Halloween Ends

I’d seen the reviews. I knew the spoilers. I had to see for myself. And it turns out to be more misguided than miserable, and it has some bold swings that almost have to be appreciated. I’m not going to re-litigate the myriad little failures of this movie. Better reviewers than me have beaten this movie’s mistakes into the ground. The pacing, the bizarre character choices, the unbalanced structure, everything can be traced back to the hands of two of the worst writers and the worst director in horror, David Gordon Green and Danny McBride. And I don’t say that as opinion; that is a stone cold fact. Want proof? When asked why the movie doesn’t address the events between Kills and Ends and where Michael has been, DGG said, with his bare face hanging out, that he “doesn’t care about why”. You know, the question that literally defines the context and motivations? HE DOESN’T CARE. He’s a fucking hack. A shameless fucking hack. He should be legally barred from making movies. I wouldn’t even trust him to make cookies. I’m getting away from my own point. This movie’s many, many, many failures have been discussed ad nauseum, and I find them just as moronic and baffling and frustrating as anybody else. But I don’t think that’s what hurts this movie the most. No, this movie was dead before it hit the first cineplex, and it all ties back to DGG and McBride. They shot the horse in the leg while it was standing in the gate. It’s no secret I thin Halloween 2018 is an abomination and an insult. But it was popular. Halloween Kills ruined a lot of the good will by being a movie that has carnage and nothing else. Except for Karen, everybody starts and ends in the same place. It’s attempts at commentary on mob mentality get lost in its grandiose and melodramatic speeches about evil transcending and whether or not it should die tonight. It was called a “bridge” movie. Fine. Important to the discussion here is that it was the second movie of a trilogy. All Ends had to do is what the third movie of any trilogy does: tie up the loose ends. Bring it all together. Close it off For whatever reason, DGG and McBride decided to swing for the fences with a weird character study about how evil can corrupt good, that sidelines the killer for half the running time, and makes the marquee battle that this whole trilogy has been building towards a stapled-on epilogue. It tries to paint this picture of a town poisoned by evil, but seeing evil around every corner, and ruining an otherwise good kid. It ignores almost every plot thread built in the previous two movies. Imagine if Return Of The Jedi started with Han dead, Luke vanishing, Yoda moving to another planet because why not, Leia falling in love with a guy named Kyle that joins the Rebellion but changes to the Empire and becomes the new bad guy, then gets kills and THEN Vader comes along, and he dies in a thirty second fight with Luke, who also came back. And there’s no second Death Star or The Emperor. And Lando shows up once to say hello to Leia. Imagine that. THAT is Halloween Ends. I pity this movie. Had Kills not existed, and this was a one-two punch, Ends’ big swings might not feel so out of place. Or, had Ends just did what it was supposed to, and carried on from Kills instead of trying to have Something To Say About Evil, it might’ve flowed better. But instead, it’s forced to exist alongside the movies before it, awkwardly embracing and repudiating them. It wouldn’t exist without the two before it, but it doesn’t want to be tied to them either, so it winds up formless and functionless, and given its role as a trilogy closer, both of those are roles it could not afford to take on.