Halloween Ends, and Thank The Lord it's Over

Hi! Today, I'm going to complain about Halloween Ends, because even though I have better things to do with my time than bash two-year-old movies, things like homework, I'm tired, I don't want to talk to people, I don't want to do any more work, and I want to complain about Halloween Ends. I watched this film a few years ago with some college friends, and I distinctly remember us all finding the self-serious ending of this film hilarious, but that's kind of just what happens when you put a bunch of guys in a room: everything is funny. Now, I decided to rewatch the film to review it, because frankly, I'd forgotten a lot of it, and I do have to give the film credit where credit is due and point out the fact that the third part of the Blumhouse Trilogy is a pretty significant step up in quality from its predecessor, Halloween Kills. It takes some ambitious swings that pay off in some ways while also disappointing supremely in others, but hey, at least it's swinging. The first part of the film, while not really being a Halloween film, is pretty solid on its own merits. But I also want to point out that Halloween Kills is not a very high bar to clear in the slightest, and so just because Ends is the better chapter, that's not saying much. It's a film that's confused in its identity, confused in how to portray that identity, and one that may have been better off sticking to its surprisingly solid outcast-love tangent without forcing itself to try to be a Halloween movie at the same time, because once the film's opposing identities were forced into conflict with each other, any semblance of coherency just went out the window, and the film just overall ended up reeking of studio interference, and even though I couldn't find any confirmation of this when I searched for it, it seems that a lot of other bloggers out there also pick up on what I noticed and likewise share my suspicions. Anyway, this is the last film in the Blumhouse Halloween trilogy, so if you like this review series, too bad! It's going to be all done after this article. But I hope you've enjoyed it so far because even though the concept was getting tiring after one pretty good movie and two stinkers, taking a break from watching and writing about arthouse films and critically acclaimed pieces in favor of watching some more pulpy pieces has felt kind of nice, so maybe I'll do something like this again in the future. But for now, on to the review!

Halloween Ends, the final installment from Blumhouse Productions in the reboot trilogy of Halloween, follows Laurie Strode four years after the events of Halloween Kills. She lives with her granddaughter, Allyson Nelson, and works on her memoir about her past experiences. However, little do the two realize that a series of events will put them on a collision course with Corey, a hated boy accused of murdering his babysitter as well as the boogeyman himself, a previously missing Michael Myers.

First off, I do want to compliment the movie for some things that others actually criticized it for. For all of its problems, Halloween Ends does not share the dire pacing of Halloween Kills. Well, not in the same way. Sure, it has some really, really bad issues with plotting that I'll discuss later, but what I mean is that this movie actually felt like it possessed something resembling momentum, unlike its predecessor, which was an extremely stagnant piece. Sure, we don't get to see as much Michael Myers in this movie as some would have liked, but to be honest with you, I'll take the movie with Corey and Allyson's relationship that has a semblance of intention over whatever the heck that whole "evil dies tonight" crap was. And for the first time since Laurie Strode was re-introduced to me in the 2018 film, I actually kind of found myself liking some of the characters in this film. Corey and Allyson are pretty easy to root for, if somewhat shallow when compared to couples in other dramas, and while I do get that their relationship kind of robbed this Halloween movie of feeling more like a Halloween movie than it did, to the point that I wondered if the romance subplot might have worked better as it's own standalone story without being tied down by the Halloween franchise narrative demands, the interpersonal character drama was definitely the high point of this movie, and even though it does create some issues by putting two different types of stories in conflict with each other, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the romantic subplot. As far as the character of Corey goes, he was interesting. Sometimes he feels like a monster, but mostly, he feels like a man. And yeah, he might not be Oscar material from a writing or acting standpoint, but his character was definitely better than this movie deserved, although there's still an aspect to Corey that ends up tainting my feelings on him and on this perceived strength of Halloween Ends. As far as Laurie and Michael go, they're more of the same-old-same-old from a quality and screen presence standpoint, and you won't really see anything here regarding the two of them that you haven't already seen before. But what you will be seeing here is a lot and I mean a lot less of the two of them going at it or even preparing to do so. The movie gets so caught up in its subplots that it just doesn't give the relationship between Laurie and Michael the attention it's due, and I did not appreciate this lack of prioritization in the slightest.

Moving onto the plot of Halloween Ends, it's something of a mess, predictably enough. Sure, it's not quite as undesirable as whatever the heck the non-existent story of Halloween Kills was, but its tendency to drop subplots and poorly attempt to subvert expectations certainly keeps it far from greatness and even tolerability. Some of the revelations we see at the end of the movie are wildly inconsistent with what had come before, and just kind of came out of nowhere in a way that neutered any impact that some of the film's earlier and minimal triumphs had procured. The film develops some of its characters pretty well but then proceeds to overturn said developments in the most bizarre and clumsy of ways in the name of shock value. The climax of the film itself is underwhelming, anticlimactic, and far shorter than it should have been. It feels almost like an afterthought when it should have felt like what's supposed to be the culmination of Lord knows how many films, and I wonder if the studio just ran out of scheduling time with the actors involved and had to throw something together really quickly. Now, on a purely technical level, this film possesses a good soundtrack and some surprisingly excellent cinematography, and even though these positive aspects don't do enough to lessen the blow of a critical failure this movie was, I do want to give them some recognition, because even if the present itself was really disappointing, at least the box and wrapping were pretty.

All of this said, Halloween Ends is a bad movie with some good ideas to its name, and it's a movie that may or may not have been the victim of rewrites. I can appreciate this film for trying to subvert expectations and go with a different approach and mood than we'd been conditioned to expect by previous installments in the franchise, but its attempts to subvert expectations are really graceless and led to wasted subplots, conflicting visions, and a film that never quite understands what exactly it's trying to be. Granted, this final installment is a significant step up in quality from the horrible Halloween Kills, but that's kind of like saying that ripping off one of your toenails is preferable to ripping off two of them. The film's unfulfilled promises with its subplots just end up rendering everything that comes before the film's climax largely inconsequential, and this is a shame because there is a good movie hiding somewhere in here. But the writers obviously felt obliged to write a Halloween movie first and foremost, so these promising subplots got overruled, and we were ultimately left with a dull, confused, and disappointing ending to a trilogy that had started off by showing some genuine strokes of promise.

But hey, on the bright side, this film is called Halloween Ends, so that means that critics and audiences alike won't have to be exposed to any more exploitative, Michael-Myers-themed sequels trying to copy the dark magic of the original Halloween without knowing what made it so magical in the first place.

Until someone else gets their hands on the franchise, that is.

Halloween Ends - 5/10

James 4:13-15