To give context to how little I cared about HALLOWEEN ENDS (2022), the "conclusion" to this now bloated, confusing, retconned franchise, I completely forgot that it was coming out this year. When I saw trailers on YouTube recently, I was thinking it was coming out some time next year. Also, I literally found out on the SAME DAY it was premiering that it was available on Peacock! And I was like, it's Halloween month, this is (supposedly) the final Halloween film, I have time to spare, so I'll give it a go. Maybe my low expectations will be countered with something remotely decent. And, honestly, this movie might actually be worse than the atrocious predecessor Halloween Kills! It's that bad. Looking very cheap and less cinematic than the prior 2 entries, Halloween Ends tells what feels like an incredibly random story that could have been any throwaway sequel from the 80s.
Inexplicably, this movie opts to focus on a completely new character Corey and the filmmakers chose one of the most boring and annoying horror movie protagonists/antagonists that I can recall in recent memory. In the film's pre-credits scene set on Halloween night of 2019, Corey accidentally killed the kid he was babysitting for and spends the rest of the movie, set in 2022, being the town pariah. The film opens with an interesting premise that the Haddonfield citizens are so paranoid about Michael Myers that they implode and turn on each other, but it never really followed through with it. Instead, we get all these weird scenes of random citizens verbally attacking the main characters Corey and the Strodes for being the cause of all the evil and killings. What's odd is that even though Laurie (once again played by Jamie Lee Curtis) was barely a blip in Kills, even though she gets a lot more screentime in Ends, she still feels like a bit player.
As I said, it focuses on this new character Corey, who ends up in a forbidden romance with Laurie's annoying granddaughter Allyson (reprised by Andi Matchak), the most useless character in this recent retconned trilogy of films. I couldn't stand Allyson in the 2018 movie or Kills, and Ends just confirms my belief that Allyson was nothing more than a terrible plot device in the trilogy. In H2018 and Kills, she just a random nuisance who got caught up in the action while Laurie (in H2018) and Karen (in Kills) were the proactive badasses who got things done. Then Laurie gets sidelined while Karen gets killed off, while Allyson gets to hang around and continue to be useless. In Ends, this time it's Corey who gets to be proactive while Allyson is just his love interest. Somehow, this girl is a filler love interest after she's been in 2 movies, while the new guy gets to be the lead. Shows how uninteresting she is. Also, Lindsay is in this movie for no reason whatsoever than to exist, just like she did in Kills.
But the worst offense in this movie is how little Michael got to do. For some reason, he's been hiding out under a bridge for the last 4 years since the tragic events of H2018/Kills and no one has even caught him yet. Then he only re-surfaces when Corey gets thrown over the bridge by those 4 juvenile delinquents, who for some reason are dressed like it's still the 1970s. So he takes Corey in as his apprentice and the duo tag teams it for a while until Corey decides he wants to be the alpha and incapacitates Michael stealing his mask and taking over being the main killer. To top off this weirdness, Allyson basically stays with Corey knowing how sick he is. He literally tells her that he killed a person and her first instinct is to comfort him and go on a date! No reporting the crime to the police...she just wants to keep making out with him. The duo have all these weird scenes where Allyson is all like she's drawn to him and they were meant to be together.
In fact, the tone of this entire movie was strange with a terrible supporting cast of unlikable characters. I know it's a "small" town, but what was with all these random moments of people running into Laurie, Corey, and Allyson and spewing out judgment on them? There was that grocery store parking lot scene where the lady scolded Laurie for being the cause of Michael slashing her cousin's throat (how did that old lady survive Kills?), the 4 teen bullies always running into and bullying Corey, the creepy cop (who looks twice her age) hitting on Allyson, the couple whose kid Corey accidentally killed just show up randomly in the bar including the father delivering that weird monologue, Corey's strict and holier-than-thou mother, and his boss/stepfather's odd line "I hope you find love"? So much weird dialogue in this movie. Then there were filler characters like Allyson's co-workers: the sleazy doctor and the mouthy nurse. Were they supposed to be comic relief?
The climax made no sense. Laurie shoots Corey a couple of times, then purposefully shoots the wall using up her bullets, lets him grab a knife to supposedly kill her. But she literally said a few minutes ago "Did you think I was going to kill myself?" He stabs himself and then she's sad about it? He just tried to kill her. Of course the plot deviced Allyson walks in and assumes Laurie killed him and then drives away then gets a call from Hawkins (played again by Will Patton) who asks about Laurie because she called about a suicide, so she goes back. Didn't Allyson realize that was a hoax? She just saw Laurie standing over Corey's body with a knife. Why would Laurie commit suicide when she just stopped her assailant? Also, why would Laurie tell someone she was going to kill herself? Then Michael pops up, Laurie battles him, gets the upper hand, then slows around and killer talks him until he can grab her throat, Allyson shows up, she runs her mouth unnecessarily, they don't finish him and instead wait for the police and entire town to parade Michael's body to the junkyard where they mutilate his body. The End.
There were several times where I kept looking at how much time was left in this tedious film because that's how bored and frustrated I was. The first 30 minutes felt like an hour. By the 50-minute mark, there was a whole hour left and I couldn't believe it because the movie felt so slow and random with such an unimpressive cast of characters. There was actually one decent scene in the entire movie (thus the extra star) and that was the scene between Laurie and Hawkins in the grocery store. It was actually well-written and acted by Curtis and Patton, but then the movie followed it with randomness, just like virtually every other moment in the film. Kills and now this film Ends are so bad, it's making me appreciate H2018 even more because that movie had some cohesion, tension, buildup, and horror and a smashing ending, even though it had it's share of cringe moments indicative of modern writing and filmmaking. But Kills and Ends are just cringe films start to finish. It's hard to believe that this is how the storied franchise is actually going to end. They'll probably reboot/remake it again for like the 5th time. They may have to because this film is not the right note to go out on.
