I am a big Halloween fan. Last year, I watched every single Halloween film, from John Carpenter’s 1978 classic to Halloween Kills. I am probably even one of the few who love Rob Zombie’s two takes on the series. With that in mind, I hope you don’t take it lightly when I call Halloween Ends one of the worst slasher films I have ever seen.
There is so much wrong with Halloween Ends on a structural level. The film mainly consists of a romance between Laurie Strode’s granddaughter and a man who accidentally kills a child in the first scene of the film. It takes 40 minutes for Michael Myers to make a non-flashback appearance, and even longer for him to make a kill.
The plot movements from that point onwards are completely unjustified, including trying to make a character a shadow of Michael Myers himself. This is foreshadowed visually, in the form of callbacks to the 1978 original, but not justified in the text of the film in any way. Everything is coincidental and makes for a bizarre viewing experience.
Halloween Ends introduces too many new elements for what is supposed to be the end of this series. I enjoyed Halloween Kills so much because it delivered on its titular promise: kills. Halloween Ends, on the other hand, felt like it would never end.
The reduction of emphasis on Michael Myers killing people in creative, gory ways and replacing that with a family drama more akin to a melodrama than a slasher film makes for possibly the worst release within the franchise. At least films like H20 and Resurrection had some ‘so dumb it’s funny’ moments. Halloween Ends is just boring from beginning to end.
1/5.
Halloween Ends was released October 14 and is out now in cinemas.
Cinematographer and film lecturer at the University of Salford, Laura Hilliard, talks about filmmaking,
cinematography, and the barriers of the film industry
