One of the big things I have been looking forward to this Halloween season is seeing how the Halloween movie franchise finally ends. Halloween has been an iconic part of my “spooky seasons” since I was very young, even before I actually watched the movies. And, even though I may enjoy Freddy Krueger’s sense of humor just slightly more than Michael Myers’ more “strong and silent” approach to slasher-dom, the Halloween movies are always my go-to when it comes to rewatching an OG slasher. The atmosphere is just perfect.
While many people seemed to be on the fence about Halloween Kills, I absolutely loved it and it’s one of my main go-to movies, period, not even just within the Halloween franchise. So I naturally had pretty high hopes for Halloween Ends.
To say that I was disappointed, just might be an understatement.
Halloween Ends was basically the Necro episode of American Horror Stories, minus a few details, with a little bit of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers thrown in.
The movie starts off with a guy named Corey Cunningham, who looks like the dorky high school nerd version of Will Graham in the Hannibal TV series, going to babysit a kid named Jeremy. Jeremy turns out to be a little shit, and, I guess like everyone else in the town of Haddonfield, is obsessed with Michael Myers, and scaring people. He winds up somehow locking Corey in a closet, and when Corey manages to finally break his way out, he somehow also manages to slam the door into Jeremy, and not just knock him down, but throw him from the top of an immense staircase, killing him. Jeremy’s mother never forgives Corey, and he becomes somewhat of a town pariah, even getting beat up by high school kids at age twenty-two-ish. (Jeremy’s death happens in 2019, by the way, a year after the events of the first two movies in this new trilogy, and then we jump ahead to the present day. We never find out if any of the characters got COVID in 2020.)
Eventually, Corey meets Allyson, granddaughter of Laurie Strode. Laurie actually ends up inadvertently introducing them, after rescuing Corey from his latest beating by high schoolers who are either really into Stranger Things or actually have somehow teleported over from 1986. Allyson and Corey form an almost immediate trauma-bond that gets real toxic real fast, and the next 90% or so of the movie is pretty much all about that. It’s a love story about two people from opposite sides of a street called Fucked Up Boulevard, and I never appreciate a love story seeping in where it doesn’t belong. Especially when it comes to what’s supposed to be the epic conclusion to a forty-four year old beloved horror franchise. So yeah, I was bored and annoyed. I’ve never really liked Allyson…I don’t hate her but I don’t think she’s anything special, definitely not “the next great Final Girl” material, and Corey was just kind of stereotypical. I guess an argument could be made that it’s an interesting statement on how people perceive the victims of different types of trauma, but this story did not belong in this movie…at least not as the central plot. This should have been Laurie and Michael’s time to shine.
Michael, the man himself, is actually only in a small portion of the movie. He’s apparently been living like any common homeless person, or has decided he wants to be Pennywise the clown, and has taken up residence in some kind of sewer. After one of Corey's beatings by the local Stranger Things fan club, he's thrown over a railing and lands right near Michael's residence. Michael pulls him under, but rather than doing what Michael does and you know, killing him, he instead stares into his eyes and Corey emerges from the sewer a new, more brutal man. This is where it becomes Corey's movie. It's literally all about his downward spiral, his relationship with Allyson, and Laurie's realization that she's letting another killer into their lives. Michael is really just a driving force in another person's story here, though it seems to be a bit of a two way street, as Corey's presence seems to wake him up a little. I'm sorry but I have a hard time believing, even with how injured he probably was after the events of Kills, that Michael Myers would really go and hide in a sewer for four years. This plot point would have worked better without the time jump, and the Corey storyline would have worked better if a) this was just a random sequel and not meant to be the long-awaited end to a forty-four year legacy that had nothing at all to do with him, or b) he was actually being set up to become the new "Shape" for more than about twenty minutes.
But neither of these scenarios are the case, so a huge portion of the movie is lost on him and this ~edgy~ romance. Corey eventually kills himself after a confrontation with Laurie, and only then does the real Michael emerge. We finally get the long-awaited final battle, and it's more or less over before it really starts. It's basically a few minutes of Michael and Laurie grappling with kitchen appliances, and Allyson returning, somehow suddenly snapped out of her several-years-too-late teen angst phase, to assist her grandmother in finally putting Michael to an end.
The best scene of the movie is the twisted funeral procession that comes when Allyson and Laurie decide the whole town needs to see Michael die for real. They carry his bled-out body to a machine that chops him up, and the whole town comes to watch. This was the only time I felt truly emotional during this movie, but a lot of that emotion was coming from the fact that this was the end of an era...and it wasn't exactly going out with a bang. For all his forty-four years of existence, Michael deserved better. While there was definitely some power and emotion behind this scene (and I felt the absence of Dr. Loomis, which made me want to cry even more), it really didn't make up for the lack of buildup to get there. If one were to watch this movie on its own (which I'm not sure why anyone would, but you never know how people will discover things), they certainly would not think such a ceremonious ending was deserved. It would be one thing to have Michael appear as more of a side character in a random sequel or some sort of bridge to something new, but he deserved to be an actual character in this movie that was meant to end his long legacy.
I will say, I am glad that things worked out happily for Laurie. Again, I wish there had been a little more of her in the movie, but at least she had more of a role than Michael. It was nice to see the ultimate Final Girl get her happy ending, especially considering the fact that I really thought both she and Michael would die, but the buildup to it kind of sucked. I mean, yes, her interactions with Corey were interesting enough when she started to realize what he was becoming, but her history is with Michael Myers, not Corey Cunningham, and putting so much focus on a new character with no apparent connection to the forty-four year old plot was, in my opinion, not appropriate for the supposed final film of the franchise.
With that said, I don't think we've truly seen the last of the Halloween franchise, and I'm sure it will return in a few years with either a reboot or some sort of continuation, maybe not including Michael or Laurie. Allyson is still out there, after all. I would also love to see what a modern take on Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch would look like.
I suppose the best thing about these horror franchises is that they have so many different, convoluted timelines and canons that when you don't like how something goes, it's not hard to reject it. I just wish they would have tried a little harder with this one, as it's been so many years, over four decades, in the making. Devoting the last movie, a movie that should have been one of the most important of the series, to a new character and a toxic romance, just wasn't the right move. I'm actually very curious as to what this movie would have looked like if it hadn't been for COVID and the forced four-year time jump.
All in all, I found Halloween Ends to be a mostly dissatisfying experience. But, we'll always have what came before, and at least we have the satisfaction of Laurie's happy ending.
If anyone has any other thoughts they'd like to share, I'm always interested in hearing them.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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