Halloween Ends Spoiler Free & Spoilers w/Warning – The Horror Blog

Over the weekend, I opened my brand new vintage styled Halloween shirt and grabbed my fiancé to race off to the cinema to see Halloween Ends. We stood in a sea of fans with their blankets and every possible Michael Myers tee-shirt design you could imagine. We got our literal bucket of pop corn and soda and packed ourselves into the sold out theater auditorium to watch the final installment of the rebooted franchise. We were literally buzzing with excitement. How could we not be? Arguably the most iconic slasher in film history, and the OG final girl fighting it out in one last battle. Who survives? Who will finally come out on top after all these years? I have a lot of thoughts, and there will be spoilers. BUT, I will start out my post spoiler free and I will let it be known there are spoilers coming. This way, if you haven’t seen it, you can still get some feedback and then leave before anything is ruined for you. If you are new here…I’m not into spoilers or ruining people’s cinematic experiences. One day, I will share a story, of the worst spoiler I have ever encountered, WITH NO WARNING. It’s a jerk move. We don’t do it here. If you were one of the nuts like me who made it to theaters opening weekend, then you have nothing to worry about and you can let me know your thoughts as well.

In 2018 the Halloween franchise was rebooted, and this was the final installment of the trilogy. As we all know, this franchise has been well loved. It has many sequels, reboots and remakes to show just how much of a mark John Carpenter has left on horror. I would argue that he has other films that are better, but this is the movie that has been ongoing for over 40 years. I consider Michael Myers one of the “founding fathers” of slashers. It’s my opinion that “The Shape” set the standards for the slashers that came later

So, here are my thoughts. I liked it. It was okay. I will watch it again…but it did not live up to my expectations. I think the opening scene of the film, was the second best part of the movie, if not THE best scene of the film, and that’s saying a lot. I think that compared to the other two films in this reboot, it was the weakest of the three. To me, this is very disappointing because honestly, they hyped the shit out of this final showdown. To me it seemed like this would be the focus of the whole film and while it had that final battle, it certainly wasn’t the focus of the film as a whole. They had an A-team when it came to marketing for this movie. I get in trailers you need to include some goodies to hook us in as the audience, but compared with the film –it’s almost like they advertised another movie all together. The movie they had from the trailer is the movie I desperately wanted as a fan.  This was supposed to be a big deal, advertised as the final blowout between Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. To me, that means this is the final movie, the final showdown with Jamie Lee Curtis portraying Laurie Strode. That’s a huge deal, she was the original actress. She was the original character. She has come back to the role more than once, but this was specifically advertised as the conclusions to Jamie Lee Curtis as Strode, her final portrayal as this character. Which, it should be. She’s been this character for over 40 years at this point and we love her for that. We love Jamie Lee Curtis as our final girl. So yes, it is the big deal, and we get that delivered to us in the film. BUT I really feel like they squandered that opportunity. I think they underutilized Curtis herself as an actress and as her character Laurie.

In reference to what I just said- this film focuses a lot on Laurie’s granddaughter, Allyson. It is a very character driven film, which usually isn’t the case in these types of movies. So in underutilizing Laurie’s character, we see a lot of a plot that follows Allyson through this film and a love interest. I don’t mind so much, because it has potential, she’s lost her parents. There’s a lot of trauma there and now she’s building her life and trying to move on. She has a seemingly happy, and more normal of a life than you’d expect…especially with how we see Laurie at the beginning of this trilogy, living in a bunker practically.  We do see that she’s kind of let that go and focuses more on having a real life, with her granddaughter, which not everyone will probably be a fan of, but I liked that the character seems to be embracing some normalcy.

