“Halloween Ends” (2022)
The psycho and the freak show and the end of Michael Myers?
The psycho and the freak show and the end of Michael Myers?
Prior to visiting my local cinema this afternoon with my two favourite people in all the world one of those glorious humans, my beautiful son, insisted we end Halloween at the beginning and the 1978 original, as well as leaping forward to the last two iterations of this mythological franchise, last year’s Halloween Kills and 2018’s 40 year anniversary of the original Halloween. I saw the 1978 original for the one and only time well over two decades ago and I didn’t care for it then and, heathen that I am, I don’t particularly care for it now. What I did enjoy though was the stark juxtaposition between the slowly crafted suspense and oddities of the original John Carpenter directed film that runs at its own deliberately slow pace, with the grotesquely over the top almost “slasher” type recent additions to this cinematic cannon under the direction of David Gordon Green.
Green returns in the director’s chair here alongside the beautifully evergreen Jamie Lee Curtis for her seventh (eighth if you include the uncredited appearance in Halloween III) outing as “Laurie Strode” and nearly four decades since I first fell in love with her and the infusion of love, fun and humanity she introduced beside Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy in the John Landis directed Trading Places in 1983, an epochal film of my adolescent years. The original Halloween should have been similarly significant in my growing up and early tentative steps into the world of film appreciation but I simply can’t see past Friedkin’s The Exorcist from 1973 or Kubrick’s The Shining 7 years later. Both of these horror films had and still continue to hold, a significant vice like grip over my horror film loving heart with only A Nightmare on Elm Street (epochal) and The Blair Witch Project coming close to joining the horror films of my youth.
Halloween Ends won’t be joining these epochal films but it is far, far better than the two most recent additions to the franchise and concludes somewhat of a trilogy of films that has seemingly, finally, brought an end to this cinematic saga. There’s a verve and vitality here that’s sorely absent from the films of 2018 and 2021 with the opening scenes pre the film’s famously reprised opening credits reminiscent of horror films of old with odd camera angles brilliantly capturing the shadows and reflections of a winding spiral staircase before the shocker, THE opening shocker, of a film I enjoyed. The slasher type horror is scaled back (and only really prevalent in the second half of the film) with the first half a surprisingly bright, hopeful film of acceptance, young love, moving on and the writing of a final chapter in a lifelong drama that confirms the ultimate closure.
This isn’t Laurie Strode’s story and nor, paradoxically, is it the story of Michael Myers, the neighbourhood masked “boogieman”. Laurie has firmly moved on and no longer the “freakshow” of local renown. Her closure is in the form of her written memoir (and part film narration) and the final ending of this chapter in her life before the beginning of a fresh new one. Arguably the film is of the coming of age and young love of life’s outsiders, Laurie’s granddaughter “Allyson” (Andi Matichak) and “Corey” (Rohan Campbell) with Corey in particular the cornerstone for the film’s initial placement at Halloween in 2019 before the film roots itself in the present day and a particularly impressive performance from Andi Matichak.
With the addition and insertion of so many iconic moments as shards of memory throughout the early part of the film and its very definitive conclusion, one can only assume that this is a final and absolute ending to the franchise. The production team from Blumhouse never fail in the horror department and they haven’t here, as well as confirming this is their final involvement in the franchise. Can the same be said for the film’s original director John Carpenter? Alongside his son Cody and Daniel Davies, the trio provide a brilliantly atmospheric musical soundtrack to accompany the end of his original character creations, but is this the end for Michael Myers?
Horror history suggests not but Halloween Ends is a worthy enough finale for a four decades long horror franchise.
Thanks for reading. Just for larks as always, and always a human reaction rather than spoilers galore. My three most recently published film articles are linked below or there’s well over 100 blog articles (with 300+ individual film reviews) within my archives from which to choose:
“The Forever Prisoner” (2021)
Alex Gibney with yet more ugly truths from the Evil Empire.medium.com
“The Greatest Beer Run Ever” (2022)
“War is not a TV show”medium.com
“tick, tick…BOOM!” (2021)
Astounding central performance and lots of ticking but definitely no boom.medium.com