I first discovered Halloween back in the early 2000s, there were only eight movies. I remembered my excitement when I started Halloween Resurrection, eager to see Laurie Strode fight the Shape once more. I can’t begin to describe my dismay when the long-running heroine was killed in the opening scene, paving the way for one of the most alienating movie experiences I’d ever had. Laurie was a character I cared deeply for, and no matter how hard I tried to write the film off, her final fate always hung in the back of my mind whenever I rewatched the original classic. When David Gordon Green came along with a new trilogy that would bring Laurie back and tell the story in a new context, I was thrilled. That optimism quickly turned sour after the first two films came out, and I was left feeling apathetic about how the trilogy would end. Then Halloween Ends came out.
Let me just begin this by saying I get it.
I’ve been a huge slasher fan ever since Halloween. It’s hard not to have some love for a monstrous character that so horrified and fascinated you as a kid. I hoped Halloween Ends would be an epic final standoff between Laurie and her nemesis, and though I always wanted Laurie to win, it only seemed right for the Shape to take his final bow in epic fashion. Halloween Ends is none of those things, instead taking a more subdued approach where the Shape is only part of a more complicated story and was seemingly sidelined in favor of a new character’s journey into evil. So, for those who hated this movie, I absolutely get it.
I also absolutely got the movie. Out of all of Green’s films, Halloween Ends not only gave me greater appreciation for Halloween from 2018 and Halloween Kills, but also became my favorite Halloween sequel. It picks up four years after the events of the 2018 killing spree. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) are living together and trying to put the Shape behind them. Things take a turn when Laurie befriends Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a youngster blamed for the death of a child he was babysitting. While Allyson tries to coax him out of his shell, Corey has a chance encounter with the Shape that sends him down a murderous path of his own and brings the Shape out for one final Halloween. Ends suffered from remarkably poor advertising promising an H20-style finale. Going into this film, it’s important to remember that Halloween Kills was the finale of Michael’s story. Ends is an epilogue, providing a more grounded look at how the slasher saga has impacted the survivors and the killer himself.
Laurie and Allyson are now living in relative peace together, Laurie abandoning her survivalist lifestyle and Allyson getting a job at Haddonfield Memorial. Their roles are now reversed from 2018. Now it’s Allyson who has cut herself off while Laurie tries to encourage her to be more open. Laurie here is a far different character than in 2018 and Halloween Kills, working to forget her boogeyman and move on with her life. At a glance, it may seem a stretch, but the seeds of this transformation were planted in the previous films. Laurie destroying her compound and leaving with her family was an important step in choosing them over her obsessions. Learning Michael had long forgotten about her was an important revelation that set her down the path to forgetting about him. She’s trying, to maintain relationships with her fellow survivors and spending more time on contemplation than fear. She’s also trying to help her granddaughter Allyson work through her grief and fear in a way no one did for her.
One of the most important things to realize is Laurie is not okay. She’s trying to embrace life and play the part of the kindly grandmother for Allyson, but she’s not doing a very good job at it. Her first scene with Allyson sees her trying to bake a pie for Allyson, but she botches it. Laurie is still so focused on writing her book that she ends up burning this goodwill gesture, showing she still doesn’t have it all together. She puts on the demeanor of a friendly, fun-loving person, and like her friend Annie did for her, tries to play matchmaker for Allyson. But underneath it all, Laurie is riddled with guilt and regret for missing out on her daughter’s life in favor of her obsession. Little by little we see the real Laurie come out, glimpsing her for the first time when a relative of one of Michael’s victims confronts her. Laurie does want to forget and move on, but Haddonfield won’t let her.
One thing Green does so well is making Haddonfield a real place. Previous sequels even in the same continuity struggled to find a consistent look for this Illinois town. Green is sure to remind us of where we are, using landmarks, character arcs spanning multiple films, and even background players like a reporter who appears in all three movies. Little Lindsay Wallace now runs a bar and offers support for her fellow survivors, and even Allyson’s sleazy boss Dr. Mathis is established in Halloween Kills before becoming a prominent supporting player here. Such things give us a real sense of place, long changed from what it once was. In 1978 and 2018, Haddonfield was an innocent town harboring a dark secret it tried to bury. After Kills, the town won’t let it stay buried. Everyone now believes as Loomis and Doyle did, that Michael is beyond human and will someday return. He’s not present, and yet he’s everywhere, hanging over the town like a curse, one that infects Corey Cunningham.
Corey is often labeled as a replacement for Michael, but I never read him as either that or the film’s main character. Instead, Corey is the Shape’s final victim. In this continuity, he’s the only person apart from Laurie whom the Shape personally targeted, and the movie focuses on him for much the same reason the original focused on her. But while Laurie fights her stalker, Corey tries to become him. Corey has a lot in common with Arnie Cunningham from John Carpenter’s Christine, a film Ends tips its hat to numerous times. Corey and Arnie even wear identical outfits in the opening, when Corey accidentally kills Jeremy, the boy he’s babysitting. The Shape may not be present for the opening, but he inspires it. It’s talk of Michael that causes a fight between Jeremy and Corey, leading to Jeremy’s fateful prank where he dies and Corey is blamed. The next time we see him, Corey no longer looks like Arnie. He’s working in a scrap yard and wearing an all too-familiar boiler suit. His transformation has already begun.
