How Does Halloween End?

Halloween has been a horror tentpole franchise for the better part of 4 decades. Now the thrilling saga is said to be concluding with this final entry. There are plenty of loose ends to tie up, plenty of ideas to throw around that make way for a true final installment.

However what we got was an absolute mess of a movie. New subplots with no payoff. Bad character switches in a final film undoing all of the work that had been put into the previous two installments to showcase the pure evil that is Michael Myers.

The subplot featuring Corey and Allyson was like a secondary teenage angst romance rolled into a Halloween film. The oddest choice of all was to use this subplot to basically push Laurie onto the back burner and make it less about her confronting Michael one last time and make it more about her being concerned for Allyson. It is glaringly obvious they wanted Laurie and Allyson in this relationship where she was the one who mothered her but by this point Allyson is a full grown adult capable of making choices on her own. She is working, capable of carrying on a half decent social life and it is all thrown up in the air by this man she claims to have always been intrigued by. Her infatuation with Corey added zero cool elements to the story.

By the time all is said and done Corey's presence in the film truly doesn't matter. He essentially spends the film being groomed by Michael Myers just to be killed off before the final showdown between Michael and Laurie. I guess in some ways that showdown had payoff. They finally answered the question that Michael is in fact a mortal man who can bleed out just like anyone else. As the film ends we learn absolutely no one in Haddonfield makes rational and smart decisions. Some of the decisions even throughout this film felt like set up just for those characters to be put in a position to die. I know that is the point of most slasher films but these felt especially pointed out. We had a group of entitled teenagers pushing a fragile mind to the brink. We had towns folks who continued to push the agenda about how evil comes to be.

This film truly felt like a rehashing of the old ideas that were supposed to become fresh again with this new trilogy. It honestly felt like the studio greenlit a trilogy and when it was time to discuss ideas for the third film they just pulled out pieces of paper from a jar. None of this felt like a cohesive Halloween movie which debated the manifestation of evil and how far that concept can push someone. It was a mishmash of horror concepts thrown together as a potluck.

It sucks to say these things about a movie that was high on the list of anticipated films. Most wrap up films are usually subpar in a lot of ways because they spend time wrapping up silly plot points. This one was beyond subpar in a negative way. Truly. It was the worst thing about modern horror films rolled into an a laissez-faire attempt at ending a beloved iconic franchise. If this truly is the end of Halloween and Haddonfield then I would say the old T.S Eliot quote applies here more than ever and it is a damn shame it has come to this.. "This is the way the world ends.This is the way the world ends.This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper."