In Halloween Ends, the biggest killer may be unfair expectations
Despite a great performance by Jamie Lee Curtis, the Michael Myers-Laurie Strode relationship comes to an unsatisfying close
Film Reviews halloween
After 44 years, the saga of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers finally concludes—or we’re supposed to believe it does, anyway, with Halloween Ends. The film wraps up the cycle of movies that began in 2018 with David Gordon Green’s eponymous franchise reboot, as well as the entire history between Strode and Myers, save for the installments whose mythology does not fit into (or was actively rejected from) the timeline that began in 1978 with John Carpenter’s groundbreaking original before jumping unceremoniously 40 years forward. Necessary though it may be, eliminating all of that interstitial storytelling feels like a counterintuitive choice for a finale not only obsessed with its characters’ legacies, but determined to make you feel them; but maybe that’s also why, sadly, this finale isn’t particularly good.
Though it marks a significant improvement over the cartoonish political commentary and dim-witted characterizations of 2021’s Halloween Kills—and how could it not?—Halloween Ends does not thread the needle needed to stitch together the three most recent films, much less provide a suture for almost four-and-a-half decades of canon. Instead, Green again attempts to simultaneously deliver a grisly, relentless slasher movie, a measured character study, and an examination of decades-old trauma (or “TROW-ma,” as star Jamie Lee Curtis pronounces it)—in the process leaving viewers without even the benefit of a temporary sugar high.
Four years after the events of both Halloween 2018 and Halloween Kills, both of which you may have forgotten took place on the same night, Laurie Strode (Curtis) has recovered from her injuries and (mostly) fully moved on from her obsession with Michael Myers. Not only is she completely over the murder of her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), but Laurie has fully transformed into a pie-making, Halloween-loving sexagenarian whose chief activities include writing a memoir about her experiences and caring for her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), who’s now a nurse.
Although (or perhaps because) some of Haddonfield’s citizens blame her for Michael Myers’ reign of terror—which ended only with his complete disappearance after Kills—Laurie extends compassion to fellow outcasts like Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), who was involved with the death of a local child a few years earlier. She initially encourages him to ask Allyson on a date, but after Corey has an unexpected encounter with Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney), who meekly survives in the town’s sewers, the young man develops a newfound confidence—and a clarity of purpose—that scares Laurie into warning her granddaughter of dating him. By then, however, Allyson and Corey have begun to develop deeper feelings for one another, forcing Laurie to revisit her traumatic past in order to save her granddaughter, even if the process of doing so risks alienating them from one another forever.
While narrating the book that she is constantly revising, Laurie talks often about the evil in individuals’ lives changing shape; the choice of language feels more like an Easter egg for fans of the ’78 original (where Michael was called “The Shape”) than any profound psychological insight. But it also gives this film an explanation of exactly how a young man like Corey could share, absorb, or inherit Michael Myers’ murderous instincts (which one of those it is, the movie never decides). But for a film about people who cannot outrun their legacies, it also feels like a tell that this is no better or smarter an installment than any before it, since more Myers-related mythology has been forgotten over the course of the series than this conclusive trilogy is willing to remember.
Green and co-screenwriters Danny McBride, Paul Brad Logan, and Chris Bernier soft-pedal the possibility that any real “transference” occurs between Michael and Corey, but they let the encounter between the two plant a seed that gets watered every time Corey’s bullied by local teenagers, or menaced by a cop who’s romantically interested in Allyson, or eventually, by Laurie’s sober admonitions to leave her granddaughter alone.
That the prospective victims all end up being so one-dimensional makes it easy to want to see them die. But Green, via Laurie, acknowledges that Haddonfield is collectively mired in unresolved pain, grief, or anger—so shouldn’t they be treated with the same empathy as poor Corey? Questions like this are too complex for Halloween Ends, which after Kills depicted Karen’s death so dismissively, gives formerly haggard and reclusive survivalist Laurie Strode an all-timer of a glow up as she immediately gets over her unimaginable loss in a glossy “moving on” montage. Meanwhile, the film sidelines Michael Myers, whose diminishing powers of regeneration necessitate the rise of another to take his place, to instead follow a kid who answers the challenge of making Haddonfield’s sewers run red with blood.
