By Cody Englander, Contributor 
[Universal Pictures; 2022]
Rating: 4/10

The myth of Michael Myers lives on in the ‘final’ entry as this new Halloween trilogy comes to a conclusion. The movie follows mostly new characters, with Laurie and Michael taking a backseat to their own story. The marketing for Halloween Ends strays away from the main plotline with a new killer in town, following about every trope villain trope imaginable, yet never becoming the true threat that Michael Myers was just one movie ago. 

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If you are solely in these for gruesome and satisfying kills, this movie is definitely for you. This movie has the bloodiest kills in the entire Halloween series, with some genuinely satisfying character deaths. If you’re a fan of the franchise, this might be a divisive new entry. While insisting that this is the last Halloween movie, as Laurie Strode says in the movie, “Evil doesn’t die. It changes shape.” And it does just that. The movie opens unexpectedly with a shocking and unexpected death scene, which nicely sets up Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) as a character, and gains the pity of the audience, along with being bullied by a group of band kids. 

Past this scene, the movie slogs and gets bogged down by a story that the audience has little to attach to. Allyson Nelson (Andi Matichak) isn’t really used as a character, which is a shame because she was built up well in the previous two movies. This could have been used as a passing-the-torch moment had her character been given more depth. She wasn’t, despite her having nearly the same amount of screen time as her better-developed counterpart, Corey Cunningham. 

The rest of the movie ranges from boring to excessive. The kills, as with most slashers, are interesting, and there are a lot of new elements that director David Gordan Green incorporates to engage the audience, but outside of these tension-filled scenes, the movie doesn’t offer much of anything. As an end to Laurie’s and Michael’s stories, horror icons of the past 45 years, this fails as a conclusion. Halloween (2018) is a perfect example of how good a conclusion to this franchise could have been, despite messing up the ‘timeline’. It shows how these two characters have changed over when they last saw each other, and Laurie burning down the house she booby-trapped for Michael’s return with him stuck inside is as good a way to end a franchise as any. 

This ended up being a disappointment, although others may have fun with the gorey kills, brooding villain, and an end (for now) to one of the most iconic horror franchises ever.

Watch the trailer here: