The final instalment of one of cinema’s best loved horror franchises comes to a close with Halloween Ends, culminating in a final showdown between its two infamous main characters.
Set 4 years after Michael Myers’ last attack, we reconnect with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) living with her granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak) and doing her damnedest to move on and live a normal life. Writing memoirs of her final girl legacy seems to be helping her and there’s a big difference in the Laurie we saw in the movie’s predecessor. A bunch of new characters are introduced but it’s Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) who drives Halloween’s final chapter.
An interesting aspect to the story is seeing how Laurie deals with trying to re-integrate into Haddonfield’s society. Whispers and occasional confrontations are a constant reminder of her history but perhaps luckily for her, a shockingly unfortunate incident pushes Corey into the limelight as he becomes an outcast and the town’s latest piece of gossip. His journey made the movie a little confusing during the first half but while what unfolds for him is convincing, his involvement with and influence over Allyson had me eye rolling in disbelief of choices her character was making.
Whatever your opinion was on 2021’s Halloween Kills, you can’t deny that the actual kills were creative, fresh and shocking at times. The fun and impact that element had was seriously lacking here and while there were some glorious moments of gore (and a really funny bicycle joke), they just didn’t happen frequently enough. Some of the dialogue was so cheesy and absurd it became hard to take much of it seriously and unfortunately, half way into Halloween Ends I found myself almost wishing that it just would.
Jamie Lee Curtis is, of course, fantastic to watch again and the final showdown is one of its saving graces but it is just a shame that there was no real build up to it. I can see what David Gordon Green and the writers were going for and perhaps if this was part of a whole new story, carried out over a few movies it would have worked really well. But deviating from giving Michael Myers the amount of screen time we want and have come to expect really felt disappointing.
Verdict
The movie’s ending does feel final and it even manages to sting us with a little tease but by the end of it, Halloween Ends felt more trick than treat.
