A Review Of Jamie Lee Curtis’ Halloween Ends

After 44 years, the saga of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers finally concludes—or we’re supposed to believe it does, anyway, with Halloween Ends. The film wraps up the cycle of movies that began in 2018 with David Gordon Green’s eponymous franchise reboot, as well as the entire history between Strode and Myers, save for the installments whose mythology does not fit into (or was actively rejected from) the timeline that began in 1978 with John Carpenter’s groundbreaking original before jumping unceremoniously 40 years forward. Necessary though it may be, eliminating all of that interstitial storytelling feels like a counterintuitive choice for a finale not only obsessed with its characters’ legacies, but determined to make you feel them; but maybe that’s also why, sadly, this finale isn’t particularly good.

Though it marks a significant improvement over the cartoonish political commentary and dim-witted characterizations of 2021’s Halloween Kills—and how could it not?—Halloween Ends does not thread the needle needed to stitch together the three most recent films, much less provide a suture for almost four-and-a-half decades of canon. Instead, Green again attempts to simultaneously deliver a grisly, relentless slasher movie, a measured character study, and an examination of decades-old trauma (or “TROW-ma,” as star Jamie Lee Curtis pronounces it)—in the process leaving viewers without even the benefit of a temporary sugar high.

Four years after the events of both Halloween 2018 and Halloween Kills, both of which you may have forgotten took place on the same night, Laurie Strode (Curtis) has recovered from her injuries and (mostly) fully moved on from her obsession with Michael Myers. Not only is she completely over the murder of her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), but Laurie has fully transformed into a pie-making, Halloween-loving sexagenarian whose chief activities include writing a memoir about her experiences and caring for her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), who’s now a nurse.

Although (or perhaps because) some of Haddonfield’s citizens blame her for Michael Myers’ reign of terror—which ended only with his complete disappearance after Kills—Laurie extends compassion to fellow outcasts like Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), who was involved with the death of a local child a few years earlier. She initially encourages him to ask Allyson on a date, but after Corey has an unexpected encounter with Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney), who meekly survives in the town’s sewers, the young man develops a newfound confidence—and a clarity of purpose—that scares Laurie into warning her granddaughter of dating him. By then, however, Allyson and Corey have begun to develop deeper feelings for one…