Whether or not this is the last time she plays Laurie Strode, Curtis performs with a confidence and ownership that certainly suggests it’s the last for a while; after Halloween 2018, in which Laurie was depicted (if understandably) as a stringy-haired kook, she’s become the ultimate sex-positive, progressive grandma who also happens to be lying in wait for her mass murderer-nemesis to return. Matichak has matured as an actress in just a few short years, and she brings real substance to Allyson’s frustration and uncertainty about staying in a place that’s both “home” and home to her greatest trauma, even if the script undercuts her ability to sell the fast-moving relationship she develops with Corey. As her would-be boyfriend, rescuer, and eventually, the embodiment of her biggest fears, Campbell primarily looks constipated, as if he’s struggling to wait for the moment to pick up Michael’s homicidal mantle.
Once again, David Gordon Green’s films miss an opportunity to clarify whether or not Michael Myers actually knows who Laurie Strode is, and consequently, to explore a really intriguing notion about the ways individuals center themselves—justifiably or not—in traumatic events. (Thanks to the excision of 1981’s Halloween II from this timeline, the characters have no direct relationship, and the events leading to them crossing paths in Halloween 2018 are pure happenstance. Watch it again.) Intentionality, even just from the filmmakers, could have truly shaped this conclusion to Strode’s timeline into something explosive and operatic, as well as cathartic. But this is another film from Green where the immediate payoffs are more important than deeper, long-term ones, even amid an orgy of sly visual and narrative references.
Then again, it’s important to remember that this is the latest installment of a long-running horror franchise whose reputation, despite its groundbreaking impact and its endurance, is hardly unassailable. These films should not be burdened with too many expectations of greatness. Rather, a Halloween movie has to deliver an escalating series of grisly deaths, even before it provides a resolution (or comfortable resting place) for the most famous monster-final girl relationship in film history. In which case, Halloween Ends is almost passable as a nondescript sequel—a little blood pumped into the carcass of an indefatigable slab of intellectual property. But for somebody who has fought and lost and survived for so many years, it’s less vital a finale than Laurie Strode deserves.
119 Comments
Alright, be honest. Who’s expectations were all that high for this thing?
yeah the last movie was terrible, so I’m not expecting anything great.
This movie suffers from imposter syndrome, like Friday the 13th part 5 all over again. F
After Halloween Kills? Not a single soul.Damn you, Gil Toddchrist!
No, Who was in the first movie.
I don’t know.
Third sequel!
What?No, What’s on second.
My only hope was that it be better than the laughably bad Kills. One question, does evil die tonight?
I really didn’t expect them to sideline Meyers and introduce a new killer though. That sound really dumb.
In your opinion, which was the last really good Halloween film? I didn’t really enjoy any of the Rob Zombie and David Gordon Green films.
I’ve only seen a couple. The original and the one with LL Cool J & Michelle Williams. I saw the beginning of the Rob Zombie one, but either turned it off or fell asleep.
Yeah, my buddies and I pretty much had an “MST3k” session with that first Zombie Halloween. Probably the last one I enjoyed was either Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers or H5: The Revenge of… Oh, and if you haven’t seen it, I would recommend Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. The sole Halloween movie without Michael, and it’s a pretty damn good film.
The further you get away from the first three, the more shit the franchise becomes until you hit the nadir of “Trika treat, mutahfuckah!” – so as long as it was better than Part VI, I’d be okay with it.It was barely better than part VI.
I’m glad my grandmother wasn’t sex positive. I don’t think I could’ve handled that.
It seems she was at least positive enough for you to exist. And what more can one ask for?
Oh…she was.
So. It’s both a “spine-chilling climax” and an “unsatisfying close.” I guess both can be true but, I dunno.
Both are true, the movie really comes alive when it finally gets to what we all came for, the Michael vs. Laurie showdown. Getting there is the unsatisfying part, not bad, but not what most of us are there for. But, I’m going to give it another watch or two, maybe without those expectations, it will grow on me.
Isn’t that all of 3 minutes?
FWIW, I didn’t think I said that but I suppose there are a few suspenseful moments along with the tedium of its storytelling. Either way I hope you like it (or whoever wants to, anyway)!
