Back in September 2017 when it was announced that Jamie Lee Curtis was returning to the role of Laurie for David Gordon Green’s soft reboot to Halloween, fans couldn’t have imagined she would be around for another two films.
After the financial success of Halloween 2018 and its sequel Halloween Kills, we come to Halloween Ends, the final chapter in Green’s take on the Michael Myers mythos.
We are four years down the road from the bloody carnage of Kills and Haddonfield has become a town where the odd person may go missing but Myers himself has disappeared without a trace.
Laurie, now living with her granddaughter Allyson, come into contact with series newcomer Corey Cunningham, a troubled teenager who ignites the fire to bring together good and evil one last time.
The first thing to say about Ends, is that this will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but again neither was 2018 or Kills, so you are free to make your own choices. The tonal shift here was quite refreshing in the sense, it is a more character driven story, but it is Corey that drives the story forward, ably backed up by Laurie and Allyson.
In terms of Myers, liberties are taken with his mythos, but at this stage it feels time to try something different with The Shape. Green has sprinkled hints about supernatural tinge to Haddonfield’s favourite son, but here we go full tilt and while it is a choice, for the most part it works.
Green’s social commentary continues and we see a paranoia played out from the events of Kills plus some aftermath which like with little moments in Kills, work quite well. What does encountering a killer leave on you in terms of scars?
The kills here although brutal and varied, aren’t as vicious and OTT as Kills, which may appease those who didn’t care for the carnage of that film. It falls somewhere between 2018 and Kills.
In terms of Laurie, she is also vilified by the town, saying she antagonised The Shape into his rampage, effectively shifting blame from a psychopath to a paranoid doomsday planner. Given Laurie has chosen to embrace life and live a more purposeful existence, there are moments where we see chinks in her armour and this comes from good character development.
Newcomer Rohan Campbell is the best part of Halloween Ends, with a full arc played out over the film, with nods to films such as Christine and Butcher Baker, Nightmare Maker, as we see how someone with implied darkness inside deals with being cast out by his community.
Is evil inside all of us or does it take an encounter with something of true evil origin to awaken it?
When it comes to the hyped final showdown of Laurie and Michael, it is as brutal as you’d imagine, and as Curtis has described it is scrappy but also gives us a level of catharsis in a more toned-down way to the endings of previous sequels such as Halloween H20, that went for the shock factor conclusion.
While the future of the Halloween series will ultimately be dictated by Box Office dollars and streaming figures, this feels like the right time to close the curtain on The Shape and Laurie – at least until the next iteration.
Halloween Ends is showing now in cinemas and on Peacock.
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