Reviews
TRICKS ALL AROUND, NO TREATS: A Spoiler-Filled, King-Sized Review of ‘Halloween Ends’
For a point of reference on how baffled and taken aback I was by this movie: I, no joke, felt like I was dreaming this film up midway through the screening at my theatre. Regardless of whether you enjoy it or not, you will be captivated by this movie the whole way through. And that’s all there is to say that won’t spoil things. Skip to the bottom for my summary review and to avoid the
Why Halloween Ends Feels Disconnected
I’m not going to do my usual synoptic blurb I put at the front of my articles. Having to sum up Halloween Ends is a confusing task. The movie itself is a confusing question of whether a roadmap was made or not by Danny McBride and David Gordon Green following the triumphant ending of Halloween (2018) and the fun, but admittedly mindless roller coaster ride of Halloween Kills.
Ends makes little to no sense with the tracks laid by the first two films in the trilogy (quadrilogy, if you include the original ’78 film) and can only be described as a feverish script being performed by delirious actors, all filmed and edited by unsteady and shaking hands. In short: Michael’s mythical reveal of immortality at the end of the last movie is all but glossed over in favor of a plotline where he has to get his strength back through the murders committed by an ersatz of The Shape in the form of newcomer Corey Cunningham (played by Rohan Campbell).
I think?
Unclear Motivations and Michael Myers’ Role
I say I think because the movie, unlike previous dabblings into the occult with the likes of The Cult of Thorn, Halloween Ends never truly tries to explain how Michael’s newfound legend status power-up works, or really what the point of any of this is. If he’s fueled by the paranoia and fear of the citizens of Haddonfield, he should be operating at peak condition by the beginning of the film and slaughtering in droves. If he’s only fueled by Laurie’s personal demons and fear of him, he shouldn’t be able to lift a finger and should still firmly be in that sewer that Corey drags him out of to go on a vengeful, Punisher-esque series of kills to try and clean Haddonfield of evil people. If that is his goal, again, unclear. Because what does Michael even need any more than to finish his contractual obligation to be in this? His hatred of Laurie seems to be a fairly low priority, in a movie all about finishing their legendary feud.
Corey Cunningham: A Misguided Addition
Beyond the fact that they’ve given a dog-eating silent psychopath a partner in crime (which is a Halloween franchise sin if I could ever think of one), how Michael even goes about choosing Corey as a vessel for his evil influence doesn’t make any sense, as most of this film doesn’t: things simply happen until they don’t need to. Corey’s involuntary manslaughter of a child and being bullied by local teens somehow baptizes him in evil to become the apprentice of The Shape…until it isn’t enough, and Michael kills him. Relationships shift in this film on a dime, as do motivations and any general sense of direction as it tries to navigate to the promised clash that was all we really saw in the promotional material for this film.
The movie takes great actors and gives them a clammy, terribly written script to work with that turns all of their characters into buffoons whom all sound like Tim and Eric characters, or worse, true crime show hosts waxing philosophical about the nature of evil. Their dialogue and the placement of the scenes are so asynchronous to the movie’s pacing that it feels all too fast and all too slow all at the same time.
Allyson’s Wasted Potential
And so sadly, the biggest victim in Halloween Ends is one of its most promising characters. The movie, for some bizarre reason, discards the wonderfully charismatic Andi Matichak and Allyson with her. Allyson was a complex character who thanks to this film goes from the inheritor of a terrible burden, the burden of fighting off an immortal evil, a bearer of unfortunate and violent history, to being a side character in her own film. A woman with as little screen time as they could give her, who becomes the dawdling, flat love interest for the film’s newly introduced main antagonist. It’s vexing how shafted she gets by this screenplay.
I wish I could say on a technical level it redeems itself with some cool kills and gory effects, but it has three interesting ones out of a dozen or so forgettable murders that happen in this film, even if the rest are well-done practical effects. The camera work is nauseatingly bad, with random little zooms and distracting camera movement littered throughout it. The film doesn’t aesthetically fit with its sister entries, with lighting that feels overexposed. And beyond the cut-in montage of all the times Laurie and Michael have fought to remind you what is at stake here, the editing is nothing to write home about.
