Previously, in the “Halloween” franchise: the residents of Haddonfield, fed up with four decades of fear inflicted by their local mask-wearing serial killer, Michael Myers, descended into a pitchfork wielding mob, chanting “Evil Dies Tonight.” Unfortunately, it was a forgone conclusion that they would not be successful in their crusade, because the film, “Halloween Kills,” was only the second installment in David Gordon Green’s trio of Hallo-reboots, and he still needed a Myers for the third film in the trilogy, “Halloween Ends.” And end it does, not with a scream but with a whimper, or perhaps, a sigh of relief that it’s over — the franchise that is, at least for now.
“Halloween Ends” has the feeling of dour obligation, and it’s clear that no one’s heart is really in this any more, the limits of narrative possibility in Haddonfield stretched beyond their max. The writers, Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier, Danny McBride and Green, don’t seem interested in writing real characters, but rather in proclaiming vague archetypes and platitudes about “evil,” which are declared in narration by Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who is finally writing her memoir.
Laurie describes evil as “an infection,” which is the main plot of “Halloween Ends,” a story about the lasting effects of violence that ripple outward from the main actors and that can reverberate for generations. There’s also a half-baked exploration of the ways in which bullying and name-calling can result in a self-fulfilling prophecy that in “Halloween Ends” acts as a sort of vampirism, or even a death curse trope.
