Halloween Ends (2022) Review

It's about Michael Myers and Laurie Strode, who have a final showdown in the last installment of the Halloween franchise.

Halloween Ends was directed by David Gordon Green (Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills) and stars Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween Kills, Halloween II, and Halloween (1978)), Andi Matichak (Halloween Kills, Son, and Assimilate), Nick Castle (Halloween Kills, In Search of Darkness, and Halloween (1978)), James Jude Courtney, and Kyle Richards (Halloween Kills, Curfew, and The Watcher in the Woods).

Goodbyes are never easy. In Halloween Ends, we say goodbye forever to Laurie Strode, who has enriched the lives of every horror fan as a quintessential Final Girl who has used her intellect and courage to save herself time and again from a powerful threat of evil. We don’t know for sure if there will ever be another Halloween movie (time has told us that there probably eventually will be), but for now, the horror franchise that started the trend of the modern day slasher is over - and I’m not satisfied.

Michael Myers has always had a supernatural quality to him. He’s been shot, burned, stabbed, and has fallen out of windows. So though it’s not totally impossible for him to escape each movie and continue his Halloween reign of terror, it’s improbable. But what Dr. Loomis was always telling us was that he embodied pure evil. He was more than a man, he was darkness itself. So I understand the want, as a writer, to use that quality to propel the story forward in a new way. The first two films in the three film installment were more typical slashers, with the backstory focusing on Laurie’s domestic troubles and her family, trying and failing to live a normal life because of Laurie’s traumatic experience. This final installment was a complete departure that seemed to have little to do with the first two movies at all, with Michael somehow being able to sense darkness in others. There’s also a toxic kinship between a killer and Laurie’s granddaughter that borders on sexy. It’s like I was watching a completely different franchise. Is this supposed to be our Halloween III?

While we are treated to plenty of homages of iconic scenes from the original film as we were in Halloween and Halloween Kills, Michael Myers was made into a shell of a man in this film. He’s not even the main antagonist. While Laurie has bought a new house, started writing a book, and made a concerted effort to live in light rather than darkness, Michael is old, he’s been maimed, and his injuries are making it too hard for him to do what we know him and love him for - stalking his prey. But there is a metaphor there, that the less Laurie is consumed by him, the closer he is to dying. I get it. I like it. What I don’t get or like is that Michael has now decided he wants a protege, who, let’s face it, is not anywhere near as scary or iconic as Michael.

Michael has been spending his days in a sewer where when the occasional unlucky person walks by, Michael kills them. But what happens here is we are taken completely out of what makes Michael tick. He doesn’t just walk up to people and start killing them in the prior films. He takes his time, he hunts his prey, and when he’s ready, he attacks. That’s what makes him so scary, that he could be watching at any moment. The scariest parts of Halloween are the slow moments in between kills where he’s simply lurking. Now, with every death, he gets closer to the killer he used to be. More fear in Haddonfield means he’s growing stronger. Evil is winning. And now, with his protege, it’s been spreading. The more life we give to the darkness, the bigger it grows.

Conceptually, the writers had an interesting idea - that you may be attracted to others by way of shared trauma, and sometimes that attraction makes you see things unclearly. That evil is a sickness that can be spread, and it won’t be killed when Michael Myers is, because it lives on in others. But this is Halloween Ends. We need to pay respect to the monster who started it all. This should have been the crescendo of the man who struck terror in Haddonfield going out for one final Halloween massacre. The much-anticipated face-off between Laurie and Michael was completely lackluster. Where is the tension? Where is the masked maniac we all love to fear?

Worth Watching? 

Had this been a standalone film, I would have given a much more favorable review. It just didn’t resemble a Halloween movie at all. If you found Halloween Kills a bit of an, um, overkill - this one may be more your speed. The death count is significantly lower and overall the film is much less brutal - and in fact, a bit too tame. You must watch, though, to see what happens to two icons - Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. I usually don’t say this, but I hope for more films in the franchise in the future. Maybe some wrongs can be righted. For now, I say to Jamie Lee Curtis, thank you for everything you’ve done for the horror genre. You’ll always be our Laurie.

Halloween Ends Review (2022) Worth Watching? - ALL HORROR Tweet it