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'Halloween Ends' review: A disappointing end to more than just a trilogy

Movie Reviews

‘Halloween Ends’ review: A disappointing end to more than just a trilogy

A messy and ultimately disappointing ending to a trilogy that started with so much promise.

Welcome to another installment of 31 Days of Halloween! This is our chance to set the mood for the spookiest and scariest month of the year as we focus our attention on horror and Halloween fun. For the month of October we’ll be sharing various pieces of underappreciated scary books, comics, movies, and television to help keep you terrified and entertained all the way up to Halloween.


***WARNING! SPOILERS FOR HALLOWEEN ENDS BELOW***

If you are looking for a final addition to the Halloween franchise that pits Jamie Lynn Curtis’ Laurie Strode in a thrilling fight for her life against evil incarnate itself Michael Myers, than this movie is not for you. Instead, Halloween Ends is a confusing cluster of uninspired storylines and awful writing that makes  Halloween Kills look almost masterpiece-like.

There is so much wrong with this movie, that I don’t really know where to start. Before the opening credits hit (one of the only true good things about this movie), we are introduced to a new character, Corey, who accidentally kills a young boy he is babysitting on Halloween night. Fast forward years later, we see Laurie Strode living with her granddaughter, Allyson, and is wrapping up her memoir based on her events with Michael Myers who hasn’t been seen since the events of Halloween Kills, where he killed Laurie’s daughter.

We soon see Corey (Rohan Campbell) being bullied by a group of high school students and is miraculously saved by Strode. She takes him to the hospital that her granddaughter is working and the two soon fall in love. Seriously, over the course of 72 hours Corey and Allyson meet, fall in love, attend a party, fight and break up at the same party, Corey meets and is somehow spared by Michael Myers (more on that later), Corey kills a homeless man, winds up at Laurie and Allyson’s house, admits to killing a man, and agree to run away together. I can’t make this up. The Corey/Allyson relationship might be the single most forced on-screen relationship in a long, long time. I spent the majority of this movie trying to figure out why the screenwriters were so keen on establishing a relationship that really had no impact on the movie as a whole. Yet, it was the primary focus for the first two acts of the movie!

Corey is obviously a mess from killing the little boy a few years back and the constant bullying really begin to make his already fragile psyche crack. After leaving the party mentioned earlier, Corey once again runs into the high schoolers from earlier who wind up throwing him over a bridge. The next morning, he wakes up in a sewer and meets Michael who winds up, I’m assuming, infecting Corey with his evil and just lets him go. At this point, we are 40 minutes into the movie and this was the first Michael sighting.

'Halloween Ends' review: A disappointing end to more than just a trilogy

The last third of the movie felt abnormally rushed and overdone. Both Corey and Michael (acting almost like Corey’s mentor here) go on a murder spree across town taking out all the other minor characters that were introduced one after the other after the other after the other. While the murders were horrible and over the top like we have come to expect, they started happening way too late.  Please note that the first murder committed by Michael was 70 minutes into the movie. That should tell you something in its own right.

Laurie manages to get the upper hand on ‘Michael’ who is actually Corey wearing Michael’s mask. After taking him down and unmasking him, Corey takes a knife and kills himself after stabbing himself in the neck. Laurie, of course, picks up the knife just as her granddaughter opens the front door.  She lets out of the worst screams I have ever heard, starts hyperventilating, and walks back out the front door and is perfectly fine when the door closes. Now, while I’m sure Andi Matichak is a fine actress, this was surely not one of those moments. I’ve seen better horror acting on a SyFy Original Movie.

'Halloween Ends' review: A disappointing end to more than just a trilogy

Laurie is so distraught that she has to sit and contemplate all her life choices up to that moment (please note the sarcasm here) until she notices the back door is open. Right on cue, Michael goes over to Corey’s body and picks up his mask. Of course, Corey is actually still alive somehow, and is finally put out of his misery by Michael. Couple of points here, Michael had opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to kill Corey, but waited until he went on a murderous rampage with him to kill him? And, are we seriously led to believe that Michael just LET him have his mask!? The mask that harbors all his power? Not a chance, but that is what it looked like.

By the time that Michael and Laurie finally start fighting, I was so over this movie at this point that it felt almost pointless. They had a little scuffle before granddaughter Allyson returned and helped her grandmother finally kill Michael. This is just another scene where things just didn’t add up. Earlier in the movie, we literally saw Michael cave somebody’s skull in with his boot, yet, when he had Laurie underfoot, she was able to escape. Several times!  Michael was able to survive a knitting needle lobotomy but couldn’t handle his mask being touched. And the cherry on top of the cake here is Laurie literally held Michael’s hand as he died. It was all a mess. But, just to drive the point across that Michael was in fact dead, they taped his body to the top of a sheriff’s car, drove him around town, and tossed his body into a human meat grinder. Closure.

'Halloween Ends' review: A disappointing end to more than just a trilogy

I can see where director David Gordon Green and his team were trying to make it look like Michael had infected the entire town of Haddonfield, but it was so poorly executed that it is almost laughable. Fans of the Halloween franchise do not want to see some psychological mess. They want to see Michael Meyers kill people, go head to head with Laurie Strode, and possibly see the end of one of the two characters. While Green might have something here, it did not work with a franchise that already has pre-established lore like Halloween.

'Halloween Ends' review: A disappointing end to more than just a trilogy

Overall, Halloween Ends does a poor job in tying things together. New plot points and storylines were introduced with little to no explanation. The acting and pacing was awful. There were more questions than answers and not in a good way. Unlike the other two movies in the trilogy that stepped into the ‘so bad it was good’ category, Halloween Ends does not. We get ‘closure’ only because the movie said we did.

You can watch Halloween Ends in theaters and on Peacock.

'Halloween Ends' review: A disappointing end to more than just a trilogy
‘Halloween Ends’ review: A disappointing end to more than just a trilogy
Halloween Ends Review
Halloween Ends does a poor job in tying things together. Unlike the other two movies in the trilogy that stepped into the 'so bad it was good' category, We get 'closure' only because the movie said we did.
Reader Rating0 Votes
0
Opening credits
Classic theme song
The trilogy is FINALLY over
Confusing storyline
No explanations for actions
Michael Meyers character assassination
Slow and messy first 2/3 of the movie followed by a rushed final act
Corey
Allyson
Corey/Allyson relationship
Writing and dialogue- felt like there was no real direction
Bold ideas by director that did not mesh well with franchise
2.5
Poor

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