HALLOWEEN ENDS – Review by T.J. Callahan
Halloween Ends: “We’re gonna have a good time tonight.”
After 12 movies and 45 years, originator John Carpenter and crew say they have made their final Halloween film with Halloween Ends. It even says it in the title, but this film franchise has said goodbye longer than the Cher farewell tour. You can grind up Michael Myers into little bitty
murderer meatballs all you want, you’ll only make him angry.
Halloween Ends takes place four years after Halloween Kills. The masked one has been nonexistent, but when a bullied young man with a Joker complex is pulled into Mike’s lair, the two becomes partners in crime and bring tag team terror to their Illinois town. But Laurie Strode, still played fiercely by Jamie Lee Curtis, refuses to let the pair get away with any more murders.
She’s the new “sheriff” in town and is ready to cut these boogeymen off at the pass.
Halloween Ends begins with a quick recap of all the previous films. Once the audience is up to date, the movie becomes a David vs Goliath, Batman vs Superman, Godzilla vs King Kong fright fest that is more gory than suspenseful. While there are requisite jump scares, this Halloween is less about hair-raising and more about relationships and community-wide revenge.
Halloween Ends does go out with a bloody bang despite its anemic plot, but after 45 years are we still looking for substance or just silly slasher fun? The audience I saw this film with clapped and cheered and laughed with the characters, not at them. Halloween Ends is horror that isn’t horrible. It gets a 6.
