Halloween Ends (2022) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 31

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This is the end. My only friend, the end.

Thirty-one days later, it is the end. Halloween Ends brings closure to another year of 31 Days of Horror, but also to the latest trilogy of films about serial killer Michael Myers. It is not the ending that was necessarily anticipated, but it makes for an extremely satisfying conclusion.

Before Viewing

This is a very straightforward trailer. It’s Halloween night and Laurie Strode isn’t putting up with any of Michael Myers’ BS anymore.Rapid shots from the previous Halloween films and from this film lead up to Laurie vs Michael. This is gonna be brutal, as Halloween Ends.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

On Halloween night 2019, in Haddonfield, Illinois, one year after the events of Michael Myers most recent killings, Corey (Rohan Campbell) comes to the Allen house to babysit young Jeremy (Jaxon Goldenberg). The young boy becomes a handful and tries to scare Corey by looking at him in the attic. Corey kicks the door open knocking Jeremy over a railing and accidentally killing him. Three years later, Laurie Strode (Jaime Lee Curtis), the sole survivor of Michael’s attacks in 1978 is working on a book recounting her experiences.

Corey is bullied by some other kids at a convenience store and cuts his hand. Laurie witnesses this and takes him to the emergency room where her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) works as a nurse. Allyson invites Corey to a costume party the next night. Laurie reconnects with Frank (Will Patton), a police officer that she’s known, at the local grocery store. When leaving the store, Laurie is berated by the sister of one of Michael’s victims from 2018.

Corey and Allyson go dancing at a bar, but Mrs. Allen (Candice Rose), Jeremy’s mother, yells at Corey for trying to have fun. He leaves unexpectedly and is again bullied by Terry (Michael Barbieri) and his friends. They push him over a bridge overpass and he lands near a homeless encampment. Someone drags Corey into a tunnel, which turns out to be Michael Myers. He doesn’t kill Corey as they share some kind of connection. Officer Mulaney (Jesse C. Boyd) interrupts a date between Corey and Allyson, which pisses Corey off. He lures the officer under the bridge and helps Michael kill him.

Laurie observes Allyson and Corey going home together, which makes her concerned after talking to both Corey’s mom (Joanne Baron) and Mr. Allen (Jack William Marshall). Both a nurse and doctor co-worker of Allyson’s are murdered by Michael with assistance from Corey. On Halloween, Laurie confronts Corey telling him to stay away from her granddaughter. He scoffs at her, since she was the one that invited him into their lives. That night Corey takes Michael’s mask and goes out on the town murdering seven people including Terry and his three friends, his mother, and the town DJ.

At her house, Laurie pulls a gun out of her safe and calls 911, reporting a suicide. Corey, in Michael’s mask, hears a gunshot and enters her room where she shoots him, saying she never intended to kill herself. Dying, Corey stabs himself in the neck with his knife which Laurie pulls out, just as Allyson comes home. She believes her grandmother killed the boy she loved, and leaves upset. Michael arrives and takes his mask back, stalking Laurie.

After a number of close calls, Laurie manages to pin Michael to her butcher block and slices his throat. He gets a hand free to choke her, but Allyson returns, breaking his arm, and the two watch the boogeyman bleed out in the kitchen. The strap Michael’s body on top of their car and drive to the junkyard, followed by hundreds of townsfolk. They toss the body into the industrial shredder, ridding the world of Michael Myers. The next day, Frank drops off some groceries at Laurie’s house, and the two sit on the porch talking about the future.

“Michael Myers kills babysitters, not kids.” “I’m not a babysitter.” – Jeremy and Corey

It’s the end of 31 Days of Horror for the month and it’s also time to wrap up the current trilogy of Michael Myers films with Halloween Ends. The current trilogy, which started in 2018 with Halloween and followed that with Halloween Kills in 2021, ignores the events of the intervening nine films between 1981-2009. This is not that odd since the legacy of the series has been to use, or ignore, continuity as needed. The series started with Halloween (1978), which is the root of the story for all the films. Teen babysitter Laurie Strode survives attacks from masked killer Michael Myers. It was a film that reinvigorated the slasher genre for the 70s and into the 80s. Michael returned in Halloween II three years later which continued Laurie’s story and apparently ended Michael’s. The third release Halloween III: Season of the Witch had nothing whatsoever to do with Michael and was envisioned as a change in the series which could tell haunting tales about events on the night of Halloween. Fans did not appreciate that so Michael returned six years later for three more titles, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers through Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (number 6). Thus ends the original continuity.

When Michael returned in 1998 with Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, the continuity retroactively erased films 4 through 6, and continued after the events of Halloween II. Halloween Resurrection followed in 2002, which ends continuity branch number two. The next two films were a reboot of the series, again titled Halloween and Halloween II, from 2007 and 2009. These were reimagined versions of the original two films directed by Rob Zombie and received varying reviews from the horror community. That brings an end to the third continuity. The current spate of films, being the fourth continuity, start with the 1978 film, ignore everything else, and pick up with Laurie 40 years later, now with a grown daughter, Karen (who was killed by Michael at the end of Halloween Kills), and granddaughter, Allyson. This may be the most engrossing timeline for the series, having members of the original cast return and having the luxury of seeing multiple different storylines that have played out over the years to pick and choose elements from. But the new series is really mostly about Laurie’s trauma which turns her and her family’s life upside down when Michael escapes from prison to once again stalk the town. After watching the previous films for 31 Days of Horror in 2019 and 2022, I was very intrigued as to how this trilogy would wrap up.

Halloween Ends definitely went off in a different direction than I anticipated. After the ending of Halloween Kills and the death of Laurie’s daughter Karen, it seemed like the direction the series would proceed was into a further revenge story for Laurie, maybe going full Sigourney Weaver from Aliens. I certainly did not anticipate a three year time jump, a missing Michael Myers, and a main character writing her memoirs. However, Laurie’s healing actions in this film are one of the two key themes. She has come to a place where she can move on with her life, somewhat. There are still moments where she appears to have anxiety, such as when she heads upstairs for the night and stops to take a breath. As with any survivor of horrific tragedies, there will be elements that stick with Laurie for the rest of her life. In writing her memoirs, “Stalkers, Saviors, and Samhain,” she is learning to process that grief, trauma, and anxiety into moving forward. At one dark moment at the beginning of the third act, she has a few drinks, pulls out a gun, and calls 911 to report a suicide. After a gunshot goes off, Corey steps into the room, where Laurie points the gun at him saying “Did you really think I’d kill myself?” It feels like a huge fake-out, but there was truth in that moment. Ending herself was something that Laurie had thought about before, and might contemplate again. But she regains composure, and strength, and in the end, after Michael has been subdued, she takes her clue from Scream & Scream 2, where the protagonists shoot the villains one last time to be sure. But Laurie also does something that you would be hard pressed to find in another horror film. She holds Michael’s hand as he bleeds out in her kitchen. The lives of both the victim and the killer have been intertwined so deeply that they had a connection to each other that was deeper than with anyone else. Her touch was saying goodbye to her greatest nemesis, but also to the person that maybe understood her the best. They were bound together in a dark turmoil of trauma and revenge, and the cycle was only broken by one of their deaths.

This connection between Laurie and Michael highlights and informs the other theme, the love story between Corey and Allyson. Firstly, the foreshadowing of Corey’s dark descent is pretty obvious. From the quote above at the beginning of the film and his killing of young Jeremy, his bullying by Terry and friends, and his rough family life, it seems like Jeremy was destined to snap sooner or later. The film seems to take some of the elements from Rob Zombie’s 2007 version, which depicted some of Michael’s traumatic upbringing as a way to explain his behavior, and channels that into a new character which becomes a parallel to Michael, eventually finding the killer as a mentor and father figure. Corey becomes unto the darkness, as Allyson walks the same road her grandmother had in the tragedy of losing friends and family. Except in the case of Allyson and Corey, their traumas seem to attract each other as lovers. At first it seems that Allyson may be taking pity on Corey due to his reputation in town. But it soon is clear that she understands his feelings and the looks he gets. Corey realizes that his ostracization in town comes from a place of fear and anger, while Allyson is seen as a survivor and possibly a hero. But even that adulation can be a two-edged sword, as Allyson feels the loss of her parents strongly everytime the stories are regurgitated from her recognition. Much like Laurie and Michael’s “relationship,” Allyson and Corey’s traumas fit together in a weird, and sometimes disturbing way.

While Allyson and Corey sit on top of the roof of the radio station midway through the film, she asks him if he’s infected. She’s referring to the cut on his hand which she stitched up previously, but it seems clear that the real question is about his mind. She hasn’t realized that he’s been hanging out with his new pal Michael Myers, but the evil from that boogeyman is slowly seeping in. A few scenes later, Laurie visits him at the Allen house, where he’s decided to spend Halloween eve sleeping on the spot where he accidentally killed Jeremy three years earlier. She tells him about the two kinds of evil in the world: the external force, and the one that lives inside. The one that is inside is the most dangerous, she tells him, because we may not know that we’re infected. At this point Laurie seems to be recognizing the signs of that infection, having thought about the madness she’s seen for 40 years. Unfortunately, Corey doesn’t want help. He believes that he will kill off his bullies, his parents, and maybe a DJ, and then take Allyson and leave Haddonfield. As if leaving the town will allow him to get away from the evil that he now carries inside. He is infected, but it’s a deep down kind of infection that he cannot see. It’s the kind of evil that brings Michael Myers back, again and again, and never lets him have peace.

The film eventually does provide that peace for Michael, and Laurie, and the whole town of Haddonfield. In order to make sure that Michael is really gone, and to “start healing” as Laurie says, they create an impromptu funeral procession (or is it a parade?) as they take Michael’s body to the wrecking yard, and toss it into an industrial grinder. Many citizens are able to “put hands” on the body on its way into the jaws of the machine, perhaps as a cathartic way to release their fears, and resume their lives. Laurie doesn’t know how to resume her life. She seems awkward when Frank stops by with the groceries, but she makes an effort to talk to him and reconnect. This is the end of her story, the end of her trauma. This survivor has finally found her peace.

Thanks for joining me for another 31 Days of Horror this October. It’s been quite a season of various films from scary to silly, and back again. Continue to join me each Saturday for my continuing articles on Sci-Fi Saturdays, a look at iconic, fun and genre-defining science-fiction films continuing from the 2000s to the present. And until next October, pleasant…screams.

Assorted Musings

• • As with the Halloween (2018) and Halloween Kills, this film has a series of homages to other films in the overall Halloween franchise.
    • Halloween (1978)
      • Corey and Jeremy watch John Carpenter’s The Thing on television referencing Laurie and Tommy watching The Thing from Another World.
      • A muzak version of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” plays in the grocery store. The original film had the original version of the song by Blue Oyster Cult.
      • Laurie sees Corey outside her window by the clothesline in a shot reminiscent of her seeing Michael in 1978.
    • Halloween III
      • The title font is in the same blue color used for Season of the Witch.
    • Halloween V
      • Terry and his band friends ride in a black convertible, in homage to Mike who obsesses over his black convertible in the fifth film. Both their cars end up getting vandalized.
    • Halloween H20
      • Michael tries to force Laurie’s hand into a garbage disposal, like a similar scene where Michael comes upon Charlie, whose hand is in a garbage disposal.