Will Halloween finally end?

Halloween Ends is finally here, the big showoff between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers aka “The Shape.” You know I do like how the credits continue referring to Myers as “The Shape,” and as someone who has seen most of the films in this series I can’t really explain why I enjoy it but I do. But considering the horror genre has a hard time letting things die and giving a satisfactory conclusion to stories, can Halloween Ends wrap things up in a way the audience will appreciate? Probably not, people tend to generally not like series endings.

Do we need to go over the story? Okay, sure. Halloween Ends picks up a few years after Halloween Kills; Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney) has disappeared after his latest killing spree and the town is still heavily embarrassed by the deeply cringeworthy “Evil dies tonight” chant they all participated in back in 2018. The mob mentality topic was easily the worst aspect of Halloween Kills and I’m glad they dropped it for the finale. I have a hard time feeling bad for the fact that the mob misidentified another one of the Haddonfield prisoners as Myers and got him to kill himself, considering the dude was in the same prison bloc as Michael he’s probably some child rapist cannibal. Having a lesson about the mob targeting the wrong person would’ve been more impactful had they done something like brutally murdered an innocent teenager, let’s make him deaf, who went out dressed in a similar looking costume and couldn’t defend himself.

Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is no longer the paranoid personality she was in the last two movies. It’s nice to see characters evolve. Strode has since moved back into town and decided to settle down on a happy life focusing on raising her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) into a fine young lady. Meanwhile Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) sort of steals the show after an unfortunate incident years ago paints him as a villain and an outcast in the town’s eye. Will Corey be able to move on from his past and find a happy future? Of course not, this is Halloween you nerds. Also Halloween is coming and that means Michael Myers is probably going to come back for another murder spree. Because if he didn’t there wouldn’t be a film.

Or maybe there would be. I could see A24 doing a Halloween homage centered entirely around a Halloween where the murderer doesn’t show up and how the town deals with the overwhelming anxiety being worse than the bloodshed itself. It’d be directed by Adam Conover.

Normally I keep my movie talk to the plot threads in the trailer, and I can’t really do that here because the trailer has been manipulated and cut in so many ways to obscure the actual plot that talking about the real plot would then ruin the surprise. So instead I’ll talk about what people want to hear; the murders. There’s a lot of brutal murders in Halloween Ends, and the series continues to bring back the classics and introduce some creative new ideas to boot. Of course you have the lady impaled on the wall with the big knife, that has to happen in every film. One or two of the kills are kinda suspicious CGI but mostly the deaths are gruesome and clearly use practical effects.

I’m going to keep this one short because I do like the movie and really the plot beats are best experienced on your own. Is Halloween Ends better than Halloween Kills? I think so. It doesn’t try to preach to the audience as much and it does take time to address the effects of the ass whooping Myers got at the end of the last movie. It also didn’t do what I suspected it would, which is to solidify that Michael Myers is an unkillable supernatural power akin to Freddy Kreuger or Jason Vorhees. Michael Myers is just a man, albeit a six foot tall walking brick shithouse. If it bleeds, you can kill it.

There were a few scenes that I didn’t quite like and a few plot threads that just seemed to fizzle out and die or were meant to throw the audience off in a completely unconvincing way, especially if you’ve seen the trailer. Overall though Halloween Ends is a satisfactory ending to Jamie Lee Curtis and her presence in the Halloween series. At least until Curtis remembers she really likes money and comes back for a cameo appearance in Halloween Lives in 2026.

Also Peacock ain’t a bad deal at $20 for a year of the paid tier. Halloween Ends didn’t have any ads, but for the shows that do you can get yourself an extension that blocks Peacock ads.

Rating: A-