Halloween Ends (2022)
Have you seen Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, the movie where Jason Voorhees is replaced by a copycat killer? Did you ever wonder what a Halloween version of that movie would be like? No? Well too bad because that’s what you’re getting.
Halloween Ends picks up four years after the end of Halloween Kills. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is living with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), who is now working as a nurse at Haddonfield Medical Center. Laurie is still mourning her daughter Karen, who was killed by Michael at the end of Halloween Kills. She has resolved to write her memoirs and move on with her life.
Meanwhile, Michael Myers has mysteriously disappeared. The Halloweens of 2019, 2020, and 2021 have apparently passed without incident. Michael is presumably still out there somewhere, but Laurie and Allyson don’t seem particularly concerned about him anymore.
Unfortunately, Halloween Ends isn’t really about Michael Myers, or even about the Strodes. It’s about a nerdy young psychopath named Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell). After accidentally causing the death of a kid that he’s babysitting, Corey becomes a social outcast. He is routinely bullied and beaten up. Corey yearns to get revenge against his enemies.
In one of many plot twists that strain credibility, Corey begins to date Allyson. You’d think Allyson would know a psychopath when she sees one, but apparently not. This, of course, leads to tension between Allyson and Laurie, who can see that Corey is bad news.
One day, Corey randomly decides to go into a cave that connects to an underground sewer. Inside, he finds a decrepit and weakened Michael Myers. This is forty minutes into the film and the first time that Michael appears. The audience is apparently supposed to believe that Michael has been hiding in a sewer for the past four years.
Michael acts like he’s going to kill Corey, but inexplicably decides to let him live. Later in the film, Corey beats up Michael, steals his mask, and goes on a wild killing spree.
The point that Halloween Ends is trying to make is that the fear of “the Shape” transcends Myers himself. This is an interesting concept, but the movie isn’t intelligent enough to grapple with it in an interesting way.
The copycat killer storyline is not an inherently bad idea. If Corey had been introduced earlier in the trilogy, it could have made much more sense. Perhaps Corey could have been introduced as one of Allyson’s high school friends in Halloween ’18.
The trilogy could have gradually revealed Corey’s dark side and built him up as a villain. Instead, he randomly becomes a major character in the third movie after not being mentioned at all beforehand.
Rating:
Halloween Ends is a bizarre misfire that will send this creatively exhausted franchise back into hibernation for a few years. Perhaps it will be revived again in 2028, the 50th anniversary of the original movie.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 4
