Halloween Ends … with a whimper of franchise brain death. The plug has finally been pulled on the series (until such future time as it is considered expedient to reconnect the life-support machine). It is directed by David Gordon Green, who began his career with Malickian drama and then transitioned to comedy before being assigned the final three-movie tranche of branded Halloween content with co-writer Danny McBride. And it is the most uninspired final episode imaginable. There are one or two lively moments, and the famous jabbing piano music is always triggering in a good way, but this is a film with a great big kitchen knife deeply inserted into each vital organ.
With the final curtain descending, a handful of OG legacy characters are hanging about in the made-up town of Haddonfield, Illinois, the site of all the carnage. Jamie Lee Curtis is back as Laurie, who originally faced off with demonic killer Michael Myers in 1978. She has survived innumerable incursions from the masked bore and is now a grandmother tapping out her memoirs, containing what appear to be her less-than-compelling observations about evil and morality, which I suspect her editor is going to cut. She lives with her hot granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) who also fought off Myers in the last film. Lindsey (Kyle Richards), one of the teens from the first film, now works behind a bar and Frank Hawkins (Will Patton), Myers’s original arresting officer in the 2018 version – now retired – has a crush on Laurie. And of course Myers himself is, disconcertingly enough, still at large.
