Halloween Ends - Movie Review

"What on earth did I just watch?!" Is what I told myself upon leaving the cinema. Halloween Ends completely missed the charm of the original movie. What was once a very simple, straight to the point slasher, where a unstoppable killer storms through Haddonfield on a murderous rampage is now a convoluted romantic thriller about Laurie's grand daughter, Alison, falling for a bad boy psychopath! I'm not even kidding you folks, Halloween Ends focuses far more on this new character named Corey, who slowly becomes psychotic upon meeting Michael Myers in a creepy sewer. After escaping the infamous serial killer, Corey slowly starts to lose his sanity and essentially becomes a copy-cat killer of The Shape, only he has an even cheaper Halloween mask from the local dollar store. What's even worse is just how much screen time is absolutely wasted on this bizarre, yet awful romantic relationship he has with Alison, which honestly takes over the majority of this film's run time! I swear to you this is the actual plot and it's not at all scary.

Thankfully the film finally begins to feel like an actual slasher movie in the second half, once Michael Myers starts teaching Corey how to be a badass serial killer on a number of tag team murder sprees, (yes this really happens) the film actually starts to feel horrific! The gore effects are realistic, with practical effects that are fairly gruesome, there's certainly some good scares here or there and the opening of the film is very chilling! To be fair, these (unfortunately very short) scenes of Michael and Corey teaming up are actually quite entertaining and intriguing, almost like a messed up version of Batman & Robin, only they kill instead of solve crimes. It's an interesting concept that would've made for a really bizarre, fun yet creepy horror film, but as mentioned before the film focuses far more on this awful romantic plot, which sadly takes center stage and completely ruins any hope I had for this pitiful excuse for a Halloween film!

There a number of references to other horror films and even previous Halloween entries in the series that were nice little nods, but ultimately they meddled with the plot, resulting in the unfortunate mess we are left with. As mentioned before; Michael Myers now lives in a sewer, a reference to Penny-wise in Stephen King's IT. Right next to this sewer, there is a homeless man who knows Michael lives in there, a reference to Halloween 5's opening with the homeless man looking after him after the 4th film. Then the whole plot of Corey slowly becoming the next Michael Myers, was something Friday the 13th part 4 hinted at with Tommy Jarvis possibly becoming the next Jason after defeating that supernatural serial killer, the name "Corey" could also refer to Tommy Jarvis's actor, Corey Feldman (This possession plot could also be a reference to the ending of Halloween 4, where Jamie murders someone at the end). These references are kind of fun to point at and connect, but they feel very forced and may have actually ruined the story in a lot of ways! This movie just doesn't feel very "Halloween" almost like a parody of other horror movies akin to Scary Movie, only it plays these references straight and expects us to take this film seriously without any of the laughs. At least Scary Movie was self aware with it's silly references and made fun of them, Halloween Ends just borrows from better horror movies and does a terrible job at recreating them.

I won't spoil the ending, but I had to warn you about this film's plot! The finale does feel like an actual Halloween movie, and Michael Myers does eventually take center stage too. Unfortunately this all happens in the later half of the movie, so you're going to have to sit through over an hour's worth of teen romance before we even get there. It honestly felt like I was watching Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey rather than a classic slasher. All this movie had to do was be faithful to what made the original 1970-1980s films so brilliant, by simply giving us a quick slasher where Michael (and Corey) go around murdering innocents for 90 minutes with a thrilling finale where either Laurie or Michael die. Instead they wanted to give us something "deeper" and "more meaningful" than that, by making it a failed psychological thriller that doesn't make sense and just leaves the viewer feeling confused and disappointed. Why was that so hard to do? They had some really good kills and excellent gore effects, so maybe a shortened cut of this film (without any of the romance) may have actually been worthy, but unfortunately the movie were left with is a tragic mess that is honestly just sad. It's a 2 out of 5 stars.