'Halloween Ends' Review: A Dumpster Fire of Bad Ideas and Missed Opportunities
Halloween Ends is the unlucky thirteenth installment in the Halloween slasher film franchise, and Unfortunately, the film suffers and fails to truly and effectively conclude the Myers saga.
Halloween Ends takes place four years after the events of Halloween (2018) and Halloween Kills where Michael Myers has not been seen since, and follows Laurie Strode finally returning to live a normal life with her granddaughter Allyson, and writing a memoir to put her trauma to rest. However, her newly-rediscovered idyllic life is soon uprooted when a local man, Corey Cunningham, is accused of murdering a young boy, reigniting the violence and presence of evil that looms over Haddonfield.
The film comes to us from director David Gordon Green, returning from directing the first two installments in this requel trilogy, and a script co-written by Green alongside Danny McBride, Chris Bernier, and Paul Brad Logan. It stars Jamie Lee Curtis returning as Laurie, Andi Matichak returning as Allyson Nelson, and James Jude Courtney as The Shape returning from the previous two films. It features a cast that also includes Will Patton, Rohan Campbell, and Kyle Richards.
The first thing that stands out with Halloween Ends is how immediately confusing the plot description is. While it definitely catches eyeballs and makes it stand out, the synopsis makes even the most die-hard supporters of this franchise pause and scratch their heads. That feeling of confusion turns into bafflement as this movie progresses, when one slowly begins to realize that the main focus of this installment, the epic conclusion of a trilogy and the closing-out of a story arc that was started way back in 1978, is not about Michael Myers at all, but about Corey Cunningham.
In this film, we are introduced to the character of Corey Cunningham as a promising local Haddonfield resident babysitting a young boy only to kill him in a gray area of unexplainable happenstance, that leads to a stigma of Corey as a kid-killer and a new urban legend. With this reputation, Corey becomes increasingly angered and withdrawn as Evil begins to take hold of him and corrupt him, turning him into a killer. Thus, the film effectively hands the torch over from Myers (who for most of this movie’s runtime is not to be seen) to Corey as Haddonfield’s Boogeyman.
The movie tries to play this switch off as an attempt at a deep exploration of the nature of evil, how “Evil” is not one entity but ever-present and contagious, and also a commentary on stigma and struggling to live with the past. But this all just falls completely flat on its execution. Most of the runtime of this movie feels very much like a coming-of-age drama rather than a horror slasher. So much is devoted to the character of Corey as he struggles to fight his inner demons and the ghosts of the past and find his path for a new future, causing this movie to completely lose any semblance of this franchise’s tone or identity. This leaves large portions of this film without any gore, horror or action of any kind, and makes it really drag.
The character arc of Corey Cunningham feels (maybe not so coincidentally) like a ripoff of the character arc of Arnie Cunningham from John Carpenter’s Christine as he succumbs to the corruption of evil and becomes increasingly more angsty and spiteful. Except in Halloween Ends, Corey is played very inconsistently by Rohan Campbell in a performance that is less than underwhelming. A lot of his lines fell flat, and his descent into darkness was simply unconvincing and difficult to take seriously. So much about his characterization and his writing just felt forced by the script to make the movie happen. By making him a copycat Michael Myers killer, the movie at several points honestly begins to almost feel like a Scream movie in the way it plays out, and not in a good or flattering way.
While Halloween Ends tries to tell a story about stigma and overcoming the sins of the past with Corey, it somehow manages to even flub that story arc with Laurie. For no reason at all, other than script reasons, the townspeople of Haddonfield are just plainly being mean and vicious to her. In something never-before-seen in the last two installments, and in a logically nonsensical way, the townspeople hate Laurie for reasons that simply do not add up. The movie forces this in to paint a parallel between Laurie, Corey and Michael as human monsters plaguing a town, but this does not fit with Laurie whatsoever.
Adding to all of this, the characterization of Laurie in this film was exceedingly odd. By taking place four years after the events of the first two films (which both took place on the same night), we are presented with a very jarringly changed Laurie without any notion of a development process or buildup. The character of Laurie is now over her trauma with Michael Myers, is living a normal life, and is awkwardly flirting with old flames in grocery stores and baking pies, all from completely-offscreen development. While Curtis definitely gives the role her best, the way her character is written does not give her much to work with.
This script was filled with contrivances and plot holes, but none so egregious as the love arc between Corey and Allyson. This arc was forced and artificial beyond belief, and only exists for the story to intertwine Corey and Laurie and lead into its finale. From the moment they meet, Allyson is immediately drawn to Corey for seemingly no reason at all, and starts to barrage him with pickup lines and insistences on a date, and none of it feels organic or earned at all. On top of this, a lot of the film’s runtime is devoted to their budding relationship, further affirming the tone of this film feeling like a coming-of-age drama than a Halloween movie.
Michael Myers is in this film a pitiful amount, and even the scenes where he does play a prominent role, he does not belong in his own movie. The movie gives us this new idea that Michael has been hiding away in a Haddonfield sewer (right off a busy freeway in the center of town where apparently no one has seen him or tracked him in four years somehow) and has this unexplained psychic link with other “Evil” that allows him to look inside the mind of Corey when he stumbles upon Michael’s lair.
This creates some sort of evil bond between the two, where Michael basically, in his own way, mentors Corey to become the new him. Not only is this just a weirdly bad idea in theory, it somehow manages to be worse in execution. Michael is reduced to practically a cripple in the sewer on the sidelines while Corey starts a murderous rampage across Haddonfield. All of this for Michael to still swoop in for the finale for script reasons and finally go toe-to-toe with Laurie again to close that 44-year story arc.
Not everything in Halloween Ends is as frustratingly bad as the majority of the film. The final showdown between Michael and Laurie is actually quite good and the climax gives the audience plenty of gore, thrills, and character moments between the two that effectively work to make it set in the ending of what was started back in 1978. In order to capitalize on this point, there was a solid directorial choice to do quick edits between the fight happening in the present and Michael and Laurie’s initial fight forty-years prior in the original film. This was a very effective addition that definitely built up the tension (combined with another excellent score from John Carpenter playing strongly in the background) and raised the stakes.
It all leads to a bloody and frustrating conclusion. Taken in a vacuum, the last 15 minutes of the movie are well worth it and a satisfying conclusion to not only the trilogy but the original film. We are not only given that fulfilling fight with Laurie, but also a cathartic experience when the town of Haddonfield can finally officially put the Boogeyman to rest.
However, all of those satisfying notes are immediately removed when you realize how little this finale fits in the context of this film, as it is not properly set up whatsoever. If the rest of this film had the same tone and energy of the finale, or if the finale was in another version of this film, Halloween Ends could have definitively been the best in the series since the original.
Overall, Halloween Ends attempts to take the franchise into a new creative direction and explore deep themes, but all of it falls totally flat due to a poor script filled with contrivances, lackluster ideas, inconsistent character arcs, and shoddy story choices that loses sight of what this franchise is, while ultimately failing to deliver an impactful conclusion to a classic horror saga.