Halloween Ends Review: The Ending Of The Saga Is Not What You Expect, An Inconclusive Ending And Devoid Of Surprises
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, James Jude Courtney, Nick Castle, Andi Matichak
Director: David Gordon Green
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3/5 (three stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Well, one of the most awaited film Halloween Ends all set to hit theaters in Halloween week. Michael Myers is the least alive man among the villains who populate the slasher horror subgenre. It is no coincidence that Debra Hill, co-author and producer of Halloween, claims that “this is a haunted house movie”: the only degree of separation between her ghost and those of works like Poltergeist, to name only the more temporally close, is the definition. It is said in Haddonfield that Michael Myers is a man and it is said that he must be “defeated”, “killed”, “annihilated” and so on, continuing on a phrase book that is never adopted in ghost stories. At the same time, however, the same denomination conflicts with everything we know about Michael Myers: it is not clear how it materializes inside the houses.
His middle name is The Shape, the shadow. Therefore the title Halloween Ends appears so evocative, and seductive: is Halloween going to end this year? Will it be David Gordon Green directing and Jason Blum, with his house of horrors (Blumhouse) to put an end? The answer arose spontaneously since the body of John Carpenter’s creature, never dead, was exhumed in 2018 thanks to the movie Halloween, as brave as Rob Zombie’s reboot in giving itself the same name as the cult work of ’78, despite being the eleventh chapter of the franchise. In our Halloween Ends review let’s try to understand if the closure of this trilogy was able to meet expectations and to consistently extend the open speech with the second chapter, Halloween Kills.
Halloween Ends Review: The Story
Four years have passed since the events that shook the town of Haddonfield, Illinois, when the unexpected and violent return of Michael Myers began to claim victims again. Now Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) lives with her niece Allyson and spends his time writing a book centered on her life and her battle against the Haddonfield monster, which has haunted her and her loved ones since adolescence. But the quiet of her days end when Allyson and Laurie meet Corey Cunningham, a young man who has been wrongfully accused of brutally murdering the baby he babysat. Suddenly Allyson seems distant and reticent, but Laurie sees in Corey’s eyes what she hoped she would never see again: the same look, the same cruel soul as Myers. The aim is not only to save Allyson but also to annihilate, once and for all, the evil of Haddonfield.
The storyline of Halloween Ends mostly moves four years after the events of Halloween Kills, opening with a small – but captivating – prologue set a year after Michael’s disappearance. Is the shadow gone? Perhaps, but his presence is a constant perception, to the point that Haddonfield is no longer the same. Everyone is afraid. Everyone is suspicious. And even the naïve Corey (Rohan Campbell), called to babysit for one night, the most terrifying one of the year, will find himself having to experience the effects of that paranoia on his skin. A paranoia that will accuse him of murder, forever changing his existence.
Three years later, peace seems to have returned, but suspicion is always lurking. Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) tries to peacefully live her existence with her niece Allyson (Andi Matichak), occasionally confronting the demons of the past. Or rather, with her demon of hers. She tries to write an autobiography and explain what Michael Myers is. But when she thinks she can let her guard down, Michael’s legacy seems to haunt the city once again. While Allyson tries to escape his victim stigma, the compassion he finds in the gaze of others, and to silence that anger, that evil that lurks within himself, Corey has to deal with the accusatory gaze of the city, with the infamy. of murder and the knowledge of having to make a choice: to give in to an ancient evil lure or remain a victim of events.
The first scene of Halloween Ends is quite explanatory of what the film is meant to be. New characters never before appeared in the franchise, a babysitter forced to spend the night of Halloween in a big house, not his. Forced by the dramatic events that fall against him to spend an evening of true horror. What does it remind you of? Naturally the initial premise of Carpenter’s first historic Halloween, with some slight divergences and with much more humility, but in any case to replicate the tones, atmospheres and directorial choices of the original progenitor. Except that the narrative drift of this prologue takes a completely different turn, declaring from the outset what is the goal of the new Blumhouse film: to respect the origins, to close a cycle but at the same time to get out of one’s seed, trying to baste an operation different from what fans of the saga expected.
And the first act of the film continues exactly on this line: we are not facing a “back-to-back” sequel to Halloween Kills, but sometime later, to be precise a few years after the massacre that a Michael Myers more deadly than ever – “empowered” thanks to the mass hysteria of an entire city and elevating himself to an almost supernatural figure and representation of the incarnate evil – made after escaping from prison. The first fragment of history is aimed at telling us how the protagonists tried to overcome the trauma of Myers, burying the monster under the fragile layers of a happy life.
It is a phase of the film that wants to tell us about the evolution of Laurie and her family, cloaking the story with an unexpected and anti-climatic lightness. As I said before, it’s valuable when a saga with a “pop” edge wants to get out of the comfort zone in which you can easily wallow, and how Halloween Ends respects this mantra is probably the most convincing aspect of the work. Above all because, under the house of cards held up with difficulty by the main characters, the tears resurface, the traumas resurface, and the monsters awaken. And as Myers plans his return in the shadows, a new character makes his way through the main faces of the film: Corey, an unfortunate boy who will cross Michael’s path, with devastating consequences for him and those around him.
