Halloween Ends

 The new Halloweeen trilogy has definitely been a ride. It began by doing away with all the previous installments except for the first one and delivering a very satisfying, mostly traditional slasher sequel. Then for its own sequel it took a hard left, featuring some strange choices (which I thought were exciting) and some of the goriest, most upsetting kills in slasher-dom.

 Halloween Ends again takes an unexpected turn. It's a much more traditional slasher than Kills ever tried to be, but it also keeps willfully subverting expectations, sometimes at its own expense.

 Director David Gordon Green accrued some serious cred with his early movies, mostly with the brilliant George Washington, which earned him frequent comparisons with Terence Malik (back when everyone spoke of Malik in hushed reverential tones.) He's done plenty of good movies since, but before he became the Halloween guy, he also made a couple of stoner comedies (one of them quite good, one of them very, very bad.)

 It's this stoner period that I keep coming back to when thinking of Halloween Ends. It's completely unfair, but I can't help it but to imagine David Gordon Green and his buddy Danny McBride (who shares writing duties) getting well and truly baked before mapping out these movies. The wild swings and reversals and inconsistencies and dropped themes and threads make a lot more sense to me that way, as do the ponderous, overwrought meditations on Evil.

  

Yeah, I get that it's based on Loomis's rants on the original Halloween. Still, though.

 After a nasty short prelude that introduces a new main character, this latest installment picks up four years after the events of Halloween Kills. Michael Myers, while still at large, has seemingly vanished, and Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) has turned over a new leaf and decided to move out of Murdertrap Deathhouse and rejoin polite society with her granddaughter (Andi Matichak).

 New character Cody is also trying to rebuild his life after accidentally killing a kid in the pre-title scene. He's been acquitted of murder, but the residents of Haddonfield at large remain as shallow, short-sighted and judgemental as ever; Cody and Laurie meet as he's being mercilessly bullied by a group of marching band nerds, of all things. Laurie rescues him and decides to play the matchmaker and introduce Cody to her granddaughter Allison.

 Allison and Cody hit it off, to say the least. For some reason Allison latches onto Cody with a psychotic intensity; Unfortunately, while both of the actors are OK there's no chemistry there and their courtship is very poorly written. Except for a scene with Sebadoh and Dead Kennedys songs... man, I wish the parties I've gone to played Sebadoh and Dead Kennedys. Anyhow, and it's SPOILERS from now on, the circumstances pile on poor Cody so that he eventually snaps and starts stabbing people to death - at first involuntarily, but slowly getting a taste for it. And Michael Myers might be playing tutor.

 It's not that weird a setup for a slasher movie - yes, Friday the 13th did something similar - but having to shoehorn Myers in, and trying to play it like there's no supernatural elements... it doesn't ruin it exactly, but he's a big spanner in the works.

 The carnage is great, as always. Who would have thought the director of All the Real Girls would move on to be a respectable purveyor of gore? The kills aren't quite as gruesome or upsetting as in, um, Kills, but there are some show-stoppers here (there's a particularly nasty one with a blowtorch, and a record-skipping scene that is a definite keeper). There's a bit too much emphasis on knives, so it gets a little repetitive, but hey.

 While the movie is a bit on the slow side, it does carry momentum and, fueled by its unpredictability, quite a bit of energy. Things escalate until (of course) it's Laurie vs. Myers again; like so many other things in this new trilogy, the logistics and underpinnings are clumsy and half-baked, but it brings everything to a satisfying conclusion that, yes, seems very final. Halloween ENDS, as the end credits helpfully point out.

 I didn't find it as appealingly weird as its predecessor (for my money, the best of this new bunch) but I enjoyed it, warts and all. It's as part of this new trilogy, and especially as a sequel to Kills, that this last installment fails the hardest, since while it keeps the characters and some plot threads (sometimes very minor) and gives them a satisfying resolution, it ignores everything the other movies seemed to be setting up.
 It's not a huge problem if you consider it as a stand-alone film, though. I'll go to bat for it.