It’s in the article synopsis unfortunately
jesus for a newcomer that’s really hard to distinguish if you felt the film was good or bad. lol like wtf “I could say the climax was very exciting but I could also say it was very bad” like come the fuck on.
Do you really need someone to tell you if a movie’s good or bad? It could be both, alternatively or concurrently, in the reviewer’s opinion and you still might enjoy it. Have some faith in your own judgement!
This is categorically the most boring movie in the entire run. Makes the Curse of Michael Myers interesting in comparison. F
The synopsis is probably reworded from imdb and the reviewer probably didn’t know what it was going to say when the review was written.
Im not sure if this even qualifies as a true Halloween movie. Murders don’t even occur on Halloween for gods sake. It’s basically FridaY the 13th V: New Blood. An imposter killer bores audiences…TO DEATH!
This just confirms my suspicion that the 2018 Halloween should have been a one-and-done film rather than the first part of a trilogy.
Gonna be honest that, at the end of the day, I think Halloween 78 should have been a one and done movie. Maybe with the exception of Halloween 3 because its just so silly and not like any of the other films
I’ll go to bat for H20. It’s not perfect, but it does what it sets out to do – and I feel like does it substantially more satisfyingly than this trilogy – which have half the catharsis and three times the collected runtime.
Much like Jurassic Park, if only the first film existed we would probably still be fine as a society.
Didn’t 3 start as a completely independent project and the studio slapped the Halloween title on it for marketing purposes? Because that’s a wild movie but clearly has zippo to do with Meyers et al.
John Carpenters vision of the “Halloween” franchise was that each movie would have been a completely different story. The thread would have been them all happening on Halloween. When the first movie was such a huge hit and Meyers became an instant icon, they immediately made a sequel with him and Curtis. 3 was actually a return to the original plan but after it did not do great and audiences were like “Where is Mike?” they went back to the standard sequel trope
Makes sense. Long-term would have been a much better strategy as well. One that’s still available to some enterprising producer, BTW.
The answer of correctitude:
Gonna be honest that, at the end of the day, I think Halloween 78 should have been a one and done movie. Maybe with the exception of Halloween 3 because its just so silly and not like any of the other films
Halloween 3 is great.
Halloween 3 is great.
I would have voted for none-and-done.
Yeah, there has been zero need to do sequels to the 2018 movie, let alone two of them back to back. The 2018 was a great reunion with a solid and exciting climax.
Holloween 2018 made a shit ton of money and got unexpected rave reviews…of course they made it into a trilogy with diminishing returns. It’s the horror movie life cycle.
I’m still impressed that Gordon Greene eliminated Halloween 2 from his continuity but also borrowed one of its best sequences with the steadicam following Michael around town. That’s some chutzpah. Anyway, you know who remade the heck out of Halloween? Rob Zombie.
Rob Zombies Halloween is just one of the many examples of Rob Zombie being like “I love this, let me not get why this was good or fun and make a movie”. Giving Michael Myers an origin is a terrible idea. Of course Rob Zombies Halloween 2 is a pretty fun watch
I sort of agree that giving Michael an origin ain’t the best idea, but I don’t think Zombie did it because he doesn’t understand the franchise, I think he did it because we already had Halloween and whatever mystery Myers had was already long gone so if you’re going to do a remake you might as well go in a different direction. I don’t think it really worked out, but I see where he was coming from.
Agreed on the sequel, though. When he was free to do his own thing it worked out a lot better.
I think it might have worked if it had been either a faithful remake of 1978 (because the parts that are taken from the original are super faithfully done right down to the dialogue – similar almost to Psycho or that ‘90s Night of the Living Dead) OR a prequel about Michael Myers as a child. It’s really two separate movies. If it had been a kid Michael prequel, it could have been good if Michael’s evil was inexplicable rather than the result of a broken home. Imagine if Michael was a troubled kid who the school wanted to help, and whose parents were trying to connect with him and seemed genuinely nice. He can be picked on at school, but maybe no more than other kids. It could then subvert the whole “this is an origin story that explains everything” and just have Michael slowly reveal himself to be a dead eyed killing machine, without ever revealing why exactly he’s like this. In fact, it could be an anti-prequel – rather than telling us the story of his origin, it reveals that he’s just already like this and maybe always was. The bit where he kills his family would be so much more horrifying if they were genuinely good. The bullied “sensitive” kid being the slasher would be a novelty, and I feel like the inexplicableness of it – and the dead eyes – would make up for the lack of a mask and the presence of a backstory.
