‘Halloween Ends’ – Review
It all ends with this. It’s been an event 40 years in the making but Laurie Strode is ready to come face-to-face with her boogeyman for the last time in Halloween Ends. And everything’s on the line in this final chapter of the bloody, gore-filled saga of Michael Meyers.
Four years after her last encounter with masked killer Michael Myers, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is living with her granddaughter and trying to finish her memoir. Myers hasn’t been seen since, and Laurie finally decides to liberate herself from rage and fear and embrace life. However, when a young man stands accused of murdering a boy that he was babysitting, it ignites a cascade of violence and terror that forces Laurie to confront the evil she can’t control.
Beginning with 2018’s Halloween, director David Gordon Green had a grand vision for the Halloween franchise and a desire to bring back the fear in the form of the original bogeyman himself, Michael Meyers. Returning to John Carpenter’s original cinematic landscape, he has continued the story of cinema’s first ‘final girl’, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), and through this new narrative, Green has unleashed the plague of Michael Meyers upon Haddonfield once more, with the kill counter growing with each new chapter. Now with Halloween Ends, Green sets out to tell the final chapter of the Halloween mythos, and the narrative takes an interesting turn with this story.
In Halloween Ends, Green turns his attention away from Laurie and focuses outwards on the town of Haddonfield and its almost cursed existence thanks to the crimes of Michael Myers. While I don’t want to run too deeply into it for fear of spoilers, Haddonfield is a place where evil, suffering and pain linger and even with the disappearance of Michael Meyers at the end of Halloween Kills, the pain still lingers. This presence of a curse and Michael’s personification as a literal force of evil leads to some very interesting moments within the narrative of Halloween Ends. This is particularly apparent in relation to Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) and her new boyfriend Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a young man with a tragic past who has felt first-hand the presence of Michael Meyer’s evil.
Green plays against the expectations of the audience with Halloween Ends, and you go in thinking this film will be one thing, and it turns out to be something else entirely. There’s a freshness to this narrative, and be prepared for some very creative jump scares that will have you leaping out of your seat out of fear and fright. The kills are nasty and intense, and the film’s narrative leads to some interesting slashing moments that are sure to shock fans.
But in the film’s final act it all comes down to a showdown between Laurie and Michael. And it’s particularly gnarly and gruesome. There’s no complication of excessive fight choreography, this is a messy, nasty brawl for survival with Laurie throwing everything at her monster. Knives stab, and blood flows, and in this final act we see Laurie putting an end to the fear, pain and horror of the past. Be prepared to be on the edge of your seat in this gritty final brawl that once and for all leaves a final statement on the evil that is Michael Meyers.
Halloween Ends is the definitive final moment of the Michael Meyers saga, and the gore and blood flow, and audiences seeking a fright will get it with this film.
Image: Universal Pictures