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.