Halloween Ends – Film Review

Four years after her last encounter with masked killer Michael Myers, Laurie Strode is living with her granddaughter and trying to finish her memoir. Myers hasn’t been seen since, and Laurie finally decides to liberate herself from rage and fear and embrace life. However, when a young man stands accused of murdering a boy that he was babysitting, it ignites a cascade of violence and terror that forces Laurie to confront the evil she can’t control.

The fact that such an iconic franchise is finally coming to a close after all these years makes me genuinely emotional, mainly because it is my favorite horror franchise of all-time. I’ll never ever forget the first time I watched John Carpenter‘s 1978 classic slasher that started it all, and I’ll never forget the countless times I’ve seen it since.

There is a reason why this series is so iconic, and there’s also a reason why it’s so divisive. With thirteen main installments, there are bound to be a handful of films that many fans argue about, and that’s fine. What I didn’t expect was for the David Gordon Green trilogy to be so hotly debated.

In my personal opinion, his trilogy is sublime and is the best out of any of the Halloween timelines. To this day, my favorite film in the decade-spanning franchise has to be the 2018 Halloween film. It took everything we loved about that original slasher and dialed it up to eleven.

The kills were brutal, the story was poignant and emotional. It introduced us to fresh new characters that were likeable, and it also presented us with a more violent Michael Myers than what we were used to. Kills was an excellent sequel that felt like it was building to something truly epic.

And now, that truly epic film is here in the form of Halloween Ends, which serves as the conclusion to the Blumhouse/Green saga of films for the series. This was absolutely not the kind of film that I was expecting it to be, but that’s not a bad thing. As a matter of fact, this is probably my second favorite entry in the whole franchise, right behind the 2018 film.

There is nothing that you can do to prepare yourself for how out of left field this entry is. Seriously. Thus far, the Green films have seemingly had a certain path and formula. Both Halloween and Kills felt like they went hand in hand whereas Ends feels more like an oddball film, albeit one that still feels like the perfect follow-up to Kills, as well as the best possible franchise-capper they could’ve come up with.

One thing I absolutely loved about this film is that it puts an extraordinary amount of focus on characters, their motives, and their emotions. There are tons of scenes scattered throughout that explore Laurie Strode’s mind and what she has been going through ever since the events of the previous two.

Obviously, she has been through a lot, and has been to Hell and back many times now. Naturally, because of all the torment and pain she has gone through ever since she was young herself, Laurie definitely knows a thing or two about trauma and being a victim of Michael Myers, and she wants to open up, even if it may be a little painful to do so mentally.

Ends sees Laurie more confident and stronger than she has been in ages. She’s finally found her footing. At the beginning of this film, she is writing a memoir all about her experiences with Myers on Halloween, while also detailing her life since then and what it’s been like for her. How scary it can all be when your life quite literally changes with one horrifying night.

She isn’t in the movie as much as you may think she would be, but Jamie Lee Curtis is, coming as a surprise to absolutely nobody, fantastic once again. Kills sort of thrust her to the sidelines in order to tell the story of Michael coming to strike fear into the hearts of Haddonfield while Laurie recovers in a hospital.

Here, though, Laurie is very much so out of hospital and ready to fight Michael if the time comes. The 2018 film teased this wonderfully, showing the iconic final girl practicing at her very own backyard shooting range. This final entry definitely comes full circle.

More than anything, Ends is a heck of an emotional and searing character drama than a slasher. There are some parts of my brain that honestly refuse to call this a slasher because of just how much of a focus it puts on character depth than actually thrills and kills, which is fine by me, by the way.

Most of the film focuses on a brand new character named Corey Cunningham (portrayed marvellously by Rohan Campbell), who has a tragic and checkered backstory. Essentially, in 2019, while babysitting a young boy named Jeremy, something goes terribly wrong and Jeremy is accidentally killed.

Corey didn’t do it intentionally but that’s not the way the folks of Haddonfield view it. To them, he is evil, just like Michael Myers is evil. He can’t even go out to the gas station to fill up without getting harassed by the citizens. He constantly gets beat up by a group of bullies, and because of how weak he feels mentally, he is, in turn, too weak to fight them physically.

These demons are tormenting Corey and he wakes up every single day in a significantly worse battle with his mental health than the day previous. He is without a doubt the most interesting and brilliantly written character in the entire film. Keep in mind, this is a film in which iconic characters such as Laurie Strode and Michael Myers are present.

And although it’s already been mentioned, I must reiterate just how fantastic Rohan Campbell does in the role of Corey. This is the kind of character that commands a truly skilled actor to step into his shoes, and Campbell most definitely rose to the occasion. I can’t say a whole lot about him other than that for risk of spoilers.

The movie also puts a humongous focus on the character of Allyson Nelson which was such a treat to see, especially after she sort of got sidelined in Kills. Although I adored that one, it certainly would’ve been nice to have gotten a little more time to spend with Allyson.

They really should’ve delved into her mind more, especially since the 2018 film seemed as if it was going to be setting her up to become the new Laurie Strode. Heck, there were even scenes in that movie that directly paralleled the Carpenter classic, which was quite fun to see.

If you are, like me, a fan of Allyson’s and wanted to see her again, this film will pleasantly surprise you. Her character is absolutely different than she was in the two films that came before this one, but the direction they go with her character surprised me greatly in all the best ways.

Unfortunately I cannot really say too much more about her in case some spoilers accidentally get touched upon, but what I will say is that Andi Matichak delivers what could potentially be the best performance of her career thus far. This was definitely not an easy character to portray (especially in this film), and yet Matichak made it look that way. She is a severely underrated actress, and I can only hope that she gets cast in more roles down the line.

Now, since this is a Halloween movie, there are inevitably going to be a ton of people who go out to see this movie simply for the kills. The thrill-seekers. People that are on the prowl for bloody, gory goodness. For the first time in the trilogy, I have to say, you may want to stay away from Ends if you’re looking for kills and nothing more.

It’s not a negative thing for me. I hugely appreciated just how deep this movie delved into the characters, but some are certainly going to find this a huge exercise in boredom. Thankfully for you, however, there are some devilishly gruesome kills in the third act that are phenomenal.

There is one kill toward the end that just may be my favorite in the entire franchise. That is saying something because the two films that came before this one were chalked full of bloody goodness. If you thought the head stomping scene from the 2018 film was amazing, just wait until some of the kills in Ends.

I’m just so immensely appreciative of Green and company for actually taking the risks they did here, coming up with a story that is drastically different than anything we have ever seen in a Halloween film before. This is not a traditional slasher. Not at all. But that’s what I love about it.

This is a genuinely gripping movie about the grief, trauma, and emotional battle that victims of Michael Myers would be going through, especially Laurie Strode. Green and company could have just made this a straight-forward slasher with little room for fresh ideas, but they adamantly refused. Originality will always win over familiarity. Halloween Ends is anything but familiar.