I’ve mentioned before my ambivalent relationship with horror fandom. On one level, it is great how the internet makes it possible to connect with others who share your interests, who have seen what you’ve seen (and frequently much, much more – providing a font of good recommendations), who can, by posting their own thoughts and responses, help you better articulate your own (something I’ve valued from other film writers that I hope my writing can, in turn, offer my readers). So many great blogs and podcasts have filled my watchlist with an endless selection of hidden gems. Via Facebook groups or Twitter, I’ve communicated with loads of knowledgeable aficionados of the genre – and that can be really enriching.
But sometimes it is just so negative out there.
As I understand it, the algorithms of social media always favor a biting critique over gentle equivocation. Fan spaces overflow with complaints that “(insert new release here) is the worst movie I’ve ever seen.” (Seriously, the worst? These statements made about capably constructed films – even if they’re not good, they at least look like a real movie – always make me wonder if these writers have ever seen an actual bad movie). Even very thoughtful, respectful writers and podcasters can really hate something and go on at length about just that. And don’t get me wrong – I can enjoy a good rant, very negative reviews can be good fun, and a bit of snark never really hurt anybody, but for me it just gets to be a bit too much. While twenty something years ago, I could get enraged about how offensive it was to remake some classic horror work in an obvious, soulless cash-grab that either missed the point or even directly flew in the face of what had made the original so significant, now I find that the longer I inhabit fan spaces, the lower my tolerance has become for such vitriol.
And nothing inspires fans to vent their spleens more than a much anticipated, high profile release – such as an entry in a long running franchise, or anything new that’s getting a lot of buzz and critical praise, which therefore needs to be knocked down a peg (often works assigned the title of ‘elevated’ horror). And so, I’ve had it in mind for a while to start a new series (which I will hopefully add to with more regularity than some that came before it – Polish Horror Series, I promise to get back to you someday…) wherein I take some film reviled by fans that I actually enjoyed, at least on some level, and go into what I found in it to value. I can’t claim to love all of these, but I can’t discount them either.
So to kick this off, I thought I’d pick up a relatively recent film that came in for heavy fan hatred on release last year, but which I was surprised to find myself rather enjoying when I finally checked it out a few months back – David Gordon Green’s Halloween Ends (2022). It should be obvious, but I’ll say it anyway – this discussion is not possible without near total spoilers, so be forewarned.
Halloween Ends (2022)
The third and final entry in this recent revisiting of the franchise, I think Halloween Ends drew venom for much the same reason that the original Halloween III did – a surprising lack of Shatner faced slasher, Michael Meyers. But whereas the 1982 film had set out (and failed) to anthologize the Halloween series, making each subsequent entry a new standalone story (Carpenter had reportedly never intended to start a Michael Meyers film series), “Ends” purports to bring both this contemporary trilogy, as well as the Halloween franchise as a whole, to a close – finding a satisfying conclusion for both the iconic masked killer and Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode. Given the way this was marketed as such, it is not terribly surprising that audiences turned against this film, which out of its 111 minute run time features less than 11 minutes of the fan favorite slasher. Now, to be fair, a great many horror films, including the 1978 original, barely show the killer or threat, but their presence is often felt – always there, looming, just out of sight, around the corner, watching, waiting, creating a sense of ever-present danger – and in this case, the film instead just tells a completely different story for most of those other 100 minutes. A bold choice, but apparently not one destined to win over many fans.
But I have to say, I really liked it – more than the 2018 film, and certainly more than 2021’s Halloween Kills, which I really did not love, but also more than most of the sequels. I mean, I’ve never really been a franchise kid, but I have watched most of the Halloween films (one day I’ll catch up with Rob Zombie’s efforts, which I still haven’t seen) and, while I love the original and might even watch it about once a year (and I am a big fan of Part III, which has happily experienced a popular reappraisal in recent years), I can’t say I’m really a big fan of the series, per se. Even when there’s a new addition to the lore, such as the Cult of Thorn in part 6, it all feels more than a bit samey to me. There is often a ominous weight of seriousness hanging over it all, but at the end of the day, we are back to the faceless killer, embodying evil, slashing his way through town. Each film has something to enjoy, but though I always end up watching a new one on release, I’m rarely that excited. Nor am I particularly disappointed. They’re fine.
And so, the fact that this tells a new story, that it is barely a Michael Meyers film at all, is a definite reason for greater interest on my part.
Most of the film circles around another troubled young man, Corey, the same age when the film begins that Michael was in ’78, who does not begin as a deadly child psychopath, but rather just has one really bad Halloween night, resulting in the accidental death of the kid he’s babysitting (in one of the best scenes of the movie – tense, playful, and shockingly awful). This unsurprisingly results in him becoming a pariah in Haddonfield, until the hatred directed at him metastasizes to the point that he snaps and actually become the monster he’s already believed to be.
Along the way, he strikes up a relationship with Allyson, Laurie’s granddaughter, who’d lost her boyfriend, both of her parents, and most of her friends to Michael’s knife four years earlier when the killer resurfaced. She is just as burdened by the past as he is, though she’s doing a better job of functioning in public (and, as he points out, it is quite different to be viewed as a trauma survivor than a child murderer). Finding a kindred spirit in Corey, she is immediately drawn to him. Furthermore, this attraction doesn’t diminish as he tips over the edge and begins to copycat Michael’s killings, even donning the mask as he does so. Rather, the darker he goes, the more confident, defiant, and magnetic he becomes, and she is ready to blow town and go start a new life together somewhere else, far from the accursed place they’ve both called home. Those plans go up in smoke, however, when his killing spree gets out of hand (as if there’s such a thing as a killing spree that hasn’t), culminating in an attack on Allyson’s grandmother – not the sort of thing one expects to end well.
On paper, this reads as melodramatic, and I suppose it could have played that way for some, but it genuinely worked for me. I felt for Corey’s plight and enjoyed this slower, emotional exploration of a broken young person backing into a corner of violence and cruelty and power and freedom. I appreciated time given over to looking at how many characters, not only Laurie and Allyson, are trying to move on with their lives, even finding peace and new direction, but how some just can’t successfully take that step. I liked how sidelined Michael Meyers is in what some might call ‘his own’ film. While he is terrifying in the first movie, and still scary in the second, for me, there is a law of diminishing returns and after a certain point, I just stopped finding his brand of blank, unexpressive ‘evil’ all that interesting anymore.
I mean, what is ‘evil’ anyway? As a non-religious person, the notion of a character simply being ‘evil’ in this kind of essential way just falls a bit flat for me. Now, that has always been a core aspect of Michael, as officially diagnosed by Donald Pleasence’s Dr. Loomis (a deeply enjoyable performance and character – but seriously, NOT a good child psychiatrist) – and that’s all well and good for a while (one, two, maybe even three or four films), but if you talk about it too much, let us just say it strains credulity (this is the 13th entry). That said, shifting focus to a study of one young person who experiences a terrible, accidental event, is then blamed for it, is treated as a killer, as a ‘bad person,’ is bullied and harassed and almost killed, before discovering the power and freedom that comes with actually choosing to be the monster, coming to feel how freeing, how empowering it is to rise up, to be willing to cause harm, to kill in cold blood – that is interesting. That is moving. That is exciting and troubling and scary and feels ever-relevant (how many dangerous young men are there out there, ready to snap?). And on top of that, I bought the central relationship – I believed the attraction, the way that as Corey becomes (unbeknownst to Allyson) a killer, he grows more charismatic – and she finds kinship and emotional release with him.
This movie is filled with unpleasant people who cannot forgive, and who assign blame unfairly and capriciously (seriously, why do so many people blame Laurie for Michael Meyers’s crimes when all she ever did was rave about how dangerous he was and try to kill him when given a chance – why does no one seem to remember Michael’s doctor from the 2018 film who worshiped him and arranged for his escape?), but it is also full of people who are trying to help each other (Corey’s boss at the scrapyard/stepdad? seemed like a really good guy – it’s a shame he didn’t make it), even if they don’t really know how, who are just trying to get through life, making mistakes, sometimes with terrible consequences, and who sometimes find their way to doing evil as they walk their troubled path. I think that is a much more engaging and fascinating kind of horror than simply another affectless masked killer.
So that is Halloween Ends. Is it my new favorite movie or, for that matter, a satisfying conclusion to this ‘trilogy’? No, of course not. But did I really enjoy it? Absolutely. I was engaged throughout, often in suspense, emotionally invested in the characters, and digging on the vibe. Of course, I can’t claim it’s perfect (for example, I’ve not gone into how Corey finds Michael living in a sewer like some kind of Pennywise the clown, infecting the town with his evil and is somehow recruited by him to go kill; I don’t feel like detailing just how much voiceover Laurie has, reading from her book about the horror of Michael’s radical EVIL; nor do I want to spend much time on the final confrontation between Laurie and Michael that feels almost from a different movie (probably the movie most people thought they were going to see) before she leads the town on a procession to the local junkyard so that they can all see her destroy his body in an industrial shredder and thus rest easy knowing that !!!EVIL!!! has finally been destroyed and that Halloween has really and truly ended), but I’m sure I’ll forget its more regrettable aspects and it’s the other elements that will remain. Truly – I watched this for the first time back in June and really only remembered loving the emotion and horror pinch of the Corey storyline, and I was quite surprised when I rewatched it last night and discovered just how much silly stuff I’d forgotten.
And that does somewhat bring me back to why I wanted to do this “In Defense Of” series. It’s so easy to jump on a work’s faults, but life is full of faults. I just don’t have the power to detail every failure I see, to get worked up about a misjudged artistic choice (or an unfortunate economic one). I find it much more interesting to consider instead what did land, even in an imperfect project (and, by matters of degree, there is no other kind). Often that reassessment comes much later (for example, see how Halloween III has become a beloved cult classic), but one doesn’t really need to wait 20 years to decide that maybe this new flick isn’t actually “the worst movie ever,” and that there can be something of value to take away from it. That’s what I’ll try to do with this series…