Aw, Michael Myers got an apprentice; well isn’t that cute? I suppose this is more of a protégé type of thing, but I like the idea of sending the kid out for coffee … or to get knives sharpened. What do you suppose interning for Mike Myers is like? At some point you have to be impressed with how “hands-on” the boss is. This is clearly somebody in leadership who is willing to get his hands dirty – after all, those teens aren’t going to stab themselves.
Welcome to what hopes to be the final installment in this tiresome wreck of a franchise. Do you remember the original Halloween? Do you remember the tension, the fright, the wonder of how you would escape such a monster as grown-up killing machine Michael Myers? Yeah, none of that exists any more. Clearly Halloween Ends flows from the same river that gave us Halloween. But while the original was a raging tide of tension, misery, and pure horror, this one is a trickling creek of mirthless drivel.
First, I’m puzzled as to why anybody lives in Haddonfield, especially around Halloween. Does everybody in the town have a death wish? It doesn’t matter. The film opens with a story about Corey (Rohan Campbell), an average dweeb who accidently kills a kid he’s babysitting. The kid as much as engineered his own death 
by being a dick, but try telling that to anybody. So what does that have to do with Mike Myers? Good question. Body count one and it’s an accident. Some Halloween film so far. Pfft.
Corey becomes the town’s pariah. Cleared of wrongdoing, his life is clearly ruined all the same … and everybody in the whole place treats him like a known pedophile out on parole. After being bullied by punks and tossed off a bridge, Corey wakes up in a sewer face-to-face with Mike Myers. Wait. Wait. Wait. Myers has been living under a bridge this whole time? And Haddonfield just let that happen? Whaaaaa? Anyway, Myers fails to kill Corey, instead taking him on as a successor. [We just sort of guess this based on what happens; Mike Myers never talks, of course.] And within a minute or two, Corey gets into a fight with a bum and ends up stabbing him to death. Oh goody, the Mike Myers legacy has begun.
I see Jamie Lee Curtis is attempting to co-star in the best and worst films of 2022. A would-be rare double.
Halloween Kills turned out to be a stinker for the oddest of reasons: Michael Myers couldn’t be killed. Well, that film was bad for many reasons, but the main one I took from it was attacking Myers proved pointless because of some weird immortality tied to the fact that a violent American mob stopped a justifiable attack. Are you kidding me? Riled-up Americans given a free pass to commit the worst of sins and they say, “Gosh, I think I’ve had enough?!?!”
This time around was different. At times in this film, Mike Myers proved about as lethal as Seth Meyers. Corey even wrestles him to the ground and takes his mask away at one point. Seriously. Raggedy DeathMandy here lets the nerdy kid steal his mask? WTF? Last film he defeated an entire 
angry mob by himself; this film he gets bested by poor man’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
I was slightly excited at first to see a change in the Halloween pattern – maybe a protégé is exactly what the franchise needed to infuse this beast. Sure, it’s a sick and disgusting passing of a baton, but … it’s new, right? The execution, however, proved that these movies bled out all decent ideas years ago. The best you can do here is rehash the same Michael Myers thrills ‘n’ chills. Except this time around, the thing who has been killing people for twelve films doesn’t even crawl out of his sewer until the second half of the film. Dude, did you forget what day it was? I doubt you’re much of a chef or intellectual or puzzle solver, but I thought you were at least good a reading calendars. And whatever excitement I might have had about this franchise was just-as-quickly lost as gained when Corey turned out to be a dick, too.
Honestly, I might have given Halloween Ends zero stars, but I’m just so happy the whole Halloween thing could be over I could forgive this film for giving me hope.
A new Halloween! That does sound neat
For senseless slaughter; it just can’t be beat
Yet Myers wasn’t himself
He spent most film on the shelf
A trick? Dunno, but it sure wasn’t a treat
Rated R, 111 Minutes
Director: David Gordon Green
Writer: Paul Brad Logan
Genre: Please, please, please end this tiresome saga
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Jason Voorhees? Freddie Krueger?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Anyone who is tired of this saga
