Review of Halloween Ends (2022) by Dw98 — 16 Oct 2022

I’m writing this with the assumption that this is the final installment in the franchise. My main gripe about this movie is the fact that almost none of the killing is performed by Michael himself, but instead some mundane nobody protege named Corey Culligan. He chance encounters Michael in the sewer, and falls under some form of mind control. it’s implied Michael is vicariously killing through Corey, which is fine, have them go on a killing spree together, but instead boring and insipid Corey shoulders the weight of the load while Michael mostly twiddles his thumbs in a dainty sewer. We came to see Michael, not Corey, Michael!! You’ll only witness him kill three people, and the methods utilized in these kills seems so uninspired. My second gripe is the lack of creativity in the kills. It seems like they’re intentionally shying away from a more gruesome take on the deaths, likely to pander to a wider audience, but that’s disappointing when you consider it’s a show about a super charged serial killer. There were maybe two interesting kills in the entire movie. This is a horror movie. Go crazy with it. My third and final gripe is the awful story and the unsatisfying finale, which was handled quite lazily. They essentially relegated Michael to just a man, and then tried to insinuate his mask imbued him with his power. They then manage to incapacitate him with a simple throat slash, long enough to where they can haul him to a wood chipper with the entire town in tow. This doesn’t make sense when you take into account the considerable amount of punishment Michael has endured in previous movies, with or without the mask. Don’t even get me started on the beginning either. It’s nearly an hour or so before you’ll witness your first intentional murder, and the duration before is a corny romantic cringe fest I didn’t want to see in a movie about Michael Myers. The dialogue is pitiful, the characters are unlikable, and again, this has no place in a movie about Michael Myers, at least not as a focal point of the plot.

I understand this is John Carpenter and Jaime Lee Curtis’ creation, but in my opinion their creation is taking a nose dive down a steep cliff. I’m very dissatisfied with what I watched.