By Paige Taylor
I want to preface this by saying that I don’t consider myself to be overly harsh on horror movies, and I don’t like writing bad reviews. This genre means the world to me and for the most part, if I’m doing something horror related, I’m just happy to be here. But as I sit in the theater, halfway through Halloween Ends, I wish I was dead.
I consider myself an avid Halloween fan, though there are installments I either don’t love or choose to ignore completely. While 4 and 5 aren’t my favorite for instance, they’re still an enjoyable watch for me since they have Michael. But this… this is just unforgivable. A lot of fans didn’t hide their disdain for Blumhouse’s 2018 installment of the series, or the follow up Halloween Kills, both of which I really enjoyed as modern takes on the franchise. But in Ends’ wake, I’m finding a trend between those who hated the first two and loved this, and those who loved the first two and found the final installment to be completely underwhelming. Let’s go there.
We left off with Michael Myers taking down Laurie’s daughter and escaping, as he does, nearly unscathed, even though he was beaten down by an entire village. The tone is ominous; both films grand, dark and honestly epic. The saga wrap-up promises more, along with a final showdown between Michael and Laurie. Instead we get… well… something else. The opening instills hope. We’re introduced to a new character: somewhat-dorky normal guy, Corey. We’re also given our first death, one that makes my eye pop out of my head and gets me expecting something really ruthless. But I can’t recall another scene after that I even really liked. To be honest, I thought I’d wake up and laugh about how I dreamt that I saw Halloween Ends and “oh my god listen to what it was…” I can list all the reasons why I don’t favor this film, just as others can list why they liked it, but at the end of the day, Halloween fanatic aside, this is a bad film. It’s messy, it’s slow, it’s rushed, it’s out of character, it’s disjointed from the rest of the saga, the dialogue is bad, the story is strange, it doesn’t seem to know what it is, and the inedible cherry on top is that it’s so, mind numbingly boring. While the other two had a through line, and shared the same humor, tone and direction, this one lacks any and all of the same DNA, making it feel so strange to be the last installment and instead feels like a lonely, jilted fanfic of someone who thinks they can “give it a shot” themselves.
The social commentary has been something I’ve enjoyed in all three of these new films. The final installment continues exploring human nature’s need to have a physical embodiment of the anger and rage they feel, and the knack to place blame on someone or something to the point of victim blaming and creating more evil in the process, leading ultimately to evil changing shape. It’s all good and well, but in this case, evil changes shape… to the form of a bad movie. The disrespect they showed Michael mixed with it being utterly unwatchable has earned it a place in my “vault”, where movies I wish to forget go to die. I can see Resurrection now, welcoming it to the darkness.
Oh, and by the way, I wish I could cure my eyesight the way Corey apparently did. I guess they felt like his character would be more digestible if they gave him his own She’s All That moment.
🔪Madame of Horror
Madame of Horror 
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