Halloween Ends

So, as with Halloween Kills, the last time was meant to be the last time but the last time didn’t last very long when money seems to talk even louder. This has to be the only conceivable reason that Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode has so far failed to sink the blade, light the match or blast the inner smile off Michael Myers’s ashen hockey mask.

As a result, in a world where a mask can seemingly last forever, there are only two real questions left. Will Laurie finally kill her brother and will we see his face before she does so? At the outset of Halloween Ends, my money was on “no” and “no” but let’s first check out the setup.

… “boys who keep secrets don’t get any custard for dessert”, so I’ll push the knife in a bit deeper.

Rohan Campbell plays Corey, a gormless babysitter who “one terrible, fateful Halloween, kills the kid he’s meant to be looking after”. It’s a complete accident but then again the forgiving citizens of Haddonfield have a poor history when it comes to sensing smoke where there isn’t a fire. Then things subsequently move forward four years. Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Stroud doesn’t want to be the bell weather chart for evil anymore and yet… as Corey’s abusive mother puts it… “boys who keep secrets don’t get any custard for dessert”, so I’ll push the knife in a bit deeper.

This is because, if anything, Halloween Ends owes a deeper debt to Stephen King’s It than all of the previous films in the Halloween franchise. Finally able to fully embrace its nature-vs-nurture subtext, we see put-upon Corey being pushed beyond the breaking point into becoming the serial killer’s apprentice. And this in itself, gives a voice to Michael Myers in a way that he has never previously been afforded. In saying that, as Corey drags his victims into the storm drain, it becomes increasingly obvious that neither he nor Michael are ever going to approach the eloquence or wordplay of Pennywise The Clown. -Why? The reason is that there’s a promise of proper body horror to be kept for the third reel.

And this is where Halloween Ends abandons its treatise on small-town American prejudice and gets fatally side-tracked into more fan service-like fare with the tying up of loose ends. As a result, characters do daft stuff, make poor choices and, well, you know the rest…

That said, Halloween Ends is a substantial improvement to Halloween Kills. In this (supposedly) final chapter, this sequel manages to step out of its own shadow and deliver some decently tense moments, all of which are built off the back of earlier character development.

So, is this finally the end of Myers and the Halloween franchise? Well, let’s put it this way. In my opinion, the only thing that can really kill Michael Myers is a disappointing opening weekend at the box office – and I don’t see that happening any time soon.