Halloween Ends: More tricks than treats

So, a lot has already been said about Halloween Ends at this point, but I do feel like I need to weigh in on some of the problems it presents. It’s baffling to see the choices that were made when you consider that this current reboot of the franchise, which began with Halloween (2018) and continued through 2021’s Halloween Kills, was envisioned from the get-go to be: a) a trilogy, and b) contain the final conclusion to the saga of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode.

Now let me start by saying that I find Halloween Ends to be a fairly good film…if taken on its own. But as film that is supposed to be part of those two points I just mentioned above, it misses the mark completely. Spoilers ahead.

For this film, a closing chapter of a trilogy, we’re introduced to not just a completely new character named Corey Cunningham, but he turns out to be the MAIN character of this movie and ends up becoming the “new” Michael Myers, with most of the film’s kills being done by him, not Myers. So much time is spent on his arc that Laurie Strode ends up being a supporting player in what is supposed to be her “final showdown” with Michael. And as for the Shape himself, he doesn’t even make it onscreen until the 40-minute mark.

A Halloween film that goes 40 minutes without even an appearance by Michael Myers?! That’s second only to Halloween III: Season of the Witch, a completely Myers-less film, save for one brief snippet when an ad for the original Halloween (1978) is shown on a television in a bar. Which brings me to my next point:

David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and the other creators behind this reboot have clearly modelled their trilogy off the first three entries in this franchise, right down to the opening credits, Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends borrow their title fonts from Halloween (1978), Halloween II (1981) and Halloween III (1982), respectively.

And like the original three, the first two films of the reboot take place over the course of the same Halloween night, with Laurie Strode surviving multiple attacks by Michael in the first film before being sidelined in a hospital bed which Michael’s carnage escalates in the second. Then the third entry in each set takes a wildly different turn, bringing in characters never seen before and following a completely different tone than the previous movies.

However, this is understandable for OG films when you consider that Halloween III: Season of the Witch was made with the intention of turning the franchise into an anthology series, where the only uniting thread would be that each movie took place on or had to do with Halloween. In other words, Halloween III was never intended to be the third chapter of trilogy set in motion by the previous two films.

And this is what baffles me: why would the creators of the reboot choose to emulate this film (which outraged fans at the time of its release due to the lack of Michael Myers), and think we’d be on board with it? Just because their third Halloween film veers wildly off-course just like Halloween III did? They consciously chose to base the arc of their trilogy on a two-parter and a stand-alone, which pretty much means that they were never going to stick the landing, at all.

But, back to the story. Like I said earlier, this is a fairly good film. But it is more of a psychological character study than a horror film. It’s something that would make more sense being the springboard film to take the franchise in a new direction AFTER the story of Michael and Laurie reached its end. And if that was the intention, I can’t see how they are going to follow through, because Corey is most certainly dead by the end of this film.

Which then begs the question WHY? Why introduce a new character in the closing chapter of a trilogy, invest all that time into his story at the expense of Laurie Strode, and then just kill him off near the end (after which, is when we finally get some Michael-and-Laurie showdown action, but it feels tacked on and out of place rather than a climatic payoff to a years-spanning story).

*SIGH* Well, only time will tell if this truly was the last we’ll see of Michael (even though he, too, was most definitely dead at the end). But just so I don’t end on a bitter note, I will say this about this uneven trilogy as a whole:

It’s still a big misstep that this trilogy chose to disregard all that came after the original Halloween, but still had everyone in Haddonfield regard Michael Myers the way they would if the timeline of the subsequent films still existed (that is, they are still treating him as a psychopath who had returned to his hometown for murderous rampages on multiple occasions, leaving dozens of victims in his wake). Because, I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe that a dude who killed three teens one night and then was immediately caught and thrown behind bars for decades is someone whose very name would keep a town “gripped in fear for 40 years” (and cause the randomly targeted girl who briefly fought off his attacks for 15 minutes before being rescued, to turn into a doomsday prepper/survivalist who firmly believes Michael Myers will come for her if and when he escapes).

However, after the cornucopia of corpses Michael Myers left strewn around town, post-Halloween Kills, the results have now caught up to the reputation. Michael is indeed a monster, so go on and be gripped in fear forever, surviving citizens of Haddonfield.