Directed by David Gordon Green
Starring Andi Matichak, Rohan Campbell and Jamie Lee Curtis

In her review of the first instalment in this new Halloween trilogy, my co-writer stated “we’re back to the cheesy, predictable and downright spectacular fare that made us fall in love with the genre some 40 years ago” and advised fans of the original work to “sit back, strap in and enjoy a brilliantly nostalgic ride”. I couldn’t have agreed more with her sentiments. 

In its sequel, Halloween Kills, a number of people from the Haddonfield community who survived an encounter with Michael Myers banded together to seek vengeance. While the depiction of its villain is very effective and despite the creative ways found to execute gruesome killings, which resulted in Halloween Kills having the highest body count of all Halloween movies, the nostalgia had been completely lost. To be frank, it overdid the cheesiness and felt like it unnecessarily went out of its way to search for sheer stupidity. 

Halloween Ends begins in curious fashion, provoking the early question of why a film that is ending a trilogy spending a considerable amount of time breeding a new antagonist and simultaneously shuffling its two drawcards to the side?

Laurie has settled into routines befitting of a grandmother, keeping herself occupied writing a memoir while maintaining a watchful and protective eye over who her granddaughter is dating. Meanwhile, Michael is contained to an environment not too dissimilar to where one might find another horror film villain, It. Both characters barely cause any harm to society or one another. But we know Michael can only be kept at bay for so long and the only person who can truly put an end to his rampage is Laurie. 

The new developments that slowly come to the fore in this thirteenth overall instalment in the Halloween franchise do strike up an element of intrigue, but ultimately opens more problems than it can solve. 

As mentioned before, after initially serving fans of the original with plenty to savour at the beginning of this trilogy, I highly doubt many fans will be too thrilled to learn that Laurie and Michael aren’t a threat to one another for so much of the film’s length. As a result, Halloween Ends resorts to cheap jump-scares that provoke a roll of the eyes more than they do a genuine startle and places a weight on the shoulders of two younger actors that just can’t carry a film the way Jamie Lee Curtis does. The latter half of this film falls back on familiar genre tropes and an absolute pet hate of mine – writing characters towards dumb decision-making in order to meet their untimely demise, feed the escalating body count and/or in an attempt to add a thrill or a laugh. It just doesn’t work.

This Halloween trilogy has been on a downward slope and disappointingly that is where it ends. Or does it? Halloween Ends marks the end of Halloween movies under Blumhouse, but the rights of the film series now fall into the hands of producer Malek Akkad, who has had some form of Halloween involvement since 1995. Sigh.

Halloween Ends is showing in cinemas across Australia from October 13th.

Moviedoc thanks Universal Pictures for the invite to the screening of this film.

Review by Leigh for Moviedoc

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