Co-sign on the origin. It’s like when Hannibal Rising (the book, never saw the movie) gave Lecter an origin story that directly contradicted his own statements in Silence, that nothing “happened” to make him this way, he just is. That’s much scarier than someone living through a war and nearly freezing and starving until some soldiers kill his sister and make a soup out of her. I prefer inexplicable evil to some contrived set of circumstances like that. L&O SVU has done this to good effect a few times as well, when a child commits a callous murder and the conclusion is that there’s just something fundamentally missing from their psyche.
I’m the weirdo that welcomed the white trash origin story, but thought that H2 was pure shite.
I agree that his Halloween barely works as a remake, but as its own thing it’s better than a lot of Halloween movies. I really dislike Zombie’s reliance on sexual violence, but the way he roots the horror in mental illness and working class abuse, while also suggesting (same as Carpenter) that Michael is just wrong, is pretty striking. I would definitely rank it above Zombie’s Halloween 2, which is much more caught up in its own mythology.
I haven’t seen Greene’s “Halloween” since it came out, but I do recall many callbacks to “Halloween II”, that steadicam shot being one of them. Boy though, I really don’t remember much about Greene’s “Halloween” at all. Let’s see – wasn’t a lot of it set at a hospital, like “Halloween II”? Some of it? And…yeah, that’s it.
Yeah the impression I get is that Green didn’t want the baggage of Laurie being Michael’s sister, and wanted to take it back to the randomness of the original, not that he actually dislikes II. Both 2018 and Kills are loaded with callbacks to II, rather than simply ignoring it. II doesn’t count for continuity, but still seems to count for iconography.
I saw it again a few years ago, and enjoyed it more, having seen lots of giallo over the years. It does have really nice cinematography. And I liked the fatter sound of the arrangement of the iconic music. The original is still best but I could see and hear and appreciate some of the conscious choices of the filmmaker.
Yeah that was the problem. He wanted to have his cake and film it too.
No worries. No one but the most deluded had expectations.
Oh I expected it to suck.
I haven’t seen any of the Curtis-starring later films, based upon the terrible word of mouth they all get. I assume she likes playing the role and the money, so good for her, but I’m not contributing.
Cant wait for the next film in 3 years, Halloween Begins Again or whatever. No horror franchise with a subtitle like ends or the final chapter ever stays dead. Not a single one. Hell maybe Jamie Lee Curtis can come back for the next reboot where we ignore these films, when she’s 90.
Is there any example of a sequel where the creative team have said “We’re ignoring all the shit sequels and only using the good stuff!” that isn’t itself rubbish?
Halloween 2018 is about the only one(but they fucked up the next two so people forget that first one was really good). Does Prey count?
Prey is certainly good, I’ll give you that much. Obviously being a prequel it doesn’t have to deal with the other sequels continuity-wise, but I’ll be honest I don’t know the filmmakers’s attitudes towards the other Predator films.
2018 gets undue praise because it’s not as bad as the movies that came before it.
I’m not expecting much agreement, but I think Terminator: Dark Fate fits the bill.
But that’s because they changed the timeline in Genysis.
Boooooooo! Boooooooo!(Still a better film than Knives Out, though!)
I know some people like the new Hellraiser movie which kinda did that… ummmm. I think this is more a horror film tradition, I know a lot of Hammer horror films just gave up with continuity at a point.
H20? or did it not ignore 4,5 and 6? I can’t remembetI recently watched a “producer’s cut” of the one with Paul Rudd, it wasn’t bad.
Wes Cravens new Nightmare?
“Halloween: Resurrection”. Or “Reborn”. Or something else with “Re-” in the name.Place your bets.
Halloween Resurrection already exists, its either the worst or second worst in the series.
My money’s on the next Halloween just being titled Halloween. The potential audience can’t look up reviews if the title isn’t search engine optimized!
