31 Days of Halloween: Halloween Ends

2022, David Gordon Green (Halloween) -- download

Dang! We should have left this for Oct 31st, so it could be "31 Days of Halloween: Ends". Oh well.

Second exclamation.

Really?!? They went there? Oh well.

I enjoyed the first in this legasequel. It resurrected the franchise, wiping away all the other dross. We did not like the last in this series. Of it, Kent said, "This whole exercise of Kills seemed to be about getting to that point, of establishing Meyers' otherness, and it leads me to believe that the closing chapter, the in-production Halloween Ends will spend far too much time delving into why Meyers' otherness is."

Not quite, but it definitely, and mistakenly, embraces his otherness.

So, when we last left our intrepid adventurers, Michael had just transcended from mad man to supernatural being, having been "killed" by the pitchfork wielding (like, literally) villagers, and then risen again to slay them all, leaving us after a final kill -- Karen, Laurie Strode's daughter. Laurie and granddaughter have survived, but so has Michael.

So has Michael. 

The movie tries to bring us back to current times, as the first two happen on the same night in 2018, via a preamble about how the town was infected by the deaths from that night, that Haddonfield had a boogeyman it could not release, and the violence seeped into its very being. It culminates a year later with the accidental death of a young boy at the hands of his babysitter. Years later, said babysitter Corey (Rohan Campbell, Hardy Boys) still suffers from that night in 2019, both internally and at the hands of bullying townsfolk. An interesting way to bring us forward a few years? Yes, but... Michael has survived. The town now has him as their boogeyman, but he is a very real threat! Why aren't there neighbourhood watch groups that patrol, seeing Michael around every corner? Why isn't there an obsessed FBI agent who, against the advice of his colleagues and superiors, continually visits Haddonfield seeking signs of Michael? Why isn't the town afraid for its lives at every moment? The extreme violence of Kills should have banished the apathy of H2018 (to steal Kent's nomenclature) and left a very palpable ever present fear. But instead, Gordon Green goes down the path of passing on Michael's legacy to another.

Oh well.

Laurie and Allyson are trying to get on with their lives. Laurie bought a new house and is writing a book, while Allyson is working for an asshole doctor, and trying to shake the looks everyone gives her. Fate brings Corey into their midst, and Allyson finds connection with him, a shared legacy of the taint of violence. 

And then fate brings Corey into the hands of Michael, and he finds a connection with him. Oh well.

While, admittedly, that is an interesting idea, it just bugged me to no end. Michael is supposed to be the lone monster, something outside reality, not of supernatural nature, but definitely not normal. As Kent's prophetic comment said, this movie dwells too much on what Michael is. No, not explicitly as there are not long monologues from people obsessed with the monster that HAS to be in their midst, and THAT is even more annoying. No, this is an implied focus, in that Michael's monstrous nature can be passed on, and in doing so, be recognized by Laurie, on her own Hero's Journey against Michael.

In the end, or more precisely, the End, I understood why they did this, but it was a toss away, not used as fully as it could have been nor as emotionally impactful as it should have been. Instead, they just move onto the final, full destruction of Michael, as the villagers in silent procession deliver Michael to his alluded (the object of the scene might as well had neon lights above it) to final resting ground.