Corey and Laurie share a lot in common in the trauma they faced and how the town constantly reminds them of it. Both try to move on and find some peace, only for others like Sondra’s sister with Laurie or Jeremy’s mother with Corey to not let them find it. They both have supportive people around them who try to help, such as Laurie with Hawkins or Corey with Allyson and his stepfather Ron. The differences between the characters are highlighted by their reactions. Laurie is now willing to lean into others when she needs help. She does this with Hawkins following her grocery store encounter. When Allyson leaves herself open for Corey, he walks away. It’s a fateful decision that puts him in the Shape’s path.
The movie leaves it open that Corey may have already been a ticking time bomb even before Jeremy’s death. He’s prone to outbursts and impulsive behavior that only make things worse. His frenzied and angry escape from a locked attic door is what killed Jeremy, and when confronted by the bully Terry and his crew, Corey makes several choices such as taunting Terry for his father’s abuse which escalates the fight. It’s this fight that leads to Corey’s encounter with the Shape, a brief moment where Michael seems to consider him before releasing him. Afterward, be it by Michael’s direct influence or not, Corey’s impulses claim another life when he stabs a vagrant who threatens him. These impulsive decisions are just the first part of his descent towards evil. It’s at the film’s halfway point that he makes his first calculated choice to lure Doug, Allyson’s ex, to his death.
Let’s set something straight. The Shape in previous continuities is not the same character as here. Those killers specifically targeted family members and for the most part, had clearly defined supernatural qualities. This Shape is an escaped mental patient on a random path, with any supernatural qualities ambiguous at best. He also suffers the most damage of any Myers all without the aid of regenerative powers. And yet Michael keeps going. Is it power he draws from his victims, or did endorphins and adrenaline simply numb him to pain? Whatever was shielding him, it has worn off. Michael’s home, the only thing he seemed to care for, has been destroyed, leaving him an aimless hermit living in the local sewer. It’s in sharp contrast to the town’s inflated ideas of him, which is precisely the point. The idea of Michael is more than the man. It’s only through Corey that the Shape’s strength starts to return, leading Corey down his own path of destruction.
Once they meet, Corey and Michael form an odd, almost symbiotic partnership as the two embark on a crime spree. It starts when Doug is killed. Corey aids the weakened Shape in the murder, asking Michael to show him how to kill. The act seems to reinvigorate Michael and showcases some of James Jude Courtney’s best acting as the character. In a single shot, we see the hunched-over man in the mask straighten himself out and become the Shape once more. Does Michael draw power from the killing, or was he simply excited? Does it matter? What matters is just as Corey helped Michael, so does Michael help him. The Shape’s intervention during the botched killings of Allyson’s boss Dr. Mathis and her coworker Deb is the only thing saving Corey from being caught. This could be Michael following through on Corey’s earlier plea to show him how to kill, but there are other possibilities as well. Was joining the killing his attempt to bond with a new friend, or is it just another example of the Shape’s prankster behavior? It’s the ambiguity that makes these moments fascinating. What we know, what we see, is how the two feed off and into each other. Just as Corey feeds Michael’s strength and keeps his legacy alive, so does Michael inspire Corey’s will to continue.
While Corey’s relationship with Michael is symbiotic, his relationship with Allyson is parasitic. Allyson’s connection with Corey has been criticized as rushed and unrealistic, but such criticisms fail to acknowledge all that Allyson suffered and lost in the space of a single night. Both her parents and all her friends were killed, and the level of violence she saw is beyond even her grandmother’s 1978 ordeal. Four years later, Allyson still hasn’t found closure and is so worried about her grandmother that she’s hesitant to pursue her own life. To expect such a person to be in their right frame of mind is not only unreasonable but unrealistic. Allyson already knew about Corey before their first meeting, and in him, she sees a lot of her own feelings of entrapment and loss. She tries to heal Corey when they first meet, stitching up a wound he gained in a fight. Corey however destroys everything Allyson puts into him. It’s during a murder the Shape aids him in that the wound is re-opened, and it becomes infected. Corey reopens any wounds Allyson closes, including her own.
Allyson has a lot of pent-up anger from her experiences, glimpsed in an outburst over a broken microwave and when she snaps at co-worker Deb during a Michael Myers-related tangent. More importantly, Allyson’s relationship with Laurie is already strained, shown even in small gestures like changing her grandmother’s caller ID from ‘Grandmother’ in 2018 to ‘Laurie’ here. It could be due to feelings of entrapment, or perhaps even blaming Laurie for her losses. It’s these feelings Corey uses to drive a wedge between Allyson and Laurie. But though Allyson cares about Corey, he cares nothing for her. She shows up to an arranged meeting spot, unaware that Corey has abandoned her in favor of a killing spree against all who wronged him. Scenes of Corey’s killings are intercut with Allyson waiting for his arrival, now more alone than she’s ever been. This is ironically the exact same way he treats the Shape, stealing the weakened killer’s mask and leaving him to languish in the sewer. It’s this act which brings the four lead characters together.
