Review – Halloween Ends
Director – David Gordon Green
Starring – Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak, Will Paton, Rohan Campbell and Kyle Richards
Runtime – 111 minutes
Release date – 14th October 2022
Certificate – 18
Plot – Four years after her last encounter with masked killer Michael Myers, Laurie Strode is living with her granddaughter and trying to finish her memoir. Myers hasn’t been seen since, and Laurie finally decides to liberate herself from rage and fear and embrace life. However, when a young man stands accused of murdering a boy that he was babysitting, it ignites a cascade of violence and terror that forces Laurie to confront the evil she can’t control.
REVIEW:
⚠️Spoilers ahead
The entire reason I chose to review the 2018 Halloween timeline was solely because I really wanted to discuss this movie in particular. I’ve had a thought ever since I first saw Halloween Ends back in 2022 that I still think about today, so I needed to discuss it, so stick with me! This is a bad movie with a great concept. What do I mean by that? Well, Halloween Ends attempts to explore a bold idea that could have been fascinating if handled differently, but its execution is so disjointed that it ultimately feels like two entirely different movies fighting for control.
Before diving into why it doesn’t work, let’s set the stage. Halloween Ends begins on Halloween night, 2019, one year after the events of Halloween Kills. We meet Corey (Rohan Campbell), a likeable young man with dreams of college and a promising future. When he’s asked to babysit, tragedy strikes: a prank goes horribly wrong, and the boy he’s watching falls to his death. It’s a shocking, gut-wrenching opening that immediately sets a darker, more psychological tone than expected. This accident completely destroys Corey’s life, and he becomes the town pariah, blamed and branded a murderer. The trauma festers within him until he eventually snaps, unleashing violence in a town already haunted by its history with Michael Myers.
Meanwhile, Michael himself is hiding in the sewers. Yes, the embodiment of evil, the legendary Boogeyman of Haddonfield, is living underground, seemingly taking a four-year sabbatical. It’s never really explained why, unless I missed something, but it’s one of the most baffling creative choices in the film. While Corey’s story is developed, Michael is treated like an afterthought until the third act, and by the time he reemerges, it feels too little, too late. The film keeps trying to juggle these two storylines but never commits to either, making the entire experience feel uneven and confused.
The real shame is that Corey’s arc could have been brilliant, just not here and not now. The idea of a town’s grief and fear manifesting into the creation of a new killer is genuinely fascinating. Imagine if this concept had been seeded throughout the trilogy, slowly building up Corey as a reflection of how evil spreads. Watching him descend across multiple films could have been a chilling commentary on trauma and legacy. But to introduce him as a new lead in the final film, when all fans wanted was Laurie vs Michael, was a monumental misstep.
And that’s the thing, audiences were promised a showdown. Every trailer, every poster, every line of marketing screamed that this would be the epic final battle between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. What we got instead was a half-baked coming-of-age-gone-wrong story about Corey and Allyson’s romance, with the final confrontation crammed into the last ten minutes. It’s not that the Corey plot is inherently bad, it’s that it has no place in the concluding chapter of a trilogy that built up decades of anticipation. The tonal shift is jarring, and the pacing never recovers.
Another big disappointment is how the film completely ignores the supernatural elements hinted at in Halloween Kills. At the end of that film, the townspeople shoot, stab, and beat Michael to the ground, only for him to rise up and slaughter the entire mob. A normal man would not survive this, and it suggested that Michael’s evil might be something beyond human. Halloween Ends could have explored that idea further, but it barely acknowledges it. There’s one moment when Michael grabs Corey by the throat, and we see flashes of Corey’s trauma, hinting that Michael might be transferring his evil, almost like a demonic entity passing its curse. For a second, I thought the film was about to go somewhere truly interesting. But no, it turns out those flashes were just Corey’s life flashing before his eyes. Really?!
The death scenes don’t do the film any favours either. In a franchise known for its violent and unrelenting kills, Halloween Ends feels tame and uninspired. Most of the murders lack tension or impact, with only one truly gruesome standout moment that will likely be the only scene you remember once the credits fade. It’s a shame because even if the story falters, brutal kills are part of what fans show up for, and this movie barely delivers on that front.
Halloween Ends could have been a fascinating exploration of how evil is inherited and how trauma infects a community, but instead, it feels like a betrayal of everything the trilogy promised. The concept is there, the ambition is there, but the storytelling choices completely undermine the potential. What we got was a confusing identity crisis of a film that disrespects its legacy and its fans. This story could have worked beautifully in another context, but as the final chapter of the Halloween saga, it’s a frustrating disappointment. Shame on you, Halloween Ends.