Halloween Ends

David Gordon Green wraps up his reboot trilogy for a horror franchise that never stays dead for long.

This time, the townspeople — after virtually hijacking the previous installment — have dwindled to a few familiar faces, and there’s a touching reunion between Laurie and a flirty Officer Frank Hawkins (nice to see you, Will Patton, however briefly). As if attempting to honor that, Green has made a movie that’s less frantic and more intimate than its predecessor, one that unfolds with a mourning finality. Changing shape, though, is something that exhausted movie properties struggle to do, and Green and his three co-writers soon revert to the comforting beats of the body count. By pumping up Corey’s psychological damage, Green could have made a passing-the-torch movie, giving Corey a clear framework for his capitulation to the allure of slaughter. But as proximity to evil causes Corey to change — being an acolyte apparently does wonders for the libido — his too-rapid transformation constitutes a missed opportunity for the franchise. Also shunned by the locals is Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a geeky lad whose disastrous babysitting exploits three years earlier resulted in a dead child, a murder trial and an acquittal.

David Gordon Green's trilogy reboot of the venerable "Halloween" franchise, starring ultimate final girl Jamie Lee Curtis, concludes not with a scream but a ...

But we come to these movies for the thrills, the chills, and the screams, yet even the kills in “Halloween Ends” feel perfunctory at best. 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 and can reverberate for generations. So after that strange, yet interesting, diversion, it’s back to Laurie to see if she can wrap things up once and for all, complete with refresher clip packages. “Halloween Ends” returns to where it all began, with a twist. The “boy babysitter,” Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) ends up in prison for aggravated manslaughter, and can’t shake the “psycho” label that he’s stuck with on release a couple of years later. 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,” declared in narration by Laurie Strode (

The film promises to finally conclude a horror franchise that began 44 years ago. But even as star Jamie Lee Curtis swears it's her last, can this series ...

It’s a risky move by Green and his co-writers to turn our attention away from the main “Halloween” combatants. “The Boogeyman”? “The Shape” a.k.a. The “Halloween” routine abruptly shifts when Laurie takes pity on Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a young man accused of killing a boy he was babysitting. If the Hollywood powers that be want another “Halloween” movie, they’ll find a way to make one, just as they found ways to resurrect supposedly dead characters in previous chapters. Now comes “Halloween Ends,” which finally settles the matter …

Halloween Kills is at least a more welcome return to what a Halloween film should both look and feel like.

It wouldn’t be a Green Halloween movie if it wasn’t still overwrought and strangely confounding in its narrative decision-making – but Halloween Kills is at least a more welcome return to what a Halloween film should both look and feel like. With Halloween Ends, there are more nods and homages to Carpenter’s original film – from its kills to its visual style to its inherent questions of morality – all of which ground us within a world that feels like a more concretely faithful extension of its source material. While suffering from the same lack of internal logic (character motivations are as random as ever) and obvious tonal choices as its predecessor, Green is at least limited in his predisposition toward free-wheeling, overly self-pronounced thematics by the simple fact that he must also close out his chapter of the franchise. The mob mentality and groupthink of Halloween Kills are replaced here by a more focused return to the director’s initial survivor narrative, marked by a repeated invocation of Haddonfield’s need for healing. [Green’s 2018 reboot](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/reviews/article-review-halloween-is-the-killer-reboot-youve-been-waiting-40-years/) of Halloween, the writer-director ushered in a new era for the creaky franchise, one that declared it was no longer enough just to play with the series’ regular bag of tricks. It is an othering that leads her to sympathize with the young Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), who accidentally killed a boy he was hired to babysit.

Bloody Disgusting reviews Halloween Ends, which makes some very strange choices as it finishes out Laurie Strode's epic saga.

That and the desire to subvert the idea of a Halloween film. Here’s the official plot synopsis for Halloween Ends: “Four years after the events of last year’s Halloween Kills, Laurie is living with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) and is finishing writing her memoir. But when a young man, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), is accused of killing a boy he was babysitting, it ignites a cascade of violence and terror that will force Laurie to finally confront the evil she can’t control, once and for all.” There’s admiration to be found in his defiant storytelling and using the final entry to swing for the fences, but the significant tonal and character shifts are jarring from the outset. Ends works best as a standalone feature, but its place in the trilogy and the Halloween canon overall is sure to be polarizing. [on track to smash $50 million](https://deadline.com/2022/10/box-office-halloween-ends-opening-1235141320/) in theaters this weekend. Save for Laurie Strode, the trilogy relies on the tiresome concept of trauma and its toll on a community as the sole connective tissue. In his bid to explore the psychological toll of cruelty and trauma, Green forgets some of the tension and menace from previous entries. In its place is an audacious storytelling swing regarding the handling of Michael Myers. The trauma lingering beneath the surface in Haddonfield comes boiling forth, igniting a new chain of violence when Corey crosses paths with Laurie and Allyson. Laurie may be the town’s freak show, but Haddonfield has a new target of scorn in young Corey ( Since 2018, Michael Myers has disappeared, and his house has been bulldozed to the ground.

Halloween ends in such a way that you hope Michael Myers never comes back. It's just not for the reasons the filmmakers intended.

But unless the plan was to put the pitcher in the outfield, that turns out not to be the case. This close to Green’s trilogy is about waking up in the ugly light of the morning after—and how that hangover can last years. So suffice it to say that, in the broadest details, it’s been four years since Michael Myers’ killing spree in the 2018 movie and last year’s Halloween Kills (which took place on the same Halloween 2018 night), and the Boogeyman has not been seen since. [2018’s Halloween](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/halloween-review/), a revival so good it brought [Jamie Lee Curtis](https://www.denofgeek.com/jamie-lee-curtis/) back as the best iteration of Laurie Strode in 40 years. Green attempts to expand on the question of Michael Myers, and while his answer is more ambitious and intriguing than the witchcraft schlock provided by the Cult of Thorn in Halloween 6 (1995) or Rob Zombie’s Goliath-sized Dahmer in the 2007 remake, it’s still ultimately just as unsatisfying. Literally credited as “the Shape” in the original [Halloween masterpiece of 1978](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/halloween-the-ingredients-of-a-horror-classic/), Michael was always intended to be the absence of light, of color, and of anything else that could be construed as a scrap of humanity.

The bloody saga of Michael Myers vs Laurie Strode comes to a close in Halloween Ends… And against all odds, it's actually pleasant surprise.

It clears the low bar set by the trilogy's middle episode, and while that may be damning it with the faintest of praise, Green’s closer to his wobbly trilogy remains a broadly effective swansong for horror's original “final girl”. Unlike the promising but squandered themes in Halloween Kills about the guilt inherent to intergenerational trauma and the timely winks to collective hysteria – all of which were handled by writers barely operating above the level of a full nappy – _Halloween Ends_’ motifs are actually handled with care. And even when Halloween Ends sacrifices character arcs for silliness and spells things out far too much, there’s enough here to keep slasher fans and gorehounds entertained. There’s also little-to-no doubt that for all of its ambition, the film singularly loses its nerve during the rushed final act, which unfortunately doesn’t quite deliver the showdown catharsis one would have hoped for. Safe to say, however, that Laurie, who was bafflingly sidelined in the previous instalment in favour of a nosebleedingly annoying bunch of vigilantes with the collective IQ of a sock, gets far more screen time this time around. However, the past comes back to taint this new chapter for the Strode family…

Universal and Blumhouse's Halloween Ends earned $5.4 million in Thursday preview showings. That compares to the $4.9 million earned by Halloween Kills via ...

Anyway, a straight 10% Thursday-to-weekend split (like the last two) gets Halloween Ends to a terrific $54 million, while a split like It Chapter Two ($91 million from a $10.5 million Thursday) gets it to $47 million for the Fri-Sun weekend. I appreciated its left-field turns and (especially for the first act) its existence as very much a Halloween film from the guy who directed All the Real Girls and Snow Angels. The reviews are slightly better than this installment (45% and 5.3/10 on Rotten Tomatoes versus 38% and 5/10 for Halloween Kills). That compares to the $4.9 million earned by Halloween Kills via previews this time last year and the $7.7 million Thursday preview gross for Halloween in 2018. Universal and Blumhouse’s Halloween Ends earned $5.4 million in Thursday preview showings. Zero more days till Halloween Ends, Halloween Ends, Halloween Ends.