Halloween Ends Review and Analysis
The great main theme of Halloween Ends is precisely the legacy of Michael Myers, explored in ways and situations that I will not go into too much to leave you to the pleasure of discovery and surprise in the room. Legacy is explored above all in the second act, in which the most surprising – but also the most controversial – aspects of the entire feature film are packaged. Taken as a story in its own right, this phase of the story could represent an excellent parable on the evolution (or rather an involution) of criminals, on the psychological and social aspect of second chances, a perfect film for those who especially love true crime and current events (in this regard, the series of the moment is on Netflix: read our review of Dahmer). But it is precisely this plurality of themes and reflections that engulf the quality of the script in its central segment.
And here, from its unsettling but intriguing premise, Halloween Ends turns into a somewhat confusing tale that means everything and, in the end, communicates little, getting lost in the rush to initiate a final act who – before anything else – must stage the final confrontation between Laurie and Michaels. In doing so, all the good initial ideas end up “victims” (pun intended, let it be put on record!) Of a rather inglorious narrative management, but capable of recovering right in the epilogue, when it is Jamie Lee Curtis and James Jude Courtney to contend each other’s life. A physical duel that we have wanted since that distant evening in 1978, and that David Gordon Green brings to the screen with respect and intelligence. Little room for the Halloween Kills epic, if not for a more intimate and visceral resolution, accompanied by a significant and symbolic final sequence throughout the franchise. And in short, what is left at the end of Halloween Ends?
In my opinion, a film that is something more than a simple final chapter: the closing of a circle that lasted decades, the greeting to one of the kings of the slasher, of course, but also the attempt to go further, to tell something different. Even moving away, for a substantial portion of the story, from the splatter tones and exaggerated violence of its latest iterations, to lead us on a more introspective level than ever. He probably does it too late, too quickly and with not entirely convincing ideas. But he does it with humility and courage, and that’s probably okay.
From a directorial and narrative point of view, we have a first part of the film that holds the game quite well. We certainly weren’t expecting a big horror reveal. Neither are the previous two. David Gordon Green does not aim so much to scare, but mostly to pay homage to a really important character and film, giving a continuation and an end to this story, focusing more on the entertainment effect than on the reflective aspect of Carpenter. Without praise and infamy, in the same vein as the two previous films: it amuses, entertains, and eagerly awaits the massacre and, above all, the final confrontation. Something in the game, however, breaks.
The film becomes heavy, and the relationship of Corey and Allison becomes the worst of stereotypes: two emo who swear to burn the world on a motorcycle in the autumn night and crown their dream of love … We were talking about 15-year-old characters, we might as well understand. But no, here the teenage age should have been past it for a while. Do we have stereotypes? The paranoia seems to affect Laurie more, who after the wonderful arc of development where she stops being a victim, takes her life in hand and goes towards a path of rehabilitation, seems to be uncertain again. Just as uncertain is this story which, consequently, affects all the characters and also their interpreters.
In the case of Laurie Strode, we are talking about a character with a heavy trauma that is never completely elaborated, but at the same time a woman who in the last films has put everything on fire to find Michael. The uncertainty and inconsistency of the character in this last chapter, sometimes left to himself, makes your nose turn up a bit. The whole is free of bite. Redundant. The actions follow one another, and the film never seems to want to take off. The same direction by David Gordon Green advances with the handbrake. An attempt is made to build a minimum of tension, but everything is constantly dampened by the sentimental “tensions” of the two younger characters. Speaking of the cast, the same interpretations are fluctuating, starting from Andi Matichak and Rohan Campbell.
The first would like to sacrifice herself to the new final girl, but it is nothing more than a train that is easily forgotten over time. A little girl in her adolescent phase (outdated for a while) behaves exactly the opposite way only to spite her grandmother, making her pass for the crazy person on duty. So little heard the recitation of the Matichak. So, in the background. Even more fluctuating Rohan Campbell, who if at first he gets along not too badly, however showing the effects of the accident on himself, with his “bad guy” vein ruining everything else. His harsh expression of him becomes a single expression that he will carry on throughout the film. From protagonist, soon becomes a functional character that we would like to get out of the boxes as quickly as possible. At times it is bordering on pathetic.
Jamie Lee Curtis is Jamie Lee Curtis, this should be enough and move forward. But, as we said before, even his Laurie – his second skin practically – is affected not a little by a script that seems to go more by trial and error than to have a precise plan on where to go. And, unfortunately, this uncertainty accuses him of Michael Myers himself who passes, within a few minutes, from Carpenter’s Übermensch to an eighty-year-old man with a Halloween mask, only to return to being the terrible shadow. Although the suspension of disbelief is necessary in these cases, it is also true that entrusting everything to this without giving a minimum explanation, or at least a context that may be at least partially credible, is quite naïve. And it is a great pain to witness this basic bipolarity of the character who, after having risen rising to a total monstrosity no longer linked to human features, takes a terrible step back which, inevitably, completely suffocates the ending.
Halloween Ends Review: The Last Words
Halloween Ends is exactly halfway between the first and the second chapter of the new trilogy: a step back, as far as I’m concerned, compared to the virulent catharsis of Halloween Kills, but a shy past forward for the themes it carries forward. He tries to create a more intimate reflection on Evil and at the same time close a thirty-year saga with dignity. It does this by displacing, not always in a positive way because the ideas on the plate of this final episode are interesting and create debate, but they are gutted too superficially during the central act. That of David Gordon Green remains an operation of intriguing mythological revisionism, and I believe that at the end of this film we must appreciate above all the courage and the will to dare. Because he makes a point and does it with solemnity, but at what price? And how much can you bury Evil in the end? The most interesting thing is that the answer to this question is more subjective than ever.