The last thing I am going to say before diving into spoilers is that there were a few times I got nervous, afraid the film was going in one direction or another that would make me cringe…but it didn’t. This goes hand in hand with a storyline that was built up and then never delivered. So why would we focus on building up this idea, or this plot, to end up not doing anything with it? Why spend so much time during the movie building this plot to throw it away? Sorry for the vagueness, I am not mentioning names because I don’t want to spoil anything. There were two story arcs through the film that were building, and neither of them followed through. So, it left me asking why? Why build up a story to just throw it away and never actually utilize either of them? The movie may have been better if they had. Or they could have just given us the movie we were desperately wanting. Also, I wish that we had more Michael Myers. For them really pushing the “final battle” as the focus of the film when they were advertising it, that wasn’t the focus of the film. I feel like quite a bit of time went past before we even got to see Myers. Then, I found myself feeling like we didn’t get enough of him through the whole film. As I said, it was good. I just expected a bit more, especially with how they advertised it. If you like the trilogy, or are a fan of the franchise period, you’re obviously going to see this and want to see it. I think fans of the OG Halloween storyline may be a little more disappointed than an audience solely connected to this trilogy, but it is worth the watch.

SPOILER ALERT- SPOILERS AHEAD

NOW…I loved the opening scene to this movie, and I kind of feel like it may have been the best scene of the whole film. That stinks for me, because it has nothing to do with our legacy characters, you know, the ones we showed up to watch? When Corey was locked up in that attic, I was 100% sure Myers was going to be in there. I was completely taken aback that he wasn’t AND the story they were setting up for Corey.

I wish I could say I loved what happened with Corey. When we first come across Myers, and Corey comes face to face with him and they have that connected eye moment, my heart sank a little. Solely, because I thought that they were going to take us in a “possession” like direction. And I really hated the idea, I hated the idea that the evil that posses Michael Myers is its own entity and it was about to hop ship and infect Corey, thus turning him into the new and improved Mikey Myers. While it isn’t the worst idea in the world, I wasn’t on board so I am happy they didn’t take us in that direction.

Let’s face it; our boy was banged up. I don’t think we’ve ever seen Michael Myers so weak and feeble as we did when we first saw him here. It really seems like he was way worse off than he had ever been. My fiancé hated that Corey was able to kind of beat him around and then run off with his mask. He claimed “this isn’t Michael Myers, that shit would never happen.” He’s right I see his point.  Admittedly for me, I liked it. It felt like this “whoa” moment, and I loved seeing it happen. It felt like the evil that was consuming Corey was more of a force than what Michael had left at this point. This is all opinion, of course, but even in my own house we are torn on this part. I see that point though, and respect it.

Finally, I hate how Corey’s story ended, because again, why? Fine, we’re starting up the film and focusing a HUGE portion of it on Corey’s character and so on. Now, why are we building this story? When Michael Myers kept letting him live, I was starting to feel this apprentice vibe. So in my mind, Myers was almost passing the torch on and letting the next monster reign. I did enjoy that build up, having Corey almost being his apprentice. BUT, then we have Corey over throw Michael and steal his mask to pretty much go pretend to be Michael Myers and try to take out Strode (yeah, he wishes)? WHY? Well, that’s apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back, because Michael goes after him and ends up killing Corey in the end. It was a moment I felt the theater enjoy because Corey throwing him around like a rag doll and running off with his mask is apparently unacceptable. AGAIN, I find myself asking, why? What was the point of the Corey storyline? We develop this story, or character arc to literally throw it in the trash and not use at all? It just doesn’t make sense to me that they spend a majority of this film building up this plot with Corey to have it just go nowhere. Obviously, I get that it’s a reflection of evil and how the town and its cruelty turned this wonderful kid who once had a bright future into a monster. I get that they wanted us to see how broken and mangled the town and community was as a whole…but did we need that for this film? Couldn’t we have done this a different way that would have suited the movie better? We came (or at least I did) to see this epic final show down between Michael Myers and Laurie Strode, this struggle that they’ve been putting on the screen for us for 40 years now. Then in the last 15/20 minutes we get the fight we were looking for?

I thought a majority of the film would be more of that; Michael and Laurie. Did anyone else race to the theaters to see it this weekend? Let me know your thoughts below! Were you thrilled with how they ended it? Did you find yourself wanting more or something different as well? Please, let me know! As always please follow me on Twitter, I am always looking for new horror friends!

Thank you for reading!