Tonight I subjected myself to the recently released “Halloween Ends”…. It was not good. For the record I did not like the first of this “requal” trilogy, I hated the second and so I was never expecting to like this one. Also the word has been it’s not good. Some people even calling it the “Rise of Skywalker” of the series. Which is interesting when you think about it, Rise of Skywalker was a desperate course correction caused by going into a trilogy with no firm plan and giving the second movie to someone different to the first who then went about doing his own thing and ignoring continuity. Then a lead actor died, the director left and JJ Abrams took a pay cheque just to get something out. This movie however is part of a trilogy all entirely by one man: David Gordon Green. All three films were announced at once with the idea that it was all supposedly to a master plan.
Halloween Review Challenge – Day 16
The film sees the return of Jamie Lee Curtis and Andi Matichak (As her granddaughter “Allison”), but the real star is Rohan Campbell as new character “Correy”. It was directed and co-written (presumably in crayon) by David Gordon Green. I’m not going to worry about spoilers here because frankly this film doesn’t deserve to remain unspoiled. That said I’m also not going to dig too much into the plot because it’s not worth it either and I suspect this will be close to 2000 words even without that.
The story follows Correy. A guy that a few years ago was involved in an accident where a kid died and who since then has been vilified by the community. On top of this a group of local knuckleheads regularly bully him and beat him up. Despite this he has been developing a relationship with Allison. After they throw him off a bridge and leave him for dead he stumbles into a cave where he finds Michael Myers… for some reason. Why Michael has been in low battery mode in a cave I don’t know. He takes the entire film to shake it off enough to do… anything and even then is a shadow of his former self. Not a great last stand for The Shape.
Bait, Meet Switch / Why is Everything a Mantle Now?
Anyway after the meeting Correy seems to take a part of Michaels evil and goes on a killing spree. That’s right, this is almost a Friday the 13th Part V job, but Michael does get a couple of kills in on the way to the finale. Where as almost the entire point of Michael is he doesn’t have a personal vendetta, he just kills, Correy is specifically seeking out all his enemies to take down and killing them in very personal ways. Instead of the dark curiosity of Michael, there is a very personal hatred and determination to kill in ironic fashions (A bit like Jason Voorheese does sometimes).
Naturally being virtually superhuman now herself for no reason Laurie Strode senses the evil in him and gets in between him and her daughter. This leads to a big confrontation and after 63 year old Laurie deals with Corrie, Michael shows up and… get’s his ass handed to him and thrown into a scrap crusher. Because this has to have a big final, totally ended for sure this time, no escape, it’s really the end, finished, concluded, done, ending…. until the next movie (Which they even admitted was inevitable, though I suppose they may feel they can do Halloween with a new character, they are of course wrong).
Not A Halloween Film.
First up, this is not a Halloween film. Most of the plot follows this new character, introduced in this movie and it is really his story. The film seems to want to do some kind of torch passing and that may be the dumbest idea they’ve ever had in one of these movies. At this stage Michael Myers is Halloween, you can’t replace Michael. The Halloween films tried to move away from him with the third movie and people rejected it. But that was a genuine attempt at a different kind of horror. Replacing him with another person that does the same job but isn’t Michael will go down like a lead balloon. About as well as replacing Skynet with another AI that does the exact same thing as Skynet (Why do they repeat the worst ideas).
The funny thing is Friday the 13th learned they can’t replace Jason way back when they tried it for part five. Now if you suggest to them replacing Jason the rights owners would probably laugh in your face and the thing is Jason wasn’t even the original killer and wasn’t supernatural until the sixth movie. When they raised him from the dead they realised the franchise would always be about Jason. Michael was created to be a supernatural killer. There was never any reason to retire Michael. He is the bogeyman. Why is it the people making Halloween films have forgotten this?
Just Pick One And Stick With It!
The movie seems incapable of deciding if Michael is supernatural or a mere human. If he is a supernatural monster it is frankly impossible to believe a 63 year old Jamie Lee Curtis can get the better of him in a fight. If he’s a human though, given he was older than Laurie Strode, sure I can buy it. But then it never made any sense for him to be human. This was one of my two big problems with the first of this trilogy (the other I’ll get on to later). Rob Zombies first movie actually did a good job of a human version of Michael, at least in the screener version, where he died in the end. That was something you can do in a reboot, because you want a fresh take. You shouldn’t do it in a movie that pretends to be a sequel.
But here’s the thing, by the time the second movie of this trilogy has concluded they determine Michael isn’t just human. It took Laurie Strode two whole movies to reach the conclusion Sam Loomis did 30 seconds into Halloween II. He’s something else, not human and you can’t just stop him with a physical struggle. But then in the third film he seems tired and worn out and loses a melee fight to a 63 year old woman. It is horrendously inconsistent. But then everything in this trilogy is inconsistent.
I
Retconning Just To Repeat.