Inexplicably, this movie opts to focus on a completely new character Corey and the filmmakers chose one of the most boring and annoying horror movie protagonists/antagonists that I can recall in recent memory. In the film's pre-credits scene set on Halloween night of 2019, Corey accidentally killed the kid he was babysitting for and spends the rest of the movie, set in 2022, being the town pariah. The film opens with an interesting premise that the Haddonfield citizens are so paranoid about Michael Myers that they implode and turn on each other, but it never really followed through with it. Instead, we get all these weird scenes of random citizens verbally attacking the main characters Corey and the Strodes for being the cause of all the evil and killings. What's odd is that even though Laurie (once again played by Jamie Lee Curtis) was barely a blip in Kills, even though she gets a lot more screentime in Ends, she still feels like a bit player.
As I said, it focuses on this new character Corey, who ends up in a forbidden romance with Laurie's annoying granddaughter Allyson (reprised by Andi Matchak), the most useless character in this recent retconned trilogy of films. I couldn't stand Allyson in the 2018 movie or Kills, and Ends just confirms my belief that Allyson was nothing more than a terrible plot device in the trilogy. In H2018 and Kills, she just a random nuisance who got caught up in the action while Laurie (in H2018) and Karen (in Kills) were the proactive badasses who got things done. Then Laurie gets sidelined while Karen gets killed off, while Allyson gets to hang around and continue to be useless. In Ends, this time it's Corey who gets to be proactive while Allyson is just his love interest. Somehow, this girl is a filler love interest after she's been in 2 movies, while the new guy gets to be the lead. Shows how uninteresting she is. Also, Lindsay is in this movie for no reason whatsoever than to exist, just like she did in Kills.
But the worst offense in this movie is how little Michael got to do. For some reason, he's been hiding out under a bridge for the last 4 years since the tragic events of H2018/Kills and no one has even caught him yet. Then he only re-surfaces when Corey gets thrown over the bridge by those 4 juvenile delinquents, who for some reason are dressed like it's still the 1970s. So he takes Corey in as his apprentice and the duo tag teams it for a while until Corey decides he wants to be the alpha and incapacitates Michael stealing his mask and taking over being the main killer. To top off this weirdness, Allyson basically stays with Corey knowing how sick he is. He literally tells her that he killed a person and her first instinct is to comfort him and go on a date! No reporting the crime to the police...she just wants to keep making out with him. The duo have all these weird scenes where Allyson is all like she's drawn to him and they were meant to be together.
In fact, the tone of this entire movie was strange with a terrible supporting cast of unlikable characters. I know it's a "small" town, but what was with all these random moments of people running into Laurie, Corey, and Allyson and spewing out judgment on them? There was that grocery store parking lot scene where the lady scolded Laurie for being the cause of Michael slashing her cousin's throat (how did that old lady survive Kills?), the 4 teen bullies always running into and bullying Corey, the creepy cop (who looks twice her age) hitting on Allyson, the couple whose kid Corey accidentally killed just show up randomly in the bar including the father delivering that weird monologue, Corey's strict and holier-than-thou mother, and his boss/stepfather's odd line "I hope you find love"? So much weird dialogue in this movie. Then there were filler characters like Allyson's co-workers: the sleazy doctor and the mouthy nurse. Were they supposed to be comic relief?
The climax made no sense. Laurie shoots Corey a couple of times, then purposefully shoots the wall using up her bullets, lets him grab a knife to supposedly kill her. But she literally said a few minutes ago "Did you think I was going to kill myself?" He stabs himself and then she's sad about it? He just tried to kill her. Of course the plot deviced Allyson walks in and assumes Laurie killed him and then drives away then gets a call from Hawkins (played again by Will Patton) who asks about Laurie because she called about a suicide, so she goes back. Didn't Allyson realize that was a hoax? She just saw Laurie standing over Corey's body with a knife. Why would Laurie commit suicide when she just stopped her assailant? Also, why would Laurie tell someone she was going to kill herself? Then Michael pops up, Laurie battles him, gets the upper hand, then slows around and killer talks him until he can grab her throat, Allyson shows up, she runs her mouth unnecessarily, they don't finish him and instead wait for the police and entire town to parade Michael's body to the junkyard where they mutilate his body. The End.
There were several times where I kept looking at how much time was left in this tedious film because that's how bored and frustrated I was. The first 30 minutes felt like an hour. By the 50-minute mark, there was a whole hour left and I couldn't believe it because the movie felt so slow and random with such an unimpressive cast of characters. There was actually one decent scene in the entire movie (thus the extra star) and that was the scene between Laurie and Hawkins in the grocery store. It was actually well-written and acted by Curtis and Patton, but then the movie followed it with randomness, just like virtually every other moment in the film. Kills and now this film Ends are so bad, it's making me appreciate H2018 even more because that movie had some cohesion, tension, buildup, and horror and a smashing ending, even though it had it's share of cringe moments indicative of modern writing and filmmaking. But Kills and Ends are just cringe films start to finish. It's hard to believe that this is how the storied franchise is actually going to end. They'll probably reboot/remake it again for like the 5th time. They may have to because this film is not the right note to go out on.