A Disappointing End to the Trilogy
When it tries something new, it flops face first into a pile of pumpkin guts at the expense of 2018 and Kills; when it attempts to evoke the old films, it helplessly fails at pulling your heartstrings. In the end, every person in Haddonfield follows a car with Michael Myers strapped to the hood, performing a sort of macabre 5k fun run for capital punishment before they toss his mutilated body into an industrial-sized car shredder in a junkyard. And really, is there a more appropriate metaphor for how this movie treats the potential of the films that precede it than that?
For the most part, the entire movie is a wheezing, asthmatic crawl to the finish line on the final third of the course. Halloween Ends is a true-blue disappointment. Its raisins, razor blade apples, and Necco wafers all in one bite. And while I encourage you to watch every movie I review and see how you feel about it yourself; I have to warn you that you will most likely be upset with this if you’re expecting a more thematically cohesive David Gordon-Green’s Halloween trilogy.
There are countless subgenres within subgenres for horror, and one that feels underutilized is workplace horror. Unless you’re one of the lucky few, most people wake up at some point during the day, go to work, and then come home. It’s one of the few things in life that’s nearly unavoidable. While there are countless real-life examples of workplace violence, seeing exaggerated forms of it in film can still be fun. When I pitched covering The Belko Experiment for this month, I actually thought I was pitching Joe Lynch’s Mayhem. I soon found out how incorrect I had been, but figured I’d go along with it anyway.
Mike Milch (John Gallagher Jr.) and 79 of his coworkers are locked inside the towering building they come to work in every day in Bogotá, Colombia. They’re given simple instructions: murder two coworkers within the next half hour. When they fail that task, coworkers’ heads start blowing up left and right. When they’re given the next task, kill 30 people in two hours, they take it…a little more seriously.
The Belko Experiment’s Brutal Premise Sets Up High Stakes
Written by James Gunn and directed by Wolf Creek creator Greg McLean, The Belko Experiment is a painfully by-the-numbers film that offers little more than a handful of entertaining kills. Its futile attempts at commentary regarding work/life balance or just how bad “faceless” upper management is fall so flat it’s comical. Nothing like multi-millionaire James Gunn telling me how awful it is to have to work a real job for a living. Great work. And its one-dimensional characters do little more than create a slight sigh of relief when they’re dispatched without regard.
A singular attempt at cleverness is broached from the beginning when we see a colony of ants in an ant farm on someone’s desk. Oh, look at that, these workers are nothing more than mindless ants! But any attempt at following that slightly clever idea is quickly thrown away. At one point, Barry Norris (Tony Goldwyn), the big boss in the office, attempts to group up who should and shouldn’t be killed; who has the most value outside of work. Gunn had the perfect opportunity to make Barry a deep and more sinister antagonist. If Barry had grouped people into sets from most to least profitable for the company, we would have something. It would show that Barry is a forward-thinking villain who is trying to suck up to the people who get paid even MORE than him!
Missed Opportunities for a Smarter Corporate Villain
I’ll do you one better. After all of that, what if the bad guys that Barry recruited to help him cull his subordinates realized they were just pawns in the game of Big Business? So then they attempt to repent by killing Barry in the hopes that they can find a common means of escape from this hell? Why is there zero attempt at making an interesting story other than this shitty, watered-down Battle Royale with people we don’t give a shit about? Instead of anything interesting, we’re just given a group of baddies who try to get into the security office’s gun safe. The only reason we’re slightly scared of the “bad guys” is because they’re bad guys.
The only slightly interesting performances we get are from David Dastmalchian and Adria Arjona, even if it might be a fluke. As someone who is a fan of Greg McLean and the Wolf Creek series, something just felt disconnected about nearly every aspect of The Belko Experiment. I’ve brought it up before that sometimes it’s okay to have a film that doesn’t tell a great story as long as the kills can carry some of the weight. But to say this film has a story is laughable, and that carries over to how flat this film looks.
Skip The Belko Experiment and Watch Mayhem Instead
It’s weird how sour this film left me. When I was watching it, I found myself grimacing at some of the kills. And I didn’t vehemently dislike it as much as this review would suggest. But as I sat there and thought longer, I just couldn’t wrap my head around what anyone sees in this. Mayhem is an all-around better film that tackles this same subject but in a much better way. So if you ever decide to sit down and watch The Belko Experiment, maybe go watch Mayhem on Shudder instead.
