Happy Halloween! A festivity I keep enjoying, despite the world turning more and more into a nightmare. I have always loved the comfort of spending a few hours watching a horror film, becoming part of a reality in which no matter how scary the monsters are, I will never suffer any of the consequences of their actions. Whether for better or worse, the majority of horror films, and by that I mean good horror films, present an opportunity to leave behind your real-life worries and find yourself fighting against fears that are part of other realm, thus preparing us, making us worried, frightened, to then suddenly in a second, release all of those emotions. It is almost some kind of therapy.

Everybody has a preference when talking about Halloween and horror films. Some people might love watching films like this, whilst others might be more interested on something like Hubie Halloween -scary on its own right, but for the wrong reasons-. Maybe for those who devote these days (because nowadays, Halloween lasts a month, summer a year, and Christmas a decade) to watching horror films, a franchise like the Halloween one is almost like too obvious of a choice, but taking aside plenty of its sequels, the original by John Carpenter still stands the test of time, being an almost perfect exercise of constant tension and unexplainable fear. But as it usually happens, this film was over-extended with a gazillion sequels, until unexpectedly, it got a new lease of life by director David Gordon Green.

Back in 2018 -which seems like two decades ago, right?- Halloween was brought back to the big screen. Speaking for myself, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised to see Michael Myers once more fighting against the final girl per excellence, Laurie Strode, wonderfully played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who captured the essence of a person who struggles to overcome the effects of trauma and who has lived her life in fear.

Although the film (using a script he co-wrote with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley) bet more on scares and gore than tension -which was the thing that made many horror films from back on the day work so well-, it was a great entry on a convoluted franchise – a franchise that it also helped to simplify, as it ignored plenty of its (worst) sequels, placing itself as a direct continuation of Carpenter’s original. However, there is always a however, Halloween ended up on a high note, which was immediately followed on Halloween Kills, film that right away dropped the ball, not only thematically, but also in terms of coherence and cohesion. So, here we are with Halloween Ends, a continuation to an unnecessary film which did not expand the story in a satisfactory way, and did not seem to have a real reason to exist, other than to keep cashing in.

Starting off with a prologue that feels original, nerve-racking, and violently abrupt, the film follows Corey, who is has become a pariah after a night babysitting ended in accidental death, stopping his career of professional babysitter dead on its tracks… because I guess he did not get much work after that. We do not know much about Corey. He is a new character in the franchise, a character I had to constantly correct his name as I wrote Cody, a character with the personality of a lemon and the charisma of a vacuum cleaner. But, do not panic, because we also have here Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie.

Nevertheless, as time has passed since the last time Michael showed up, she has abandoned her life trying to destroy him, and is now writing a book about her experience. Meanwhile, this is a film in which the word meanwhile could be used a lot, given its lack of cohesion, Laurie’s granddaughter is working as a nurse, mostly because in plenty of films female characters are nurses. I am glad they have moved on from the unexplained, sudden and violent death of Karen -played by Judy Greer- in the previous film, but last time I checked trauma played an important role in this revamped franchise. Never mind the trauma of the death of a loved one, perhaps they did not love Karen very much, so let us spend more time with Cody, sorry, Corey, who is starting to feel the urge to turn to the dark side, or let evil take the best of him.

Oh no! I am so worried for him! Will he become evil? Will he not become evil? Should I be invested on that? Where is Michael?

The idea of seeing how evil infects everything can be a fascinating concept to explain, but Halloween Ends does not seem interested on doing that in a way that feels neither fulfilling nor like it has a reason other than to solve the long term future of the franchise, in case it does not get rebooted again, because we all know the saga will start again in the nearby future -maybe not with the same team, but it will-, so they are not fooling anybody with that title. Furthermore, considering this might be the last time Curtis plays Laurie, they leave behind the possibility of exploring more the concept of the final girl. There is no moment in which Curtis passes the baton to her granddaughter, no moment of homage to a character so vital for the horror genre.

As I see it, they should have focused on the toll that Laurie’s life has had being a final girl, and the connection with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), whose character could have been deconstructed. Considering that she has lost her mother (there are barely a couple of mentions here despite Greer’s character getting killed in the denouement of the last film), having to adapt to a life with her grandmother, and seeing her character descending into hell struggling to resist the corruption of evil with her own path to become a final girl in her own right, overcoming the seemingly immortal Michael.

It is a shame that the once promising rebooted Halloween has been reduced to this. As a horror film it is not scary enough, despite a remarkable prologue, better than the film itself, and some gory bits and pieces here and there… and neither of that put together is sufficient for a film that ends up being too slow and boring for its own good. The scariest element of Halloween Ends is that is it is another example of the commodification of horror -jumpscares, gore, a well-known villain, some characters from the original films, and all the intellectual property they can use- for the sake of making the highest amount of money possible.

Now that the Halloween IP is a bit worn-out, and there are not many ideas that can be cramped into another film, David Gordon Green will shock us with his vision of The Exorcist -God save us-, film that will surely look nice on the trailer, perhaps even -maybe not- be good to a certain extent -never close to the original, though-… but it will lose its power and focus, as it has also been conceived as part of a trilogy. So, Halloween Ends, The Exorcist begins.

Then, in a few years, when that new -and completely unnecessary- franchise had become exhausted, I suggest an eco-friendly, environmentally gritty reboot of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.