You know what I want this now. 4 movies in a 14 film franchise being called Halloween is so bad I love it.
There’s always Halloween 3 Season of the Witch, which is how this franchise was supposed to go, before it got endlessly repetitive and boring.I’d like to see Judy Greer as a witch.
I’m still holding out for Halloween 3 2.
Honestly when they announced that they were making two more films after 2018 to round out a trilogy, I was really hoping that Halloween Kills would be Halloween 3 2 and have nothing to do with 2018 or Michael Myers, and then Myers and Laurie would be back (again) for Halloween Ends. It would be so perfect if the middle part of this “trilogy” was just a stand-alone sequel to Halloween 3 that has nothing whatsoever to do with the other two.
I really don’t get why horror movies turn into franchises so quickly. I never thought any of these killers had the staying power to sustain more then a film or two. I much rather anthology horror because horror is more fun when it mixes things up, which is why its a shame that Halloween as an Anthology series never took off.
It’s because horror movies are generally cheap to make, the cashing in on the name recognition is almost always worth it.
And Halloween comes annually, priming the market.
Probably because, 1) It’s easier to write a sequel and just follow they same beats than to come up with an entirely original idea.and 2) Horror movies always make money because they’re made with a modest budget and released during the Fall where there isn’t really anything else playing in theaters.
Okay but how were the kill scenes tho 😛 were they creatively staged at least
It’s a real bummer cause I thought the 2018 Halloween was damn good. And then Halloween Kills gave me such a bad case of whiplash in how poorly put together it was, I honestly couldn’t believe it was made by the same people as the 2018 movie. And of course given how bad HK turned out, I’m sadly not at all surprised that Ends is gonna be a disappointment as well. I’ll likely still watch it, I’ve already come this far, but maybe this is proof that not every movie needs to dovetail into a trilogy or a franchise or a shared universe.
I say watch it and decide for yourself. If you liked the first of this trilogy, you may be surprised. I thought this review was one of those “I don’t like it because its not what I wanted it to be about” reviews that, basically, means then you go make that movie, that’s not what this is. (Plus, they listed the wrong actor as The Shape in the header. Sloppy.) And to say ‘how could it not’ be superior to the second one is totally snide and dismissive about how hard it is to write and make these things. It DEFINITELY could have been as bad or worse than the second one, but its not.
Sorry but the first one of this trilogy was amazing and these sequels were absolutely terrible. Like the 2nd one was laugh out loud bad.
I agree, this film tied much more closely to the first film even though it takes place years later. I think the whole Corey storyline could have been reworked to give a more complex idea of how evil manifests, and could have been chopped down to provide at least a solid hour with Michael.the take that Laurie is somehow just centring herself is kind of silly I find, the whole town seems in agreement that she is an ongoing target to Michael. Regardless, the story is told from her perspective, and this is shit that is happening to her, so let her centre away.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Halloween Ends is a good movie, but I HATED Halloween Kills and I found myself interested in Halloween Ends, throughout its runtime. It kept me watching and intrigued by everything happening. I don’t know if I liked it or not but I definitely didn’t viscerally hate it like the previous film, and I also wasn’t bored.
Free on basic Peacock. Last year, you needed peacock premium to stream Halloween Kills. That says it all.
So now can Michael fight in the Battle of Helm’s Deep?After all, it sounds like he’s a rider of Rohan…….I’ll see myself out.
Kills made such a non-impression on me that I was legitimately surprised to read here that Judy Greer’s character died in it. What a steaming pile.
And I thought the Star Wars sequel trilogy, as a three-part whole, was spectacularly narratively incoherent! This makes it sound as smooth a storytelling ride as LotR.
Damn you elevated horror. When you’re good you’re great, but when your whole thing of needing to be “about” stuff seeps into franchises that don’t need elevation, you just make them boring. Remember the days when we could just have Busta Rhymes make some karate noises and call it, well, unwatchably terrible, but at least amusing?
But what about the trawma? How will we process it??
Some hot spiked cocoa and a viewing of Friday the 13th Part 2, that’s how.
I saw this on Peacock because I already had xfinity so it was “free.” My feeling after watching it? I want my movie back.