It’s assumptions that Corey makes about Laurie and the Shape that lead to his downfall. He assumes Laurie wants to keep him and Allyson apart. Scenes of the two arguing are heavily implied to be Corey’s mental projections, but Corey takes them to heart. He attempts to kill Laurie in an identical fashion to Judith Myers, a scene that was originally shot in a long POV like the original Halloween. When Laurie turns the tables, he attempts suicide to frame her in front of Allyson, and Allyson, being in such a distraught state, doesn’t notice the full context of the scene like the mask or the boiler suit. She only sees Corey in a moment that mirrors a brief laugh the two shared earlier in the film. Subjecting Allyson to this is Corey’s most cruel act, but it succeeds in driving the two apart, at least for the moment. His other fatal assumption was believing he and the Shape shared a special connection. When the Shape comes to claim his mask, Corey reaches out for help, and it’s here the Shape claims Corey as his final victim. Still, just before Michael kills him, there’s a moment where he seems to turn away. A gesture of contempt, or disinterest, or could this be the Shape actually showing remorse? Whatever the case, Allyson and Corey are gone, leaving Laurie and the Shape alone.
All of Halloween Ends is built around this confrontation. Scenes of Allyson fetching an extinguisher during a kitchen fire, Laurie sewing to pass the time, and even a casserole exploding in a microwave are all set up for the ending, which happens to be my favorite scene in the movie. With the blue tinted high contrast lighting coupled with Laurie’s clothing resembling her outfit in the original, it almost seems both characters have stepped back in time. The ensuing fight is the most physical the two have ever been. Even in H20, they were striking at each other with axes and knives. Here the pair have their hands on each other in a violent, ungraceful tussle. It’s here that Laurie’s key skill that saved her in the original comes into play, not of preparedness, but improvisation. Laurie’s ability to think on her feet, like using a coat hanger to defend herself in a pinch is what saved her before. The same goes for here, where Laurie fights the Shape not with an arsenal of weapons, but a fire extinguisher, a sewing needle, and an exploding casserole. But she doesn’t beat him. That only happens when Allyson returns, and her pent-up frustrations finally find an outlet when she breaks the Shape’s arm, saving her grandmother’s life.
The Shape’s demise is not a crowd-pleaser, nor is it meant to be. This is the death of a decrepit old mental patient, stripped of mask and legend. The destruction of the Shape’s body is not only an answer to how previous sequels allowed him to walk away, but finally destroys the larger-than-life idea of him in the eyes of the town, and sets the town, including Laurie and Allyson, free. Curtis displays a marvelous bit of acting as Michael is destroyed in an industrial shredder. She never takes her eyes off him the entire scene, but once he’s been annihilated, she finally diverts her gaze from him and breathes. Perhaps for the first time in 44 years.
The film ends on a hopeful note. Allyson reconciles with her grandmother, finally free to leave Haddonfield and start her life anew, while Laurie is finally allowed by Haddonfield to put the Shape behind her. There are two callbacks to the original here. Like the original, Halloween Ends concludes with a montage of where the Shape had been in Laurie’s home. But while the original was meant to signify the Shape’s presence, these images of an early morning filled with the sounds of chirping birds signify his absence. And then there’s Laurie’s unresolved conversations with her murdered friend Annie, who tried to help her find the courage to ask out someone she liked. How appropriate is it that Laurie’s final words in the Halloween series are asking Hawkins out? The final shot of the Shape’s mask sitting on a coffee table can mean a lot of things. The film uses it as a symbol for evil, and though not being worn now, someday that will change. To me though, the important thing is the mask has been left aside and forgotten, while Don’t Fear the Reaper, the same song Laurie listened to on car rides with friends so long ago, is playing again.
One could argue Halloween Ends isn’t a horror movie, but instead a drama that tries to take an honest look at what the aftermath of a slasher saga would do to real people. One of the biggest charms of slasher films is also one of their biggest drawbacks, and that’s the tried-and-true formula they’ve been sticking to for almost half a century. Instead of just throwing a madman at a group of teens, Green tells a story about survivors, a suffering town, and a girl who becomes a woman, missing out on her family while living inside a 40-year nightmare before finally, after so long living in fear, learns that life is still possible. That Green tried to end the series with a real sense of emotional resonance is something to be celebrated, and to me, was a surprisingly cathartic experience. When I first saw Resurrection, the disappointment and shock of Laurie’s fate stuck with me for many years. When Ends concluded, I felt I could finally let it go. Most Halloween movies finish still on the 31st. Ends concludes some time later, Laurie sitting on her porch on a bright day, thinking of what she’ll do when spring comes.
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