Movie Review: Halloween Ends

Stars: 2 out of 5

Pros: A few good moments

Cons: Tries to do something new and fails

The Bottom Line:

Final Halloween

Wanders too much before end

Left unsatisfied

“Are You the Psycho or the Freakshow?”

Yes, I’m a glutton for punishment.  Despite not particularly enjoying either of the previous films in the recent Halloween trilogy, I watched Halloween Ends.  I was curious enough to see how they were planning to wrap up the storylines and what the fates of the characters would be.

After a prologue in 2019, the main action picks up in 2022, four years after Michael’s rampage from the last two films.  Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is attempting to move beyond her obsession with Michael Myers even though no one knows what happened to him that night four years ago.  She’s even writing a self-help book to help others grow beyond trauma in their own lives.  She’s bought a house in the middle of town and she’s sharing it with her granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak).

Things take an ominous turn after Laurie and Allyson meet Corey (Rohan Campbell), a young man who accidentally killed a boy back in 2019.  The town treats him as a pariah, but Allyson quickly falls for him.  However, the killings are about to start up again.  Is Michael back?  Or is something else going on?

At this point, I’m a broken record when it comes to these films.  I completely get what the film makers were going for and what they were trying to do.  The movie is a look at what trauma does to a person and a community.  It also wants to discuss if evil is born or made.  Both of those are interesting things to explore, and both of them would be interesting to explore in a horror franchise.  This was not the movie to explore them, however.

This is a Halloween movie, and we are here to see Michael Myers stalking and killing people.  Since Jamie Lee Curtis is in this one, we are here to see Laurie facing off against Michael.  It really is that simple.  And what are the elements we don’t get?  Michael or a face off.  Oh, we get them, but they are rushed into the ending instead of actually building to it over the course of the film.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that some of the earlier movies in the franchise have slow first halves.  That’s actually one thing I like about them.  The tension builds until we get one long chase scene in the final act.  Here, there is very little tension building.  We’ve got the themes the writers want to explore, but everything that is happening is right out in the open.  There is no mystery; no tension.  About the only thing we are wondering is “Where do they think they are going with this and where is Michael Myers?”

Part way through act three, the writers remember they are writing a Halloween movie, and we suddenly get what we wanted to see, Michael and Laurie facing off again.  (Yes, I’m exaggerating some, but only slightly.)  The result is the storylines we’d been following get a sudden and illogical wrap up so we can rush a final confrontation between Michael and Laurie.  And I do mean rushed.  Honestly, if they had found a better way to wrap that stuff up, I would have cut them more slack.  But as it was, they once again made the worst story choices they could, something that has been a theme for the new movies.

As with the previous films in this trilogy, they go for gore over suspense.  There’s little stalking, just pop out and someone dies in an overly brutal manner.  The couple of times they do try to create some suspense don’t quite work either.

Just a reminder that this is an R rated film, so there is plenty of language to go along with the graphic violence I was just talking about.

There are some moments that fans of the franchise will enjoy, and anyone who has followed these characters for the last 40 plus years are going to want to see what happens here.  But I wish that Halloween Ends was a good ending for the franchise.