Halloween Ends .. At last.

What is it about?

It doesn’t matter. Oh, it isn’t a Michael Myers Movie!

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What is it really about?

Finally, a completely superfluous trilogy comes to an end. What could we not have had instead of this trilogy?

Michael & Chucky as a buddy cop comedy: Michael has been released from the asylum and is now a middle-class, if gruff cop. His partner is Chucky, formerly a killer doll and now a city-famous blabbermouth who quotes the law faster than he can chase down perps on his short legs. Both are called away just before Halloween to investigate who is ringing up chocolate with razor blades in a high school, because of which overweight students cut their esophagus. Michael and Chucky mingle with the student poke. Meanwhile, the murders multiply. Their camaraderie and friendship is put to the test, because on the one hand they are in love with the same teacher, and on the other hand, at the Halloween party at the high school, it turns out that Chucky is the one who distributes the razor blades in the milk chocolate to the teenagers, because they have always teased him so much, claiming that redheads have no soul. In a tear-jerking showdown, Michael finishes off his best friend Chucky, killing the entire student body in rage and disappointment. Afterwards, in the sunrise, he elopes with the teacher – hand in hand; just before they disappear completely, he looks up at the sky and sees Chucky proudly waving at him.

Michael in Space: It is Halloween in the year 2200. From the event horizon, a spaceship sends out goosebump-inducing distress signals after finding the key to the world formula. It seems to be caught in a maelstrom of constant explosions, and monstrous demon creatures seem to be invading the spaceship to seize the key to the world formula. The space agency knows of only one man strong enough to take on these beings. Michael Myers. A multiple murderer who has been put into crypto-sleep “in case of need” and is extracted from the freezer to send him on this suicide mission. Arriving at the event horizon, he finds that it is the starship Enterprise. He knifes his way through the starship until he rips the grimace off the skull of the incompetent (since now more impotent) Captain Kirk and takes command. From the demon creatures Michael learns that he is in the maelstrom of eternal explosions, the original chaos, there in the center of infinity, and that he will be crowned god, alongside the other fearful gods who dance around Azazoth, but Michael is footsore, has no desire for the tribalistic tap dance of the gods, makes the demons cold, slaps Azazoth in the face and locks him with the help of the key to the world formula in the cage of time and goes on, back to earth, as quickly as possible, because Black Friday is coming up in a week and he urgently needs a new set of knives.

Michael “from dishwasher to millionaire”: Michael is released as cured after he is allowed to transplant the mask. He diligently catches up on school, is the second best in his graduating class, and begins his studies in business administration as a loner. To finance the high tuition fees, he works part-time in a nursing home. There, he is repeatedly asked by the terminally ill, sometimes demented, people to redeem them. When an old man even offers him money for it, Michael senses the deal of a lifetime and opens a company for euthanasia. The cash registers ring and soon Michael is a millionaire. As he sits comfortably in his rocking chair one Halloween evening, the doorbell rings. Contrary to his expectations, it’s not costumed children asking for trick-or-treaters who are waiting for him, but God himself. The latter admonishes Michael for continuing to fulfill the suicide of elderly people, since this does not go hand in hand with heavenly laws and ensures that the old, always moral rulers are sent straight into the devil’s kitchen. He demands that Michael should return to his roots, as archangel, and stop the budding Sodom and Gomorrah by finally going out again and judging the sinful young people with the knife; that is, young people who have sex and smoke pot, just “people” who defy the heavenly commandments and therefore should receive God’s punishment spitting blood. In addition, he is supposed to pay off the remaining debt from his blood money (75 cents for a Coke Zero). Michael then stabs God, accepts God’s inheritance and since then only hangs in the hammock, sips Pepsi and in the end dies of diabetes.

What we got instead: A rigorous cheat sheet, as this Halloween finale film ignores all the previous installments and tries its hand at an entirely new terrain it would have been better off treading in 2018. I basically find the fact that Halloween Ends turns the franchise inside out and, with the exception of the last 15 minutes, puts Michael on a leash entirely and doesn’t let him go until the Grand Finale. What makes me feel like someone is constantly kicking me in the crotch, though:

• A new main character is introduced; in itself with a furious and very successful opening, but in the continuing narrative in an unbearable, cliché-laden serial killer gesture.
• A Laurie Strode who, according to the previous films, has been busy for 40 years ammunitioning herself with the heaviest artillery to prepare herself in case Michael returns, although he was actually quite safely locked up in an insane asylum. Now – 4 years after Michael’s bloody vendetta, his sudden disappearance, the death of her daughter, the deaths of over 20-30 Haddonfielders – who is the daisy-picking, happiest grandma on the planet. She loves to bake cakes and no longer represents in any way, the bad-ass Granny from the previous two parts. She may be popping five MDMA pills a day to be as happy as a clam about her daily life, but her character should be much more paranoid, because Michael is still alive somewhere out there and could come around the corner at any time to screw her and her granddaughter.
• It’s a pathetic love story that could have been written by a 12-year-old with pink ballpoint pen. Instead of setting up this romance believably in the previous two installments, Green and McBride idle themselves until the last part to make it clear with the introduction of the new main character and Laurie’s granddaughter in 1-2 scenes: They love each other. It’s particularly exhausting not because it takes up most of the film, but also because it’s completely overbroad and leads to the most implausible romance I’ve had to endure in a while.
• A worn out, tired Michael Myers, who continues his serial killer career as a sewer rat and really does nothing but lounge bleakly in the sewer. Why? I don’t know, maybe because the moon reminds him of rotten cheese. Myers just isn’t the same as he was in 2018’s Halloween and 2021’s Halloween Ends. His terrifying presence is muted to the lowest of levels. This even goes so far as to have him get himself beaten up by a bubbie over the course of the narrative, and also to train him to be America’s Next Top Killer now that the old killer’s days are slowly numbered.

There’s a lot more I could run my mouth about. The film is a huge disappointment from a script standpoint, from an acting standpoint (including Jamie Lee Curtis!), from an editing standpoint, not because it tries anything new, but because Green and McBride are too incapable of consistently executing what they want to try something new. For two films, they establish rules that are whistled through the bong in the third installment. They expose themselves as absolute bunglers who may coax out interesting ideas that are plausible when stoned, but have no ability or cinematographic flair whatsoever when sober. Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends offer nothing to the horror genre, let alone the Halloween franchise that will echo for years to come. The films will be forgotten just as Halloween H20 and Resurrection were. They merely used Myers as a cash cow to be properly milked. Without sense, without reason, without plan. And above all without heart and soul. I don’t detect any fan love, I only detect dilettantism.

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Conclusion

It’s a disaster.

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Facts

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What is Stranger’s Gaze?

The Stranger’s Gaze is a literary fever dream that is sensualized through various media — primarily cinema, which I hold in high esteem. Based on the distinctions between male and female gaze, the focus is shifted through a crack in a destroyed lens, in the hope of obtaining an unaccustomed, a strange gaze.