So this is how it ends. With a bang (so many bangs) and critics whimpering, “Wait. What? That makes no sense!”
This is the 13th instalment in the beloved and ground-breaking slasher franchise created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill, in 1978. And it’s the third and supposedly final chapter of David Gordon Green’s reboot, which kicked off in 2018.
Halloween Ends throws everything, including the fridge, at the problem of how to lay to rest Illinois killer, Michael Myers. And it wants to do right by Myers’ nemesis, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). Even Nietzsche gets a look in.
The 2018 Halloween was pretty fun. Halloween Kills was an exhausting mess, raising questions not worth answering (Myers, impervious to harm, seems supernatural). The new film is better than the last one, but still feels like the work of two totally different directors. And one of those directors is a moron.
No matter. Whenever Curtis is on screen, she makes everything better. The actress is put in the world’s most unflattering clothes and looks weary to the bone, but somehow radiates jouissance. You really want feminist icon Laurie (still living in Haddonfield; off the booze; writing a verbose memoir and offering the kind of grief counselling speeches that end in, “Show ‘em your tits!”) to survive.
The same can’t be said for her granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak). Thanks to ridiculous dialogue, and Matichak’s flat delivery, Alison is exceedingly dull, never more so than when zipping around on a motorcycle, with genial babysitter-turned-sad-loner, Corey Cunningham (a competent Rohan Campbell). The paths of Corey and Myers cross and Laurie becomes convinced that Alison should be careful, adding Corey is, “on a dark path!”
Nothing that happens is scary. A couple of scenes, it’s true, are memorably nasty. A gang of teens, a few of them vaguely nice, are assaulted with ferocious energy, while a snipped off body part gives new meaning to the phrase “you sound like a broken record”.
The encounters between Laurie and Myers aren’t nasty, but they work beautifully. Care has been taken with the choreography and we’re exposed to things we haven’t witnessed before. Myers has been killing since he was six years old. Laurie has been traumatised since she was a teen. The two register each other’s existence in a way that’s fascinating. It takes forever to get to this point, but as the knives come out, you’re unlikely to think, “Oh, get on with it!”
This bit of the goodbye, at least, doesn’t outstay its welcome. But by the end much doesn not make sense - though to unpack it fully would take this review firmly into spoiler territory.
The franchise needs to go and if the film earns a ton of money, there’s a danger it’ll be brought back from the dead. I want to believe this is the end. But it’s the hope that kills you.
111mins, cert 18