Its free on peacock for anyone, regardless of promotional deals. You get nothing back.
I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic about my joke about wanting my money back for a free movie or are serious. Well done, golf clap for oyu.
Dude.. the movie in question is totally free on peacock. You don’t get a free movie for watching it. It’s still a really shitty free movie tho…so technically you own a movie viewing to the movie gods if you watch it.
Ok, you were being serious not sarcastic. I usually don’t feel the need to got into detail about a simple joke but in this case I will make an exception.When someone says they want their money back for a free money, it means the movie sucks so bad that would like money they never spent back as retribution for sitting through the movie. It’s not about wanting a free movie.
I think that if they insist on continuing this franchise even further, they need to do a Halloween 3 again and just say “Michael Myers story is over, here’s a different story set around Halloween”. Like Halloween 2 didn’t live up to its predecessor, but it at least ended the Myers story (which is why it got decanonized), so the alternate universe in which people say “where is Michael Myers?” on seeing Halloween 3 might have had a better Halloween release this year.
Wait…So this is a ‘Jason Goes To Hell’ riff, with a scrub killer instead of the real deal?Ughhhhhhhhh.PS: I’m still surly about ‘Halloween Kills’. It was so bad for so many reasons, but the worst?The *only* reason Michael Myers went after Laurie in H2018 is that *he accidentally got dropped off in front of her house*.
Just got back from seeing it with my brother. It was…..OK, I guess. I can only think of a handful of series finales for horror franchises (Scream 3, Jason Goes to Hell, etc.) and those all turned out to be fauxnales as tv tropes so cleverly call them so there’s not many contemporaries to compare it to.I think the most vexing thing with this trilogy is they keep waffing back and forth on if MM is supernatural evil or just a strong dude with high pain endurance that likes to kill. ‘18 gave evidence for both, Kills indicated the former whereas here he’s explicitly identified as a latter when [spoilers] Laurie kills him. And even that is contradicted, they go destroy his his mutilated corpse.
As far as I’m concerned, this is where it ended. He burned down to the skeleton in that explosion. The skeleton!
What surprised me is that, unlike the previous two flicks, virtually none of the victims were innocent. Pretty much every single one of them was an asshole who has it coming.
I agree. Spoilers….With the exception of Corey’s dad, I wasn’t sad to see anyone go.
Yeah. There was one death that actually didn’t happen that surprised me.
That is, itself, a horror trope. You make hateable characters so audiences can *enjoy* the kills rather than fear the killer.It’s a common problem.
I assumed the absolute best thing to come out of this sequel would be a few weeks of awesome and hilarious interviews with Jamie Lee Curtis and based on this review it seems I was right LOL.
The most excitement this film generated for me was when Sebadoh came on during the costume party.
Goddamn, Danny McBride is up there with Rob Zombie in terms of dudes who could make amazing horror movies, but just… don’t.
Great performance? Seriously? JLC and pretty much everyone in this movie is awful. She’s far better in H20, which as rough as it is stands head and shoulders about the last too Green/McBride movies.My expectations were about as low as can be after the depressingly embarrassing Kills but this somehow didn’t even surpass those. Some of the worst acting and dialogue imaginable. No one talks remotely like a human being, and the men all put on strange accents like they’re in a James Dean movie. It has one very creative kill and I don’t think it has any redeeming factors other than how unintentionally funny it is. “Let’s burn it down.” “I’ll light the match.”
The decision to bench Michael Myers for the whole movie which is marketed as the thrilling showdown conclusion of a triology that has been marketed as a big showdown is hilarious. Laurie and Michael have shared the screen for about 8 minutes out of these three new movies.
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This review seems to completely miss the originality of this installment, or is it trying to avoid a spoiler? SPOILER BELOWᵐᶦᶜʰᵃᵉˡ ᵒⁿˡʸ ʷᵃⁿᵗˢ ᵗᵒ ᵏᶦˡˡ ᵍᵃʳᵇᵃᵍᵉ ᵖᵉᵒᵖˡᵉ ⁿᵒᵗ ʳᵃⁿᵈᵒᵐ ᵒⁿᵉˢ
I think the new Halloween triliogy can be summed up pretty much like this: The first two acts of a great movie are in the first 2/3rds of the first one, and the final act of that movie is stretched to make this… thing. With the rest of it being bad filler made just to get money.
