A group of teenagers go to a mysterious camp in the middle of nowhere and start being childish. The viewer does not like them, but there is a tacit pact with him: don’t worry, because you will see them pass, one by one, by the machete of the murderer on duty in the bloodiest and most imaginative ways possible. The slasher, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, abandoned horror almost entirely to become a kind of sadistic and almost therapeutic enjoyment.
Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Chucky and Michael Myers they ceased to be icons of horror movies and became authentic pop stars: As the sequels grew, so did the iconography around them. The claws, the machete, the mask… Mass murder wasn’t scary, it was pure celebration. The slasher was fun. And in 2022 we can’t tolerate fun.
Beware: there are spoilers for ‘Halloween: the end’. If in spite of everything you continue reading and then complain, Michael will come to your house to pay you a little visit.
this time seriously
‘Halloween: the end’ has been believed to be a newly minted high terror (if such a thing exists, which is highly debatable) and he has tried to disguise the eternal saja-raja of what it is not. And it does not work. We’ve seen too many horror movies to be afraid of the boogeyman, and the last part of ‘Halloween’ turns the tables for try to scare by sidelining Michael Myers and focusing on a new character consumed by hate.
The last part of David Gordon Green’s trilogy the bases of the saga are skipped to the bullfighter believing that originality will bring terror again, but he is wrong. By establishing the first minutes of his film as a return to playfulness, fun tension and a touch of black humor based on the legacy of Michael Myers, the rest of the footage does not quite fit the treat with excessive seriousness the fall into hell of Myers’s apprentice.
In the end, ‘Halloween: the end’ leaves the feeling of having as little to do with the franchise as ‘Halloween III: the day of the witch’ (although, eye, it’s great) or ‘Halloween Resurrection’. after 45 years, it is very difficult for a franchise based on the classic faceless assassin putting teenagers through the knife to endure a change of style and intentions like the one the director intends. Instead of giving the viewer what he wanted to see (the final fight between Laurie and Michael on a Halloween day when hemoglobin runs through the streets), the film decides to go its own way and break with everything when least touched, leaving Michael Myers literally buried. The result? A disaster.
If it is not broke, do not fix it
I didn’t like ‘Halloween kills’ because of its lack of tension and intentions, but the formula still worked. It can be upgraded, moved more or less, try to introduce new psychological horror components or play more with the kills, but silent and immortal killer chasing teens is effective no need to reinvent the wheel.
‘Halloween: The End’ is the absurd ego exercise of a director convinced that, in his (supposed) last installment, he can change the saga and turn a classic slasher into a drama of characters and a sobadísima reflection on hatred for those who forget the great star. It’s like if you put on a farewell concert to the Rolling Stones, you forget to call them to play and you trust that a rookie group that plays their songs will already do the job for you.
I’m not saying you have to go back to ‘Friday the 13th Part VII’ or ‘Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers’, obviously, but at least these sequels were perfectly aware of the saga they were part of. It’s great that you want to put together a story based on the mental degradation of a hate-motivated teenager who ends up killing those who did him wrong, but not in ‘Halloween’, or not, at least, for add nothing to the black legend and Haddonfield’s butcher. The whole movie is worthless, it almost seems like a parody in itself: Myers’s henchman dies and that plot is completely forgotten to go on to see a party finale that, when it arrives, tastes like a decaf start.
Lots of killer, little fun
The epic after the death of Michael Myers, in slow motion, with solemn music, it does not have the value it would have if the psychokiller had done something else for the hour and a half before he hid in a burrow. ‘Halloween: the end’ wants to play to transfer the legacy, but also to give a canonical ending. The result is an insurmountable gibberish that takes itself too seriously and in which, for more than a long hour, the blood does not flow.
The movie has a couple of celebrated moments where he returns to the macarrada from which it should not have come out: the tongue on the record player or the blowtorch in the mouth are just examples of what ‘Halloween’ is inside. A classic film of the saga is more honest than this one, without identity or strength, who tries to overcome his mistakes by pulling forward out of control.
‘Halloween: the finale’ will be a box office success, but it is the mirror that the rest of the slashers to come would not have to look at. Jamie Lee Curtis is a scream queen, and reprising Laurie is a treat, but she’s the exception to the rule: slasher franchises have their killer as the focal point of all interestof fun, of cruel pastime.
If you ignore Michael Myers for an hour and a half and just let him out for a forced showdown, let it be for a good reason. The story proposed by ‘Halloween: the end’ is not: it is just a long warm-up for a final fight that ends up knowing nothing. In the end, the supposed renovator of the saga has not made ‘Halloween’: he has been carried away by his own prejudices towards a saga that supposedly loves. May the next one who arrives love her a little more, please.