Michael Myers is one of the most iconic horror movie villains and the Halloween series is one of the most influential. So despite my thoughts on how the series has gone, when a new Halloween movie comes out, it's a big deal. So let's talk about the ending of another attempt to revive to franchise in...
Halloween Ends (2022)
As many of you know, I did not like Halloween Kills. I have never felt more frustrated watching people practically throw themselves on the kitchen knives of Michael Myers. Plus, I thought the writing was no near as clever as the makers of the movie clearly thought it was. I'm going to be honest with you, I was kind of excited for this movie. I wanted to see if they could redeem themselves after the last one So did they end the trilogy on a high note?
No. No they did not. We fast forward four years after the events of Halloween Kills. In that time Michael went off the grid and he faded into legend. In that time it seems like every single person in that town has morphed into the worst version of themselves. Seriously, pretty much all but one character we haven't met before is just an asshole. Like, wouldn't be out of place in a comic book level of asshole.
This may get a bit spoilerish because the movie tries to do something different and it goes over like a lead balloon. For one, despite taking up a weird amount of screen time in the last movie, we never get any information on why Michael is so obsessed with staring out of his sister's window. That's fine, it was a stupid plot line to begin with. Instead, the movie tries to bring the message that the evil that made Michael can infect anyone, or some other nonsense.
OK, back to the story. The year after Kills, a young man accidentally caused the death of a little asshole he was babysitting. Since that time he's become a pariah in Hadonfield the same as Laurie and Allyson. Allyson and the boy, Corey, eventually strike up a relationship. At a party Corey runs into the mother of the boy who died under his watch and after some awkwardness, Corey storms off. He once again runs into a group of... marching band bullies. It's an odd choice but I liked how the kid was always spinning a drumstick in his fingers. Things escalate and the lead bully throws him off a bridge.
Unconscious, Corey gets dragged into a tunnel by an unseen person. We later learn that it's Michael Myers finally showing up. When the kid wakes up Michael starts strangling him but lets him go after he looks into his eyes. At this point I'm wondering; why did Michael drag him in there? If he wanted to kill him? Why did Michael wait for him to wake up before trying to kill him? It's stupid, but it gets worse. Much worse.
You see, for a movie promising the end of a conflict 40-plus years in the making, they sideline Michael for almost the entire movie. In fact, Corey's murderous rampage is front and center. Michael just hangs out under a bridge like a troll waiting for people to come to him. To make matters worse, Corey whoops his ass and steals his mask! At this point I've lost my ability to even with this movie. David Gordon Green made a comment about how Halloween fans had to suffer through decades of bad sequels, but this, this is worse than anything two through eight.
Then when we FINALLY get the showdown between Laurie and Michael it lasts like five minutes. The movie was hyped as the final conflict and the fight ends before it really begins. I ragged on Halloween Kills a lot, with good reason, but one thing we could say about Kills is that it wasn't boring. I didn't care about any of these characters and Corey does nothing for me. After Michael walked through an entire mob last movie, seeing him get beat up by a dude bullied by high schoolers makes him so less scary and menacing. Throughout this trilogy Laurie has been shown to be a bad ass and the last time we saw Michael he was humilated by a scrawny kid who takes Michael's lunch money. They made Michael a tomato can and they want you to fear for Laurie when he finally shows up. I was scared for Michael!
The final bit of the movie is the only thing I liked about it. One of the problems with this trilogy is I didn't buy the whole town living in fear over Michael's murders. When you ignore everything after the first one, Michael only killed a handfull of people. It's a tragic event, no doubt, but not something that would turn a whole town insane. Now, after Kills, I can understand the whole town changing, especially with the killer on the loose. So I enjoyed how the whole town got their closure and how they put an exclamation point on the trilogy, but one cool moment doesn't erase a whole lot of bad.
I want to say one thing before I wrap things up. I've seen a lot of people say Halloween H20 was the perfect ending to the series. I disagree. It was really good, but Halloween II was the best. I always felt the Michael and Dr. Loomis relationship to be more personal. Loomis was obsessed with Michael and their relationship was always more interesting to me. It was clearly a Moby Dick and Captain Ahab dynamic. Michael and Loomis going out together in an explosion was the perfect ending.
