Title: Halloween Ends (2022)
Director: David Gordon Green
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Mtichak, Rohan Campbell, Will Patton
For those who don’t know, I love horror – I am a horror head, and Halloween is one of my top 2 franchises. Initially, it was my number 1, and Scream was my number 2 – but, after this film, it can no longer be my number 1; Halloween Ends ruined it for me. I know that I sound a bit dramatic, but honestly, I wish I had never watched this film…. TWICE!
The Halloween franchise is one if not the most prominent horror franchises because the original ‘Halloween’ in 1978 started the slasher genre within horror, spawning other franchises from it, such as Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, to name a few.
Halloween is a franchise with ten films with different timelines, storylines and two remakes. When the new trilogy was announced, I was excited to see Michael Myers on the big screen, especially since I was of age, to go to the cinema to experience it. Every Halloween I have watched has been online and on TV because I was underage to see any of them. When it was revealed that Jamie Lee Curtis would be returning to portray her debut character – it made me more excited to see the film.
Halloween 2018 was the first franchise film I saw at the cinema, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved the change in the storyline; the discussion of trauma and how it can affect people hit home for me, which added to why I loved it so much – and why I saw the film multiple times. Halloween Kills, I was 50/50 on the film. From the trailer, I thought I would enjoy it thoroughly – however, I thought wrong.
Then we head down to this third film in the trilogy. Man. This film made me numb when I first saw it – It made me angry with the film, the story, and the ending. Halloween Ends did an outright disservice to the legendary character, Michael Myers. Once I saw the film, I felt deflated, let down and disappointed.
It is now January, so last week, I decided to give Halloween another chance with a clear head and an open mind to what had occurred when I first watched it.
Review:
The opening of Halloween Ends is an opening that is surprising and grisly and gets you thinking – it brings excitement, depending on how you take deaths in films. It takes you back to the original Halloween night of the 2018 film. The opening is about as interesting and exciting as the film gets for the next 100 minutes. We are introduced to Rohan Campbell’s character, Corey, who seemingly appears harmless and is there to do one job, babysitting a local child. This automatically shifts the narrative of Halloween of Michael Myers stalking babysitters as they are usually female. With the opening, you believe that Michael will return. However, the audience is fooled, and that does not happen.
With a storyline that feels like a complete filler – characters being introduced in the late stages of the series, and the lack of Michael Myers in the film seriously ruined the film for me. I tried to remain level-headed and not place my needs on what I wanted to see in the film, but I couldn’t. The second time I watched it, I felt more annoyed by the film’s direction.
Thirty minutes into the film and Michael had still not appeared; no killings until the 40th minute, and to top it off, Michael did not even do the majority of the killings – they made him seem like a beaten-down older man – In hindsight, I understand that he probably is – but that defeats the message in Halloween kills when he was mass murdering an entire crew of Firefighters.
The trilogy was initially announced to finally close the door on the Halloween Franchise for Jamie Lee Curtis and her character, Laurie strode – and the ending of Halloween Ends indicates that happening. Do I genuinely believe that this is the end of Halloween? No, because there are other timelines. Do I think that it is the end of this timeline? Yes, 100%; there is no coming back from how David Gordon Green finished it.
I don’t think I will watch this film again; if I am honest, the damage has been done, and I don’t ever think I could try to enjoy it from a different point of view. I have my opinions, and my likes and Halloween Ends did not fulfil them.
Rating 1/5