Halloween Ends

[tomandtish]

So, I see there isn’t a thread for this film. It’s certainly a very controversial film on social media. I saw it on opening Thursday night. I’ve spent some time thinking about it and here are my thoughts.

Spoiler: Contains plot spoilers

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Honestly, I strongly disliked it. This is one of those cases where it almost feels like someone had another movie and they decided to reskin it as a Halloween movie. It might have been a decent horror movie by itself but making it a Halloween movie killed it. Some specific issues.

Laurie: She spent the 40 years between the original movie and 2018 convinced Michael was going to escape and preparing to kill him when he came for her again, to the point that she effectively traumatized her daughter trying to prepare her for it, and she turned her house into a death trap for him. At the end of Halloween Kills she tells Michael she’s coming for him, and she knows (or will shortly know) that he’s killed her daughter and 30+ other townsfolk that night.

And then we jump to 4 years later. And despite knowing that Michael escaped and is still alive, and despite knowing that some people have gone missing (if you pay attention there are al least 2 billboards for missing girls), Laurie has become a mostly happy person. Michael has been put aside (except for the book she is writing) and everything is peachy. This just isn’t in character. Honestly, this idea would have worked better if things had been reversed. If Michael had escaped 4 years after the original. Then she’d be justified in thinking he’s not coming back. And then 40 years later when he ‘s still out there the paranoid Laurie works well. But this just isn’t Laurie.

Allyson: Allyson doesn’t have the 40 years of baggage Laurie does, but she also knows Michael is out there, and he killed her Mom, her Dad, her boyfriend, and another of her friends. And again, there seems to be no concern that he’s alive and free. As with Laurie, it’s more like this is after the events of the original movie. And her relationship with Corey feels like it comes out of nowhere.

Corey: There’s actually the premise of a good movie here. Kid who made a horrible mistake and killed a young boy a few years ago gradually descends into darkness, assisted by a more experienced but aged and infirm serial killer. I can see where this plot works. It just doesn’t work when the killer is Michael Myers. As a result, you’re getting a movie that’s more about Corey than anyone else.

Michael: Online, there have been complaints about how little Michael is onscreen. It’s about 10 minutes. Some have pointed out that he was onscreen less time in the original movies. Here’s my response: it’s not about how much time someone’s onscreen. It’s about how well someone is used. For a classic example? Jaws. Arguably the best horror movie ever, and the shark is onscreen a grand total of 4 minutes. As for Halloween Michael is used to maximum impact in the original. He’s used almost as a sidenote in Halloween Ends. It’s really Corey’s movie, not his or Laurie’s.

The Town: The mentality of the town is just weird in this film. I get their treatment of Corey. That’s all too realistic. But apparently the current belief is that Laurie “harassed” Michael into becoming a killer? And given how much of a pariah they’ve made of Laurie, it just makes her transformation even more surprising.

Anyway, that’s my two cents. Thoughts?

[Dragonus45]

Yea, where the other movies in this reboot felt a lot like fan fiction but in the good way, this one felt like the bad kind of fan fiction. I can't find the better words at the moment to describe the difference though.

[Thrudd]

I think this is the case with pretty much all the Halloween sequels. They are all sort of alternate sequels of the first one, that don't really completely logically follow from one another. Continuity wise, it has been a mess since pretty much the first sequel. Even though the last two films were more in continuity with each other than perhaps the others were, "Kills" was definitely bad and probably deserves to be scrubbed out of the continuity anyway.

Spoiler

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I think Red Letter Media made a good argument for why the film about Corey is actually an ok (not great) movie, and they should have just left Laurie out of it and focused the story on how someone new turns into a killer like Michael, leaving Michael as just the "source of evil" which infects or inspires Corey to "take up the torch" so to speak. They look at it as a decent film about a terrible town driving someone to become a new psycho murderer, with an unfortunate probably-studio-mandated out-of-nowhere finale with Michael and Laurie doing mortal combat.

[Bartmanhomer]

Well, I saw the movie last week and I'm going to express my thoughts and opinions about it.

Spoiler: My Thoughts On Halloween Ends (2022)

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I saw the movie last week in IMAX. This movie is about how a teenager was accused of killing a child even though it was an accident. How his life changed and people accused him of being a monster. And he was killing people as how he was inspired by Michael Myers. I like how this final movie of Halloween ends. I like the horror, blood, and killing spree. I didn't have any problems with Michael Myers getting less screen time. There wasn't anything that I disliked about this movie. It was a perfect movie of Halloween movie. So I'll recommend this movie.

[Giggling Ghast]

Here’s the Pitch Meeting for The Corey Story, ie. Halloween Ends. Naturally, Ryan gets a lot of jabs in about the bait-and-switch plot.

[Dragonus45]

Here’s the https://youtu.be/LZczI-2OKcI ]Pitch Meeting[/url] for The Corey Story, ie. Halloween Ends. Naturally, Ryan gets a lot of jabs in about the bait-and-switch plot.

It's amazing how much I want to like something more after watching those videos. Reminds me a lot of CinemaSins