Main cast: Jamie Lee Curtis (Laurie Strode), Andi Matichak (Allyson Nelson), Rohan Campbell (Corey Cunningham), Will Patton (Deputy Frank Hawkins), Kyle Richards (Lindsey Wallace), James Jude Courtney (The Shape), Jesse C Boyd (Officer Mulaney), Joanne Baron (Joan Cunningham), Omar J Dorsey (Sheriff Barker), and Michael Barbieri (Terry)
Director: David Gordon Green
Just in time for Halloween, Halloween Ends finally erupts from the grave of IPs that should really be left dead to put to rest the trilogy that started out… well, okay with Halloween and then crapped the proverbial bed with Halloween Kills.
Well, after the events of that second movie, one may assume that this will be the ultimate showdown between Granny Laurie and Granny Michael but aha, David Gordon Green the director and co-screenwriter decides to show everyone that he has a shrine to Rian Johnson in his bedroom or something. That’s right, this movie will subvert everyone’s expectations, woo-hoo.
For one, the fellow playing Michael Myers is credited as playing “The Shape”, and for good reason: apparently after being hinted heavily at in the last movie, Michael Myers is really a supernatural entity because he can turn people into serial killers with a touch of the hand and a look in the eye.
That’s right, this movie cuts to three years after the events of the previous movie, and it shifts the focus from Laurie and Michael to Corey Cunningham, Allyson’s new boyfriend, becoming the newest killer in town. Just why should I suddenly care about this newly popped-out character over the story built up in the last two movies, I have no idea. Like I’ve said, maybe this is all about trolling, er, subverting expectations, who knows?
It’s really weird. Laurie spent decades being a paranoid gun-totting woman while Michael was in prison, but now that Michael has gotten away after murdering her daughter, Laurie is now… at peace and writing a book about her experiences. What? Sure, one can argue that maybe she wants to let go of the hate and the vengeance, but Michael murdered her daughter, which means she has far more reasons to be angrier than she was during the years leading up to the first movie!
Meanwhile, Allyson is like, oh mom’s dead, whatever, hee-hee, here is a new guy she’d shack up with.
Poor Corey. Years ago, he babysat a brat that pulled a prank on him: locking him in the attic while pretending that he’s Michael Myers. When Corey finally kicked open the door, he also kicked the brat at the other side of the door, somehow sending the brat over the railing of the stairs, which were taller than the brat, and down several floors to the brat’s death. Well, it was a big house.
The parents of the brat came home just as they heard Corey screaming that he’d kill the brat, and then they saw the brat going splat down on the ground right before their eyes. Needless to say, Corey was hauled to court, but cleared of his homicide charges. Needless to say, he remains a pariah to the present day.
You know how it is with pariahs and gals. Despite Corey not even being hot or brooding, Allyson takes to him like a fat kid to cakes after he comes in with wounds from being bullied and she’s the nurse on duty. Maybe her mom not warming up to Corey only adds to his charms.
At any rate, the show has been about how poor Corey is bullied and mistreated all the while that I soon begin to wonder that I’ve somehow accidentally changed the movie on the screen without realizing it.
It is only at about the 40-minute mark that our sad sack meets Michael Myers, now a decrepit sadder sack hiding in the sewers, and somehow gets “shaped” by his encounter into becoming the new Michael Myers in town.
By that point, I perk up, hoping that the bloodbath party will finally begin… until the show actually has Allyson holding on to Corey while riding on Corey’s bike like it’s the budget version of that scene in Titanic, and I can only surmount that Mr Green really, really wants to make a bad boy romance movie to add to the refuse pile section on Netflix, but he’s contractually obligated to make this movie so he’s taking it out on poor me.
The kills only start after the one-hour mark, but even then, it’s just a twat killing people. I didn’t sit down to watch this movie for that, I want to see Laurie and Michael go at it. As a result, I feel really cheated of my time.
Even worse, once I’m starting to buy that maybe it’s not Michael as much as it’s the Shape that is spreading evil around, the movie throws in anyway a last minute Michael and Laurie showdown, which sees Laurie miraculously beating the hell out of him, when she could barely fight with him on equal footing in the previous films.
Also, this scene goes back to showing that Michael is… human? Sheesh, which is which? Mr Green seems to operate on the assumption that subverting the audience’s expectation trumps everything else when it comes to making a film.
I don’t know what to make of Halloween Ends. It feels a lot like one of those sequels that were made out of a script not meant for the franchise at all, but was used nonetheless to keep the movie rights within the studio.
Maybe if this had been a standalone movie about Corey, I may feel more invested in it, but as it is, Corey is a new character sucking oxygen out of a movie that is supposed to be about other people. In many ways, he is like a stand-in for Mr Green, taking a swing of the knife at this movie, and perhaps the whole film is a metaphor of the man’s dissatisfaction of having to do this movie instead of, say, another one of those 365 Days sequels that he genuinely and passionately wants to do.
Can we please, please, please let this franchise die now?
