Now that the dust is finally settling on David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy, it feels like the right time to talk about the overarching theme of the series – Haddonfield.
Having mulled over Halloween Ends since its cinematic release, and dipped back into the other two films, the conclusion I am drawing is that Michael Myers hometown is far more interesting as a symbol than any character represented in the trio of films.
Green never really knew what to do with Laurie Strode, given her prepared warrior to her healed almost happy persona in Ends.
Myers himself remains an enigma, but that is the key to his appeal. Why does he do anything in this series? We can speculate and wonder but never really know for sure. Even his minor alliance with Corey Cunningham doesn’t have a purpose other than to re-awaken his dark soul and get him wielding his knife again.
Karen between 2018 and Kills flits between two types of characters and feels uncharacteristically caught up in the hysteria in Kills, which leads to her downfall.
Her daughter Allyson fares much better with a slow approach for the first two films before being given considerable screentime and a good arc in Halloween Ends. Although she is eclipsed in some ways by Corey, she does drive the plot and have an arc worth watching.
While the 2018 film is a soft reboot of the series, we see more of Haddonfield than ever before, with that world opened up considerably during Kills and Ends.
Green gives us extra time with minor characters such as Lonnie Elam in Kills, Sondra across Kills and Ends, and also the other anomaly of Tavoli, who has escaped Smith’s Grove alongside the Shape. Characters who in other series wouldn’t get arcs get time to breath here, but in some cases at the extent of main character.
Kills also brought back ‘legacy’ characters in Brackett, Marion, Lindsey and Tommy, for the most part just to add to the cannon fodder of the film’s zany energy. Only Lindsey survives, but again Green attempts to give her a wider arc, given her link to Tarot cards and not take the easy route of replicating her Real Housewives persona, because this just wouldn’t work in his Haddonfield.
Tommy Doyle feels plucked out of a MAGA lineup with his frenetic and aimless energy and bravado that ultimately seals his fate.
Big John and Little John, despite their short screentime feel like real people, their gruesome fates in the Myers house feel inevitable; you do feel for them being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This, of course, brings us to the polarising figure of Corey Cunningham, who on one hand is arguably the best written character in Green’s trilogy, with a real arc, and a fantastic performance by Rohan Campbell. Regardless of thoughts on the character, Campbell’s performance to carry pretty much the entire film is no mean feat.
Even Corey’s mother and her partner Ronald, via Corey are well written and fleshed out characters, who having differing fates given most of the audience may have felt she deserved Corey’s wrath whereas Ronald’s demise was an accident of sorts.
Adding to the underutilized pile are Frank Hawkins, who we may have felt had a showdown arc looming in Halloween Ends, but despite all the build-up in Kills, this approach is largely binned in Ends. His colleague Sheriff Barker suffers an even worse fate, as he takes the biscuit as the most useless character in the entire series. Whether this is the point only Green and his team of writers know but usually law enforcement play a considerable role in Halloween movies, while Barker here feels like a spare part.
Conclusively, I feel that Gordon-Green is more interested in tearing up and community and sowing it back together unevenly in his Halloween movies. They never truly recover from the 2018 massacre and those wounds are partially reopened by Corey Cunningham’s awakening and the Shape’s return.
The fact the film concludes largely in the junkyard, with Laurie triumphantly dumping the Shape’s remains in the grinder as the town watches on feels symbolic of her transformation from town martyr/weirdo to saviour given she has finally vanquished Michael Myers once and for all.
While Halloween Ends may not have worked for everyone it is undeniably the boldest Halloween movie since Rob Zombie’s Halloween II and before that Halloween III, in attempting to break new ground.
Let us know your thoughts on the themes of the Halloween trilogy in the comments.
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