The latest installment of the Halloween franchise came out last weekend. Halloween Ends is the thirteenth movie of the franchise, capping off the fifth different timeline. I’m sure it’s not really the end, but for now, we say goodbye to one of my favorite franchises.
Overall, I didn’t really like the movie, but that opinion is more of a comment on the direction they went in than for the quality of the movie. I think, as a movie, Ends is better than Halloween Kills was, but both movies really left a lot on the table for me personally after Halloween 2018. Let’s look at some positives and negatives. SPOILERS to follow.
Positives
The opening scene:
What a fantastic subversion of expectations! It’s Halloween night, there’s a babysitter alone with a kid, Michael Myers is at large. The kid has a self-aware quip that Michael Myers never seems to kill kids, just baby sitters. I didn’t know who this Corey character was, so I figured they were both expendable. All of a sudden there’s noises and screams, the kid traps Corey in the attic, it’s all coming together, and BAM(!). The kid dies in a manner that no one could’ve seen coming.
It was cohesive:
One of my big issues with Halloween Kills was that it felt a little all over the place. There was Laurie and her family’s trauma, there was the trauma of others in the town, there was the general issues of mob mentalities and extremism. It was a lot, and it didn’t quite all fit together, it felt like multiple stories taking turns in the movie. Even if I didn’t like the direction of this movie, it definitely felt more focused than the previous installment.
Negatives (for me)
The handling of Michael Myers:
I just didn’t really get it. Supposedly, this movie referenced Halloween III: Season of the Witch quite a bit, and for fans of H3, that homage may have been greatly appreciated, but for me, it just wasn’t what I want in a Halloween movie.
a). Michael was inexplicably weak for much of the movie.
First off, he’s never been weak in any other movie that I’m aware of, so it seems like an explanation should’ve been warranted. Corey manhandles him in the sewer. No one manhandles Michael.
Is it age or compounded wear and tear? Laurie says toward the end of Kills, “the more he kills, the more he transcends…”, well, despite all of the punishment, he ends the last movie killing several people. He doesn’t seem shaky when he goes back to his childhood house and kills Karen. It also seems extremely possible that post-Kills, Michael could sneak out of the sewer to kill people here and there if he needs this in order to survive.
Is he malnourished from living in a sewer? Similar to killing, you’re telling me Michael couldn’t sneak out of the sewer at night and come across a food source?
Just tell me why he’s weak!!!
b). He strangles Corey and transfers some of his evil?
I guess I just prefer the idea of Michael being a man. In 2018, he’s a man, Kills, he starts to become more than a man in terms of what he survives, so, I guess it’s been heading this way, but it’s just not a direction I like.
c). He works with Corey.
Michael doesn’t play well with others. In this plot line, I guess he’s weak and needs help, but again, it’s out-of-character to see him tag-teaming people.
d). Corey as fake Michael.
There are a couple of issues with this. At its most basic, I don’t want to watch someone else don the mask and be a crappier version of Michael. It felt silly watching Corey walk around and kill like he was Michael.
I don’t totally get the message of their partnership. The whole point of Michael was that he was just a bad seed, pure evil, born to kill, locked up, and resumed killing once he got out of the asylum. Corey wasn’t born evil. He becomes evil because of a traumatic experience, which causes the town to turn on him and torment him, and then he’s touched by Michael and this alters his brain chemistry? It’s just a completely different scenario.
Also, Corey devolves throughout the whole movie. First he’s good, then he kills the drifter in panicked self-defense, then he kills the doctor for Allison (evil, but somewhat nice intentions), and then he’s attacking everyone who was mean to him. We didn’t watch Michael become evil, so even if it was a semi-gradual transition, we’re not exposed to it. Michael doesn’t target people who are mean to him, he just kills whoever is available. It’s just a wildly different arc for Corey than it was for Michael and I didn’t like it.
If there’s an explanation for all of this that parallels what happened in Halloween III: Season of the Witch, that’s fine, but technically, that’s been ret-conned out of this new timeline, so that feels like an odd direction to take the characters.
Laurie’s arc:
In general, I appreciate that Laurie is writing a memoir and is trying to move forward and find peace, but…her daughter was killed at the end of the last movie. In 2018, she’s been (understandably) traumatized for 40 years since she and her friends were attacked. Kills takes place the same night, and the boogeyman kills her daughter. While I understand that we didn’t need another movie with Laurie as a train wreck, it just feels like an unrealistically fast transition for the character. Most of Ends takes place a mere four years later, and nothing happened in the first two movies that should’ve made Laurie less paranoid or less afraid. In fact, by the end of Kills, Michael not only adds to her trauma and sadness, but he escapes and could conceivably still attack at any point. How could she have moved forward?
Corey and Allison’s relationship:
It just felt simultaneously like they just met, but also got very intense very quickly. She falls for him very quickly. Then they go to the party, he runs into the mother of the kid, he freaks out, and she’s reluctant to forgive him, etc. It all just felt a little forced, to me.
Laurie and Hawkins’ relationship:
It makes sense that after her daughter died, Laurie would need some time. It just seems odd that Hawkins wouldn’t have been more involved, and is then speaking in metaphors about cherry blossoms when they meet.
Band kids as the bullies:
a). Band kids aren’t tough.
b). They’re from Illinois, but they speak with an East-coast tough-guy drawl.
c). It seems like the choice might’ve been made comedically, like the surprise of “tough band kids” is funny, but their role in the movie is more serious, so it doesn’t quite jibe.
All in all, I came into this movie with very low expectations after being highly disappointed with Halloween Kills, so in that sense, I don’t feel as negatively about Halloween Ends because I expected not to like it. I didn’t really understand the direction that the movie went. I will have to watch it again at some point to see if the feeling sticks. So much promise after 2018, only for it to go south.
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