Would it be a month of coverage on Horror Press if I didn’t bring up at least one aughts film? I know the curator of all things Horror Press, James-Michael, is shaking his fists at the sky and cursing the fact that he approved me covering The Hitcher. Of all the remakes that were so pervasive throughout the aughts, The Hitcher is one that slipped completely under my radar. And that’s a damn shame. It wouldn’t be until I found a DVD copy at Bookoff that I finally got the opportunity to watch it. Hot damn, the critics really got it wrong here.
The Hitcher: A Road Trip Turned Nightmare
Jim Halsey (Zachary Knighton) and his girlfriend Grace Andrews (Sophia Bush) are on a road trip to Lake Havasu in Jim’s gorgeous Oldsmobile 442. An unfortunate run-in with a mysterious hitchhiker, John Ryder (Sean Bean), Jim and Grace find themselves in a fight for life and death. Only, John isn’t their only concern. With the 5-0 hot on their tails, Jim and Grace must escape from a psychopathic man with a death wish and the hot-tempered, hot-faced Lieutenant Esteridge (Neal McDonough). As the odometer grows, so does the body count.
The Hitcher is one of those remakes that does not have the approval of the original’s lead, Rutger Hauer. Which is astounding to me. Sure, the original is good. But it doesn’t set itself apart from the crowd too much. Rutger Hauer’s John is slightly more reserved, and while he has an edge to him, I don’t necessarily find him overly menacing. (Don’t kill me.) Sean Bean’s John Ryder, on the other hand, is furiously terrifying. There’s no question that there are tons of issues with the Platinum Dunes remake, though, for me, the pros significantly outweigh the cons.
Jim Halsey Falls Flat
The biggest issue is the character of Jim Halsey. I love how the roles of Jim and Grace are swapped from the original film. It brings an updated, modern edge to the film and is a great way to throw audiences who have seen the original. Though I can imagine the hyper-masculine fans of the original were not too happy with that. When it was decided to swap the roles of the characters, it seems like any character depth for Jim was thrown out of the window. I think Zachary Knighton is a wonderful actor who does the best with what he has, but he doesn’t have enough to work with. Writers Eric Red, Jake Wade Wall, and Eric Bernt updated the film with tons of epic scenarios and moments, while seemingly forgetting to make the supposed lead of the film interesting.
On top of cardboard Jim, the inciting police incident just feels very forced. Grace runs into a diner, covered in blood, after she and Jim found a family butchered by John. Someone from the diner calls the police, which leads to Jim and Grace being arrested and charged with murder. Whether or not that’s supposed to be commentary on rural police doesn’t matter because it completely fails to do anything other than forcibly push the story forward.
Besides that? I hate to say, but I don’t have many issues with The Hitcher.
Soundtrack and Atmosphere: A High-Octane Experience
First and foremost, The Hitcher’s soundtrack is incredible. We start the film with Move Along by The All-American Rejects. Talk about a shot of adrenaline. And the greatest needle drop in all of aughts horror history is Nine Inch Nails’s Closer during the film’s most wild car chase. It’s hard not to get lost in this film when the music kicks in.
What really sells this film is how intensely they handle the violence and the film’s gorgeous chase scenes. It’s no Death Proof, but these scenes are miles above the Fast movies that were out at this time. In a day and age where chase scenes are overly produced, badly edited, and just plain boring, The Hitcher manages to infuse horror and action in a way that probably won’t be seen again. Watching films like The Hitcher makes me sad for the state of modern cinema. The Hitcher wasn’t made to win scores of Oscars; it was made by people passionate about telling a badass, harrowing story (minus Jim). And they greatly excel at that.
The Hitcher Is a Misunderstood Cult Favorite
The Hitcher falls in line with my running theory of post-9/11 ultra violence. We were a nation scared of what happened, what was happening, and what seemed to be on the horizon–The Hitcher bottles that fear and anger, packaging it into a nasty piece of genre. Sean Bean and Sophia Bush are an on-screen match made in heaven. They wade through harsh lighting, thick film grain, and buckets of blood to deliver a film that critics and audiences unfairly panned. While audiences may have moved along, I sure didn’t. I want to exist in a world of nothing but aughts genre films, but am forced to live in a world of elevated horror. Le sigh.