I wrote in my review of the 2018 reboot of “Halloween” that the team behind the film didn't “really understand what made the first film a masterpiece.

A shocking amount of “Halloween Ends” is poorly executed with clunkier editing, framing, and writing than the other two films, as if the team were hired to make this one as a contractual requirement and were trying to get through it as quickly as possible. To say the love story between Corey and Allyson is underwritten and unbelievable would be an understatement. When the kid decides to play a prank on Corey, it results in an accident that leaves the little scamp dead, turning Corey into a pariah. He’s babysitting for a kid in Haddonfield who’s a little scared by all the murder around town. [Halloween Kills](/reviews/halloween-kills-movie-review-2021)” didn’t prove me right then the baffling “Halloween Ends” certainly does. There will be another “Halloween” movie somewhere in the future, which will make this even more of an odd tangent in the history of a horror legend.

Movie Review: In Halloween Ends, director David Gordon Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis bring the classic slasher series to a surprisingly entertaining end.

The new movie is maybe not quite as goofy, but it has a similarly irreverent spirit, a refusal to fit into the demands of the broader slasher genre and a cavalier attitude toward this specific slasher’s so-called lore. Luckily, with Halloween Ends, he’s found a way to make one of these movies his own, sans scares but with tons of atmosphere and a sense of queasy, gathering dread. Watching the slow-building romance of Corey and Allyson against the backdrop of this dead-end small town, it feels at times like director Green has finally brought to the series some of the charm of his earlier independent films. (Relax — it’s not a spoiler if it’s the first thing that happens in the movie.) Although he ultimately gets off, Corey’s life is ruined. We might know where the story is going generally, but individual scenes retain the element of surprise, as the story takes unexpected emotional detours. (“As he was locked away in his prison, I disappeared into mine.”) Her new attempts at a soft-focus life notwithstanding, Laurie secretly wants to mix it up. He’s an outcast in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois, a place that knows a thing or two about child murders. Eventually, the movie does begin to indulge in gore and other typical genre kicks, which can feel like a bit of a letdown, in part because Green, despite having co-written and directed all of the entries in this most recent crop of Halloween sequels, isn’t really a horror guy. Indeed, the craziest thing in Halloween Ends might be its opening scene, which takes place on Halloween night 2019 and features a teenage babysitter, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), taking care of a young boy who’s a little too fond of pranks. There’s no desperation to escalate, no tiresome fetishization of the gruesome. The only person who seems to show Corey any kind of grace is longtime franchise survivor Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who after the events of the previous film appears to be trying to shed much of her gun-toting, survivalist persona. After the carnival-belly inanity of the previous movie,

The new horror movie, now in theaters and streaming on Peacock, brings Michael Myers back from the grave after Halloween Kills, but can't find a logical ...

The Halloween saga started by John Carpenter and Debra Hill in 1978 ends in this film, but the end can’t vindicate the existence of this continuation of the story. Where Halloween Kills was a brutal slasher that seemed to place us in the shoes of the Shape, David Gordon Green tries everything he can to subvert the primal origins of the premise. He discards the modernized John Carpenter visuals and camera work that became essential to his first Halloween sequel for a less creative or energetic film where the camera barely moves. Halloween Ends continues the thread from Kills of asking whether Michael Myers is a 70-something-year-old mentally ill man or evil incarnate, a supernatural being that heals himself through the act of killing and can almost pass on his essence to others. The tonal shift borders on victim-shaming, and a complete betrayal to what was supposed to be the core of this movie. That’s because most of the 111-minute run time is spent on Corey, who becomes a social pariah after a deadly incident one Halloween night and gets strangely obsessed with Michael Myers.