TRAO-MUH
Hoo boy. This was the most frustrating horror movie I may have ever seen. Every time they did something I liked, it’d immediately be followed by baffling choice after baffling choice.
This whole trilogy reboot has been marketed as the Final Showdown between old Laurie and Michael. In fact, between all 3 movies, they’ve only fought for about 8 minutes.
I’m a bit new to horror and loving it and so for someone like me I’ve never really seen any of the Halloween movies I’m just looking for spooky season stuff. I always see all of these slash movies always get C or D grades but they get so much hype so like whats the deal. Are people just really hard on these feels or are they hot garbage? If so why do they keep getting made.
Utter Shit nonredeemable Don’t watch it will make you stupid .
My bar for what I’m willing to tolerate for a Halloween movie is be better than Halloween: Resurrection and Halloween Ends easily passed.
I saw this Friday and i’m still thinking about it. Such a weird movie.it had some interesting and bold narrative choices but also questionable character turn from the granddaughter (I thought the granddaughter becoming boycrazy was a bit weird, but i guess the pain and grief of losing parents and escaping a serial killer will fuck your head up.).the Granddaughter/Corey stuff reminded me of Dern and Cage in Wild at Heart lol.I give the film props for trying to explore whether evil is something created by one’s environment or something already within us.the lack of Micheal was strange and the moment when he strangles Corey and “see’s” into his past, made me chuckle but i’m glad the writers tried to do something different.i’m still processing it, but i think it’s a good end chapter to a four movie saga (Halloween ‘78 and this trilogy), but not good as a standalone movie.
3 1/2 stars out of 5.
For the majority of the movie, the script seemed to be that Cory had died when being thrown over the bridge (and this was his last few seconds of life, his revenge playing out in his head) or that The Shape was a figment of his imitation all along (which is why Myers spared him in instances where he would have killed him without notice), that The Evil had infected Cory now (the eye mind-meld thing, followed by the metaphor of emerging from the sewer as a rebirth).This would explain Michael’s absence for the majority of the first couple of reels, it was all in Cory’s head. But then they fuck up the idea when Michael shows up as a real physical dude and starts murdering people. If you were going to piss off fans with a non-Michael Halloween, stuck to your guns and not wuss out at the last second!
H20 was the way to end Laurie’s TROW-ma. She was a “functioning alcoholic”, she hated her ex (that was apart of the most TROW-matic moment of Life), and she was trying to re-establish herself but simply couldn’t.Furthermore, I felt H20 did an interesting job of showing us a stark contrast to the Laurie we saw in the first movie. She didn’t want to ask Ben Traimer out in the first one, but she was definitely able to express her interest in Will. She was more bullish in her relationships than she was meek.But then we saw her regain that spark from the first one it in that moment where she was right – He was coming for her. After years of night-terrors and day-screams, she looks up and sees Michael right in front of her, and has to go through her exercise of blinking multiple times to stop the TROW-ma and invest in the reality (it’s unfortunate for her the reality was He was there).
In H20, she wasn’t “waiting” for him to return – she was worried as shit and scared for his return, but took control when it came.Jamie Lee Curtis played Strode “smart” in H20, as these horror films were billed in the early 2000s. But she also played her relatably broken – asking for another glass of wine at lunch as her glass is still full and giving the waiter shit for giving her a look. And THEN in the next scene yelling at her son for sneaking off campus.
She also didn’t have to wear a crap wig and could be the short-haired JLC she actually is and we all love. And it still actually made sense in character-context.
I got to the scene in Halloween 2018 where she bumrushed Kitty’s dinner with her family (o – they’re crooked) and drank the glasses on the table almost like a caricature, and I turned it off. It was SO bad, so terrible, and so terribly badly forced.
When taken on their own, Halloween 1+2 and H20 are the perfect trilogy for Laurie Strode as a character. I could write a whole dissertation on why Halloween: 20 Years Later is the perfect end to Michael Myers, as well.
I am glad to see Green’s Halloween end. Not the actual movie, mind you – just the conclusion to this crap trilogy.