Halloween Ends: The Final Showdown Between Laurie & Michael?
If you still watch trailers and saw the one for Halloween Ends, then there’s a good chance you might be disappointed if you expected the movie that was shown in the trailer. I no longer watch full-length trailers until AFTER I see the movie, so I only had a basic idea going in that Halloween Ends was being promoted as the “final battle” between Laurie Strode (Jaimie Lee Curtis) and Michael Myers.
But, because the previous installment, Halloween Kills, sidelined Laurie for the majority of the movie and instead tried to tell a moral tale about the monstrous behavior of the people who wanted Michael dead, I was prepared for this movie to throw me another curve ball. And that’s what it did. About 60-70% of the movie was about Laurie’s granddaughter, Allyson, (Andi Matichak) and a new guy, Corey Cunningham, (Rohan Campbell), who unwillingly became the town pariah because of a tragic accident.
Though not particularly scary, the 30-40% that focused on Laurie and led to the promised final nail-biting confrontation with Michael was very tense and exciting. It had me yelling at the TV.
All the main actors were solid, with some making their characters surprisingly likable. The first hour felt like a TV-family drama and I almost didn’t want the bodies to start dropping, because it was so charming.
Once the killing started, though, you pretty much knew who was horror fodder up until the last 15 minutes, where any or all of the main characters could have lived or died. One murder at a radio station was particularly memorable.
Savvy horror viewers who pick up on everything will notice a shot toward the beginning of the movie at a mechanic/junkyard that foreshadows the end. I saw it coming from a mile away, but it was the specific details that kept the movie interesting.
You won’t get 2 hours of Laurie fighting for her life against Michael. What you will get is a shocking opening, a moderate body count, and a definitive conclusion to the trilogy that started with Halloween (2018). Yes, it takes a detour for a large chunk of the film to focus on an entirely new character, an annoyingly recurring trend in Hollywood these days. While his story didn’t quite have the moral impact that Halloween Kills was going for, it was at least interesting and entertaining enough to watch between Laurie and Michael’s scenes, until everything came together at the end.
Halloween Ends is now showing in theaters and streaming on Peacock TV for subscribers at the $4.99 and $9.99 levels.
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