Horror fans can breathe easy. Not because Halloween Ends is good, quite the opposite. But now that filmmaker David Gordon Green has completed his trilogy, Michael Myers can finally rest in peace.
Honestly and bluntly, Halloween Ends sucks. Very bad even. However, it was believed – very naively – that David Gordon Green had hit rock bottom with Halloween Kills last year. Oh no.
The filmmaker goes even deeper, taking the famous – and once glorious – saga even further with an absolutely pathetic thirteenth entry.
We find here the eternal heroine Laurie Strode four years after the events of Halloween Kills. With Michael Myers likely to be missing, she decided to rebuild her life by freeing herself from fear and the past; She’s traded self-defense and armored locks for rope, written a book, and the pumpkin pies (yes, yes!) she makes for her granddaughter Allyson.
Because Laurie Strode is now celebrating Halloween with enthusiasm. And even persistence, something difficult to understand. But we all know that Michael Myers never went very far. He lurked in the sewers, just waiting for the moment to reappear. And it’s obvious in October that he’s going for it.
Distorted and boring
It’s hard to say more without revealing the ambitions – laudable but failed – of David Gordon Green for the final chapter of his macabre trilogy. We would be remiss to say too much, risking depriving moviegoers of every shred of fleeting pleasure in our dark rooms. But we can still say that it’s frankly unsettling to see Jamie Lee Curtis wrestle with a distorted character whose every line sounds hollow and fake.
In fact, there are countless sighs in the endless 110 minutes of Halloween Ends. So the conclusion is as obvious as it is difficult to admit: It’s high time for Michael Myers to say goodbye. In recent years we’ve only allowed him to cloud our memories of his butcher shops on the streets of Haddonfield.
Hollywood being what it is, another filmmaker may very well decide to revive Michael Myers in the more or less near future. Let’s just hope this hypothetical return is executed with more tact, finesse and thrill, three elements sorely lacking in the works of David Gordon Green.
Halloween ends ★
A film by David Gordon Green. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak, Rohan Campbell and James Jude Courtney. On the screen.