Horrorfest 2022: Halloween Ends

Halloween Ends
Directed by David Gordon Green
Written by Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak, Rohan Campbell, Will Patton, Kyle Richards and James Jude Courtney
USA, 2022

At last, the totally 100% definitely final HALLOWEEN movie is here – HALLOWEEN ENDS. Marketed as the final confrontation between babysitter turned senior citizen Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and evil incarnate spree/serial killer Michael Meyers (James Jude Courtney), this flick instead spends much of its running time focusing on a new character: mild-mannered Cory Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), readjusting to life on the outside after a four-year prison stint for accidentally killing a kid in his charge.

He strikes up a relationship with Curtis’ granddaughter (Andi Matichak) from the last two HALLOWEEN movies, but after initially feeling empathy for him, Curtis eventually begins to see evil in his eyes, and soon we’re wondering if we’ve got a proto-Michael Meyers on our hands, here.

Speaking of Michael Meyers, you might be wondering what he’s been up to since his two-movie kill-crazy rampage leading up to this one and the answer is he’s been hanging out in the sewer.

So, I don’t know what to think of this movie. It has good stuff in it and bad stuff. The bad stuff is not necessarily what most people are complaining about – the fact that it focuses on this kid or the fact that Michael Meyers isn’t in it much – that stuff doesn’t bug me and I kind of like the fact that they’re trying something new.

What’s frustrating and difficult to figure out is… why now? Why wait until the third movie of a series-within-a-series that has been touted as a self-contained trilogy and marketed as something with a beginning, middle and end to suddenly take a left turn?  

During the actual movie I was preoccupied with this stuff. After the movie, after a few days went by, and I thought about it more as its own stand-alone thing and not part of a series, I began to like the choices made in the movie more. Even though it still has big confusing flaws.

Maybe now that this series is over David Gordon Green can go back to making quiet, well-observed indie arthouse movies about the human experience. Maybe.