Halloween (Finally) Ends

I would be more afraid to watch this film again than meet Micheal Myers. 

*Full Spoiler Warning*

Halloween Ends is the type of moviegoing experience that only shows itself every few years. Within the first 5 minutes, you stay because you’re either not very good at identifying the quality of the film, or you pop open the unnamed alcoholic beverage you snuck into the theater. I was appalled by how bad Ends was, I should have taken the fact they released this onto the streaming service Peacock the same day it was released in theaters as a bad omen.

What you need to know about the plot is that it takes place in Haddonfield, and the town can’t get over a few murders from 40 years ago and blame all their problems on either Laurie or Myers. So, ya know, I’m sure it’s a very nice place to live.

I have never seen a Halloween film, but know enough about the original and some of its sequels through pop-culture osmosis. Even if I didn’t I don’t need to worry, as after the prologue and opening credits, Laurie, the main character from the original, narrates to the audience the events of the past movies with clips from those films. They tried having this actually tie into the story, as Laurie is writing a memoir. The only problem with this idea is that there is no payoff to make it feel like the voiceover was warranted. It feels like a lazy excuse from the filmmakers just to have Ends start how they want so that certain events can happen rather than actually trying to tell a cohesive slasher.

It would seem the only real reason I could find for them to include this opening monologue, is that the filmmakers didn’t know how to properly establish the setting for each character in a clever way. It also seems like a retcon, as I can remember for the marketing of the 2018 Halloween, the whole point was that Laurie had been training for Myers to return. In this one, with one line of dialogue, they completely get rid of that idea. She’s just a regular grandma now, dealing with stress the old-fashion way by swearing profusely when pies burn. Maybe this is talked about in past films, but I mean really, why doesn’t anyone move? A masked man has come after you, and your family twice now in 40 years, just like, move to another town. It seems a bit unrealistic and takes you out of the story.

Horrible dialogue makes it almost impossible to fully invest in the film. I know it’s a trope that horror films have bad dialogue, but this is on another level. Worse than “Somehow Palpatine returned.” On multiple occasions, characters let out exposition that’s helpful for the audience to understand, but would never be said in a real-life setting. One moment sees a new character Corey, legitimately sneak up on Laurie and then says, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” It wasn’t meant for a joke or anything like that, my guy literally snuck up behind someone, made them jump out of fear, and saw nothing wrong with it. There’s this one part where Laurie is talking to Corey’s parents, and his mom has this really long line and it’s full of unmemorable exposition, a question the in middle, and then her statement on Myers, to which Laurie responds with, “Yes.”

The new character Corey takes the front stage for a majority of the film, and what they decide to do with him is interesting on paper, but horrible in execution. There’s no other way to put it so I’ll just say it how it is, they use his character in an attempt to “pass the knife,” to the next generation. That’s right, Corey finds Myers living in a hobbit hut (basically) and asks him to teach him the way of being a serial killer. 

At first, it starts with Corey bringing Myers people to kill, and somehow that leads to them killing people together. This first-person Corey brings him, is a cop that’s into the girl he’s seeing, which is Laurie’s granddaughter, and he lures the cop into the cave and falls backward with him in front of him because he was trying to cover his sight or something. So, then Myers comes out of the darkness and stabs the cop, and when this happens he like, starts to shake while making eye contact with Corey on the floor holding the cop, it was weird. Also the whole, “bring people to die to an evil entity that lurks in the dark,” is strangely similar to the Are you Afraid of the Dark episode called, “The Tale of the Dark Music.” When the 40-year-old franchise is stealing ideas from 90s children’s television programs, it might be time to stop.

Corey’s motivation is that the town bullies him because he was babysitting a kid one time, and the kid locks him in the attic while taunting him, to which Corey understandably kicks the door down to open it, as the door flings open the kid falls to his death. His entire plot, seeing what it takes to drive a man to kill, is incredibly hypocritical of everything the franchise stands for. In multiple interviews with different cast and crew, they all agree that what makes Myers a scary antagonist is that you don’t know anything about him. Corey is just an excuse to explain Myers’ motivations, through a different character so that they can still say we don’t know anything about Myers. 

They even have Corey take the iconic mask in what will probably go down as one of the worst scenes…. Yeah, actually I’ll just leave it at that. It was pretty bad, instead of actually explaining how some scrawny mid-20-year-old was able to take down MICHAEL MYERS, they leave the camera at just the right angle so you can only see them fighting for maybe 10 seconds within frame. A lot of the scenes in the trailer are Corey wearing the mask, not Myers. Myers is only in the film for like 15 minutes so that they could have more time developing one of the saddest excuses for a character ever put on screen. 

The final confrontation between Laurie and Myers was okay. In the middle of their fighting, Laurie gets away, and somehow there’s something in the microwave, and when the microwave beeps Myers gets distracted giving Laurie the chance to surprise attack Myers. Other than that, we see Myers kill Corey which was satisfying. Although, they never really show what happened to his body, meaning they’re probably gonna have him come back and hunt Laurie’s granddaughter, which is just spectacular news. 

Endings are tough, and maybe if this wasn’t supposed to be the final Halloween it wouldn’t have been so sad. From what I’ve heard the last one was worse than this, which just can’t be right. Can it? Another day, another failed reboot trilogy, and hopefully, this is the last we see of Haddonfield for some time.