That’s what should keep audiences up at night. It will stick with you long after even the film’s wildest kills have faded (and those kills include instantly iconic offerings that hinge on everything from a blowtorch to just, like, a lot of knives), inspiring questions that can never be fully answered. Part love story, part major therapy session, and all chilling, what befalls Allyson and Corey (and, yes, everyone around them) is scarier than nearly anything else this franchise has ever attempted. Why does no one ever seem to leave Haddonfield? Look no further than Allyson, the first person who should have hightailed it out of there years ago and yet never quite got to it. If “Halloween” was all about reintroducing Laurie, and “Halloween Kills” was about the pain Karen (Judy Greer) was always trying to overcome, “Halloween Ends” is about how all of that has given us this present-day Allyson, someone who fully understands her pathology and yet can’t entirely escape it. And when Allyson meets Corey, two broken people in a town filled with them, what comes next is both totally shocking and wholly unsurprising.Īlong the way, Green finds the time to elevate Matichak, here appearing in her third “Halloween” film, often turning the film’s attention away from Laurie’s ever-evolving journey to follow Allyson’s quest, which ultimately becomes nothing less than a battle for her soul. She’s moved back into Haddonfield proper, where she lives in cozy comfort with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), who has endured more than her fair share of pain and only seems able to barely obscure the many ways it’s impacted her. “Halloween Ends” finds her at her most - dare we say it? - zen. Not so much for Laurie, who has fought hard to feel she is a “survivor” over the last four years. The film’s eerily discomfiting opening then runs us through a litany of other, Halloween-adjacent deaths (all suicides), making the case that Haddonfield is so very cursed that even people not killed by Michael were still at his mercy. This time, it’s not the babysitter that gets it, it’s his charge, but Corey’s involvement with the death of a spunky youngster is enough to turn him into his own kind of outcast, an urban legend in his own right, a boogeyman. While most of “Halloween Ends” takes place four years after Michael’s last attack ( the one that killed Laurie’s only daughter Karen, important catch-up note), the film kicks off with a brutal tragedy that unspooled just one year after Michael last appeared in his hometown. The second a character smirks that “Michael Myers kills babysitters, not kids,” it’s clear that this (final) entry isn’t pulling any punches. Green’s third “Halloween” film opens in surprising fashion: without an immediate focus on iconic, enduring final girl Laurie Strode ( Jamie Lee Curtis, riveting as ever) and with a quick flashback to yet another horrifying event that’s mostly unconnected to the saga of Michael Myers. New Movies: Release Calendar for November 4, Plus Where to Watch the Latest FilmsĤ2 Great Films That Failed at the Box Officeĥ0 Directors' Favorite Horror Movies: Bong Joon Ho, Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro, and More 'Stutz' Review: Jonah Hill Makes Art from Therapy in a Cagey Netflix Doc About His Psychiatrist Violence and trauma and death and pain are “contagious,” we’re told in “Halloween Ends.” They’re “addictive.” And everyone here? They are “infected.” After decades of horror, of course this once-idyllic small town (and its inhabitants, even those not named “Strode” or “Myers”) remains in the throes of a significant traumatic episode. If Green’s “Halloween” was about the corrosive effects of sustained terror on a single family, and his “Halloween Kills” was about how mob justice can’t solve anything, his “ Halloween Ends” thrillingly connects those ideas, putting all of beleaguered Haddonfield, Illinois, on display. And yet the driving force behind Green’s three “Halloween” features has always been at odds with the very idea that any of this could ever end. The principal question of David Gordon Green’s trilogy-capper “ Halloween Ends” is baked right into its seemingly definitive title: It ends? After 13 films, including multiple timelines, confusing continuity, a pair of remakes, one wholly unaffiliated outlier sequel, a run of “re-quels,” and more, the ballad of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode is coming to a close with one last bloody, brutal slasher.
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