Monday, October 28, 2024

MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Halloween Ends" (2022)


...look... look... okay, look... do I have to do this one?

I just... I really don't want to do this one. I barely wanted to do the last one. I mean, hell I didn't want to do the last one at all, but this is just...

...yeah, I'm not getting out of it, am I? Fine, hell with it. Horror Month 2024's last film. Let's get on with it.

Halloween Ends is a bad movie. Okay? It's not good. Don't watch it. Just ignore that it exists.

So, remember how Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) was geared up to go hunting down and facing off against Michael and finally bring an end to their dichotomy that has existed since that long remembered October night in 1978? Well, you can just forget about that because this film certainly did.

Four years after the events of Halloween Kills, Laurie has gone full domestic and is living in a home that isn't a gun-filled trap-filled box along with her granddaughter (Andi Matichak). Yeah. It's been four years. Four years since Michael got loose and brutally murdered half the population of Haddonfield including Laurie's own daughter... and she's off baking pies and writing her story.

...and we aren't even 10 minutes into this movie.

...and on minute eleven, we have an extended scene of Laurie and her granddaughter dealing with a burning pumpkin pie in the oven.

I'm going to hold off on commenting until I finish the recap, but the change in tone from the last film is jarring.

Anyway, it seems that the Strodes have more or less settled into a happy. Domestic. LIFE. We get introduced to a new character that nobody asked for, Corey (Rohan Campbell). Corey is a young man of about Allyson's age who accidentally killed a young boy he was babysitting after the kid locked him in the attic. Now, everyone in town hates him. This, by the way, happened back in 2019, supposedly between Halloween 2018 and Halloween Kills. After he gets thrown into the sewers by a bunch of bullies, Corey comes across Michael Myers... who is for some reason not putting Corey out of our collective misery.

Why? Because the film for some reason wants to try and set up Corey as some sort of successor or dark mirror to Michael. Except... he isn't. He's a fucking dork. It doesn't matter how many people you have him kill or how brutally you have him do it... he's a fucking dork.

Eventually, the film figures this out and we get back to the plot that people actually care about - the showdown between Laurie and Michael, which is just as unsatisfying as you might think it is.

Alright, so... I have nothing against Rohan Campbell. Corey is a pretty much unlikeable piece of crap from the very first scene that he's in. If he's supposed to be the brand new Ultimate Evil that Michael once exemplified... then evil is dumb. Luckily, he ends up being one of those problems that takes care of itself by the near end... or rather Michael does when he remembers who the hell he is and gets to stabbing properly.

Laurie's complete 180 from the end of the previous film makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If anything, she should be more paranoid than she was at the beginning of Halloween 2018, not less. Instead, she's keeping a home in Haddonfield, cheerfully decorating her house for a holiday that she certainly has no good memories about whatsoever, and baking pies.

Honestly, most of this film makes no sense and if it were in the hands of another creative group through each film I would understand that. However, both the director David Gordon Green and Danny McBride were credited as writers for all three films - the 2018 film, Kills, and Ends - so what happened!? I have no idea, but if this was their original two film plan they had had, then it would have been even more jarring a shift in tone than it was here.

What the hell were they even thinking?!

And yes, the film ends in such a way that a sequel would be difficult... which, honestly, is a good thing. I could stand to have a nice, wholesome H20 style branching timeline off of this absolute crapfest. It's not scary, it's not interesting, and it's not even good in even a "so bad it's good" kind of way. It's just... bad. It's so poorly done that I'm glad Malek Akkad is getting the rights back to it. Blumhouse has said that they're done with it and after this I am glad.

It's honestly right up there with the Rob Zombie remakes as just... bad. There is nothing at all redeeming about this movie, either.

Avoid.

Avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid.

Happy fucking Halloween!

...oh, wait, it's the 28th.

...happy fucking Halloween!

Halloween Ends is brought to us by Universal Pictures, Miramax, Blumhouse Productions, Trancas International Films, and Rough House Pictures.

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