe the most interesting thing about Halloween Ends is to what degree this is a horror film told from the perspective of an older woman and a grandmother. It’s pretty rare for an actress in her 60s to be headlining a big horror franchise. At a time when action movies about old dudes like Liam Neeson kicking ass have become their own subgenre, Curtis is perhaps the only example of a woman in a similar role. Action heroes in movies tend to represent some level of wish fulfillment or power fantasy. In Halloween Ends, Laurie is an ass-kicking grandma whose warnings, whether about Michael Myers or the boy her granddaughter is dating, are invariably proven right. Laurie also has a bit of a romance with Deputy Frank Hawkins (Will Patton).

The main romance, though, is between Corey and Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson Nelson (Andi Matichak). It’s a mixed bag. I’ll allow that these two might feel drawn together out of a shared feeling of being outcasts, at least in the film’s presentation. But I never really bought that Laurie Strode, famously traumatized by mass murderer Michael Myers, would go out of her way to play matchmaker for her granddaughter and a young man who is the town pariah because of his connection to the death of a child. That’s a stretch, especially given how the first two films in this trilogy went out of their way to portray Laurie as overly paranoid and cautious.

When Michael finally appears, nothing about it makes much sense. After being thrown off a bridge by high school marching band bullies—I still can’t believe that’s a thing in this film—Corey is dragged into a sewer by Michael, who it turns out has been living there for the last three years. How was Michael able to survive in a sewer for three years? What did he eat? If Michael is a supernatural being, the films haven’t given us enough evidence to draw that conclusion, other than vague assertions about Michael being the personification of evil. I find it hard to believe that a man in his 60s or 70s who has spent three years living in a sewer would be strong enough to overpower a young man in his early 20s.

For no reason, Michael—who tends to kill anyone in his path—lets Corey go. That’s when Corey starts killing people himself. It’s implied that Corey has become “infected” by Michael’s evil. Really, it’s a lot of muddled nonsense that happens only because this is a Halloween film, and viewers expect to see Michael Myers. It seems like Green was more interested in the character of Corey at this point, in which case I ask: why start a trilogy of films focused on Laurie Strode if you’re going to lose interest in her and focus on a new character in the finale?

The main link between Corey and Laurie is that the latter grows increasingly concerned by her granddaughter dating the same man she encouraged to pair up with in the first place. Corey’s relationship with Allyson feels straight out of a feminist text on toxic masculinity. Despite Corey being involved in the death of a child—or perhaps precisely because he has a dark, mysterious past—Allyson feels drawn to him. That Corey is handsome in a nerdy way and drives a motorcycle doesn’t hurt. He’s a “bad boy”, and only gradually do Allyson and Laurie remember that “bad boys” tend to be, well, bad. True, Corey becomes that way in large part through rotten luck, and then being treated as a despised outcast by society. But by the time Corey says of Allyson, “If I can’t have her … no one will,” regardless of what drove him there, it’s clear this is an abusive man whose possessiveness makes him want to murder his girlfriend.

That line comes from an exchange between Laurie and Corey, where she says she wants to help him while warning him to stay away from her granddaughter:

Laurie Strode: You know, there are two kinds of evil. There's the evil that exists as an external force that threatens the well-being of the tribe. Survival depends on understanding and awareness and fear of physical threat to our daily lives. The other kind of evil lives inside of us. Like a sickness or an infection. It's more dangerous because we may not know we're infected.

Corey: Am I a bad person? Are you?

Laurie Strode: Well... we're both fucked up. I want to help you, Corey. Let me help you. Or let me find help for you. You can't have her. Allyson is not equipped for this relationship, and I will not let her get hurt. So stay the fuck away...

Corey: You started this! You brought me in! You invited me! But you're the one to blame. “You want to do it, or you want me to?” If I can't have her... no one will. You want to help Allyson? Let her live her life. She has me now. You should give in. You should surrender to that feeling you had the first time you ever looked into his eyes. You secretly hope Michael comes back for you. I'm the psycho. You're the freak show.

A theme of the movie seems to be that people can be drawn to evil. Characters repeatedly suggest that Laurie has some kind of subconscious attraction to Michael, which would parallel the relationship between Allyson and Corey. This sounds a lot like victim-blaming. In any case, when Michael and Laurie finally face off again, it ends as it always has: in a fight to the death.

Spoilers ahead.

The movie tries to develop these themes, but doesn’t pay them off in an interesting way. The best example is Corey’s end. Green has spent the bulk of the movie focusing on this character. Maybe Corey is being groomed as the new Michael Myers? After all, he seems to have some understanding with Michael, and dons the latter’s rubber mask to murder people. Both even have alliterative names. Given Michael’s advanced age in these movies, and the fact that the title of this movie is a blatant lie—of course they’re going to make more Halloween movies, because studios like making money—that would be one way to continue the series.

Except Corey’s fate ends up being that of any other slasher movie victim. Near the climax, Michael just kills him. So the finale ends up being yet another battle between Laurie and Michael. Is Green trying to say that Corey’s flirtation with evil led to his death? The moment still doesn’t leave any impact. My reaction was a big “meh”. Same with Michael’s death. How many times can you kill a character and then expect people to buy that they’re really, seriously dead this time?

At the end, Laurie and the good people of Haddonfield take Michael’s body to a salvage yard and dump it into an industrial shredder. Sure looks to me that Michael is dead, but that means nothing. Movie monsters always come back for more sequels. Ends only came out last year, yet Miramax has already landed the TV rights to Halloween and is planning to develop a series. If they make it an anthology series, which was Carpenter’s origin intention for the films, it might be worthwhile. But I can’t imagine watching a TV series centred around Michael Myers. There’s nothing new or interesting to do with this character or Laurie Strode. Even Halloween Ends implicitly acknowledges that by focusing so much on Corey.

I appreciate Halloween Ends for taking a different approach to this material, even if I would have preferred that the marketing reflect what the movie is actually about. It was nice to see a horror movie from a grandmother’s perspective, more so than even the 2018 film. John Carpenter’s music is great and iconic as always. The opening scene is memorable, and Corey has some interesting moments. But the movie suffers from trying to mash together an interesting original story with yet another Halloween sequel, and its themes end up confused and half-baked.

Still better than Halloween Kills though.