If there always been a plan to do a trilogy it would make sense to actually have them flow into each other. Halloween Kills at least follow on the same night as the first movie though they feel thematically unrelated with a bunch of new characters introduced in the second. It felt more like Halloween 2 did in relation to the original, that is: unplanned. Halloween Ends though feels like a random sequel where some rogue director has tried to do something new, in this case giving Michael a protegee. Not a good idea, but in a random sequel it wouldn’t be surprising. This however is meant to be the end of a trilogy and even though everyone has admitted the series will still continue one day, the “final” end of Michael Myers. Weird to waste most of the film on a new character.
It occurs to me though, if Halloween Kills is a bad version of Halloween 2, then this is a bad version of Halloween 4 and H20 merged into one. Only instead of Michaels niece being driven by mysterious forces to follow in Michaels footsteps at the end of the movie, some random kid that is bullied and vilified gets randomly taken under Michaels wing because he feels the hate or something like that because Michael is apparently a Sith Lord now. In Halloween 4 what happened with Jamie mirrored what happened with Michael and it had a purpose through their shared bloodline. In this movie though, the character couldn’t be more different to Michael and it seems to miss the point of Michael that they want to give the guy a reason to be evil. Meanwhile the H20 element comes in the form of once again repeating Laurie Strodes vengeance and trying to be the “final”, “definitive” ending for Michael.
The Shortest Section – What Did I like?
The music was good. John Carpenter not only picked up a pay cheque to say the film is good, but also came back to do the soundtrack again. The sad thing is I won’t even buy this soundtrack as I don’t want to be reminded of the movie. To be fair to John he maybe isn’t shilling and does legitimately like these movies, his taste is questionable these days, I mean he called “Fallout 76” a great game…. I dunno. He’s still my favourite director so I won’t bad mouth him any more than that. Sorry John.
Much like the previous films I also like some of the kills, though this time around none of them were Michaels and they were all much more personal so it feels a bit of a cheat, but from a stand alone perspective they were fine. Had this not been a Halloween film perhaps I would praise it.
Understand Your Own Franchise People!
Honestly I’m tired of people taking over franchises that don’t understand the franchise. This whole thing has been an exercise in hubris. Coming out and retconning Halloween 2 and H20 and continuing the retcon of Halloween 4-6 is a bold movie that says “What we are doing is better than what came before”. But then they went out and basically just made worse versions of those films. Their first movie tried to impersonate the original Halloween, while throwing in the ending of the freshly retconned Halloween 2. Then the second film duplicated the “same night” killing spree of Halloween 2, with the conclusion basically being Laurie coming to the same realisation Loomis did at the start of that movie. Then we have the final part where they merge Halloween 4 and H20 into one horrible mess.
What is the point except as a cash in? There was no creative reason to do all this, it was not for the fans and it muddies up the continuity and makes it even more ridiculous next time Michael returns. This was entirely done as a cash in and as a vanity project for Gordon Green, who must be recognised now as an absolute hack of a director. Like Rian Johnson before him and many others, he wanted to make his own film, not a franchise film he just used the franchise as a shortcut to do it. There was no respect there just a few token Easter eggs and references, which is the usual shallow way these directors pretend to care about the franchise.
Chose Your Own Misadventure.
The Halloween franchise is a total mess now. Three branching continuities and each new one worse than the last. Halloween 4 is a better Halloween than H20, but H20 is better than Halloween Kills. Halloween 2 is far better than the frustrating named Halloween (2018). Then you get to the clangers and while it’s a tough call I’m going to have to say Resurrection is better than Halloween Ends. Halloween 5 is better than both. At least Resurrection was focused on Myers.
Ultimately the best run of Halloween films, if you are going all the way is the original one. 1-6 and yet the rights holders have gone back and rebooted twice and green lit a Rob Zombie remake (and sequel). It feels like such a waste and only something that damages the franchise long term and that more than anything is I think the greatest loss here. Hopefully Hollywood will get over this “Requel” concept and stop doing it.
Final Thoughts and Rating
It’s okay to drop a clanger in a horror series. At least it is as long as you don’t do anything that stops you making another sequel and do actively try and undo other films in the franchise while doing it. Horror franchises like Halloween need to accept they will keep going. Retconning and doing “definitive final no escape, he’s definitely dead this time” endings is frankly stupid. Everyone knows Michael will be back at some point. It comes to something when the ending of “Jason X”, the Friday the 13th film with Jason is space is more intelligent than the ending of your Halloween series that you retconned two continuities for (For those that haven’t seen Jason X, the final solution is to launch Jason into space where he crashes down on an alien planet… at a lake).
My great hope for Halloween now is that at some point they do a sequel back in the original continuity. That would do a good job of putting this disaster behind us, expose the foolishness of the supposedly definitive ending and get away from all these crazy timelines. Furthermore I hope they embrace the supernatural aspect of the character. That was what made him different to the other slashers, especially Jason (prior to him being bought back to life in part 6). Anyone can make a random slasher movie, but there is only one bogeyman. Sadly he wasn’t present in this film. This is a stinker. Stand alone, not within the Halloween franchise maybe it is worth a 5/10 but as a franchise film and the end of a trilogy it is a total disaster. 3/10.
I’m not even doing a trailer.
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