Halloween Ends (2022)
Last Watch Date - October 14, 2022
Total Times Watched - One
Comments
How much do I want to say about the final installment of a trilogy set 40 years after the original? Halloween 2018 brought Michael and Laurie back. It was an ok movie that really didn't need to exist, but it did bring some danger back to the series. Then Halloween Kills went full-on slasher sequel with tons of wild kills, tension, and some unbelievable bits.
The plot on this feels familiar for some reason. Not specific to Halloween (though definitely H4), but also Friday the 13th part 5 and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2. The idea of evil never dying but changing shape is one of the central threads of this series. Maybe this should've been expected, ultimately, but it was somehow disappointing all the same.
This has all the tension and scare factor of a Disney movie. Hocus Pocus 2 came out recently and probably has more scares to it. There are some gory bits here and there, but there's no tension. You know who is going to die and who the killer is. It's all a matter of waiting to see who dies when and in what way. That can be fun in its own way, but it somehow falls flat in this movie.
If it's not scary and the story isn't that great, it has to have the creativity of the kills going for it, right? There was one that sticks out as a clever kill (spoiler: it involves a torch), but the others have been done in some fashion. I'm really trying not to give things away here, so though the way the ending unfolds is kind of interesting, it's also not very satisfying. Certainly not what it could be.
This is more of a story of a grandmother and her granddaughter trying to move on from a family tragedy. It resolves it pretty well if you're wondering, but I want Halloween to be about Michael Myers. Laurie has been the sole survivor for too long. When she says things to Michael like "you're here to kill me so do it," I want it to happen. Let this end. The Laurie storyline needs to end, no matter how much JLC would want to reprise this role. It's not interesting anymore and Michael in this movie is pretty pathetic.
So Halloween Ends is supposed to be the resolution to this storyline and it does resolve things. But if it's not tense, not scary, and not interesting, what exactly is it? Not to mention its 1:50 running time, which drags on far too long. After the wild Halloween Kills, I expected more. But with the story they chose, there was really not much else they could do. It's a flawed movie that is ok to see once, but likely will not be something I'll watch again.
Recommended?
Finish up the series if you must, but this is one of the weakest Halloween movies in the entirety of the series.
