3 Thoughts After Watching ‘Halloween Ends’:
You’re tasked with creating a franchise-ending chapter of a legendary horror series with the iconic star/character that started it all, and this is what you put together? A “final” Halloween film that’s barely about Michael Myers. GTFO. Missed opportunities GALORE.
The relationship with Laurie and her granddaughter starts out healthy and promising. A nice setup for chaos to ensue. Two seconds later, Allyson is ready to ditch her family for a random dude. So many out-of-character moments that made zero sense.
This wasn’t the film to introduce (and focus on!) a character like Corey. Maybe mid-franchise this could have been done to mix things up a bit. Friday the 13th kinda sorta did that, where the killer wasn’t always Jason. But NOT this time, not when you’re touting a final face-off between Michael and his Final Girl. You’re setting your fans up for disappointment.
Bonus Thought: I’m officially pretending that this new trilogy never existed, back to when Laurie Strode was Michael’s sister and everything made sense.
What a disappointing end to the Halloween reboot trilogy. Halloween Kills was so unbelievably good that I was excited to see what's next, it turns out that this film is vastly different. I'm aware that the filmmakers wanted to try different approach with this final entry but I wasn't expecting this messy. It's more of a drama, villain origin story, dark romance with some slashing. Definitely not an easy task to pull this off, but you can clearly see the struggle. The focus shifts on this new kid's descent into darkness which largely feels underdeveloped and hollow, with some super corny romance thrown in, cornier than people chanting 'evil dies tonight'. I find it super weird and get so frustrated because of how the kid got the main focus when this film is supposed to finish Laurie and Michael story which started a long time ago. Also, the romance part feels forced, downright cringy and unnecessary. Like seriously, who thought that it was a good idea?! The slashing is brutal and fun, at least, although you won't see the incredibly menacing Michael Myers like in the previous film. It honestly makes me appreciate Halloween Kills more since that one is the most 'slasher' out of 3.
A prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 classic with the same name, this copycat turned out to be better than I thought it would be. It offered nothing too original except a smart Ripley-type character who was decent and likeable. The filmmakers managed to tie the ending of this story into the opening of Carpenter's original, which was an appropriate thing to do since they had branded it as a prequel as part of its marketing strategy. I really don't think I would want to see this movie be a part of some "The Thing" box set, though. It's totally unnecessary and is really nothing but a cash grab based on an earlier masterpiece. Yes, that's right. I called Carpenter's original a "masterpiece".
What surprises about this prequel is that it isn't a bad movie at all, that is until the final act. There's some decent suspense and some real tension generated. The classic blood test scene of the original was almost to the point of being copied, but they pulled back and developed a different way to tell alien from human. It's not as effective, but it does manage to turn up the suspense. And about that last act, it's awful. The characters get involved in a "hiding from the alien" scene that makes absolutely no sense given what we find out about them later. Even the alien behaves like an absolute idiot. I don't know why I'm trying not to spoil this, but perhaps it's because I wouldn't want a forehead slapping moment ruined for me, either.
No comments about a movie containing aliens would be complete without a word or two about the special effects, and in this movie, they weren't very good. Everything is CGI and it totally eliminated any potential scares. They weren't SyFy Channel cheap but were at times very nearly cartoonish. The alien was not scary and even the gore, which there was less of than I anticipated, was not convincing in the least. Seriously, what is it about special effects that allows me to accept how bad they are in '50s science fiction or horror but reject them when current films botch them. This version of "The Thing" didn't impress in that department.
John and Amanda are so bloody sassy in this film, I want to give John a big hug, bless him.
Please kill the found footage format. Please! I also found the unbelievable superiority complex of the "hikers" all to familiar and wanted nothing more for than them to die a horrible death or at least to lose a few limbs. Guessing this was intentional?
The ending was not shocking and neither were the callbacks to the Philadelphia Experiment to anyone over the age of ... what 35 or 40? There's even a movie called the Philadelphia Experiment (I and II). Not original. Not by a long shot. The ending? Typical horror attempt at shocking... yawn.
