Halloween(s): Horror Retcon
Now, everyone knows Busta Rhymes killed Michael Myers by kicking him out a window. What these new films presuppose is: maybe he didn’t?
Welp, this is it, the final entry in the 2022 Spooktacular. I wish I could go out on a positive note, but I spent most of the evening handing out Halloween candy and drinking hard alcohol. Then I watched Barbarian, which I have mixed feelings about. That all said, I figured it apropos to end with some discussion of the Halloween franchise. It’s kind of a weird one isn’t it?
There were seven films in the original series that were about the Michael Myers character — excluding Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which I’ll get into more later. Then, once Laurie Strode was finally killed off and Michael was felled by a Busta Rhymes roundhouse kick, they decided to start things over again with Rob Zombie. His remake series only got two installments. Some people are big fans, but, in my experience, those people tend to be pretty big fans of anything Zombie does. I don’t remember liking them myself, but it’s been a long time. I do remember going to the theater to see the first Zombie Halloween film. I went in thinking I was about to see a horror masterpiece and came out pretty crestfallen. I didn’t think it was a masterpiece. As a matter of fact, I didn’t think it was very good at all. Perhaps it’s time I revisit them though.
After trying the same remake route that failed to bring other horror franchises much success, the keepers of the IP decided to go in a different direction. How about we go back to the one film in the series that everyone agrees is great and pretend that nothing that happened in the films after it counts? I’m being kinda pissy about it, but I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with this approach. They were proposing something similar for the Alien franchise a little while back that would have seen us get a more conventional sequel to Aliens that didn’t kill off Hicks and Newt. (we got Prometheus/Convenant instead). It doesn’t erase the original series necessarily. It just creates something of a separate timeline — an alternate movie reality. In fact, I think it’s an interesting thought exercise and I’ll be interested to see how it’s employed going forward. However, I really think that what you do with said approach should be interesting.
When the David Gordon Green trilogy was announced, I was excited about the possibilities. I like Halloween II — a lot, actually — but lets see where the series would have gone without that sequel and all the baggage that came with it. The reviews that preceded the release of Halloween (2018) were very encouraging as well. One horror writer said that it brought her to tears (in a good way). But just like with my Zombie remake experience, I was left wanting. This was just part one though. Green had a whole trilogy planned out to make good on this little experiment. Maybe I just needed to see his vision through?
Due to pandemic delays, Halloween Kills was released just last year via the Peacock streaming service. Pretty early in my initial screening, I let my expectations go and I actually enjoyed myself a little bit. It was BAD — just a stupid stupid film — but I enjoyed the inventive over-the-top kills (the fire department scene is an all-timer) and the weird portrayal of the town of Haddonfield. Maybe Halloween just wasn’t meant to be taken seriously? If I needed extra convincing, Halloween Ends did that.
Ends focuses a lot on a young man named Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell — cool name!). From what I’ve seen of audience reviews, this did not sit well with most viewers. In it, an unfortunate accident makes Corey the town pariah and their continued ostracism of him turns him into something of a leather jacket-wearing motorcycle-riding bad boy — a no good street punk. A chance encounter with Michael Myers down in the sewers also puts a little bit of the (murderous) dog in him. To make matters worse, he strikes up an inexplicable romantic relationship with Laurie Strode’s granddaughter. Laurie, herself, is busy being completely different than she was in the two previous films while trying to finish a book (that others have pointed out seems to be nothing but final pages).
I don’t mind the Corey character being the focus here. It is, once again, a very silly film, but I think it could have been done quite a bit better. Does anyone else feel like a lot films aren’t even trying anymore? It’s hard to put my finger on it, but I’m thinking specifically of the scene where Laurie confronts Corey (aww, they rhyme). The way she tries to act menacing rocking in a chair while rattling off embarrasing dialogue — like they wrote the scene over a weekend, shot it all in one take, and decided “good enough”. I got that feeling throughout a lot of Ends. It didn’t give me the sense that a lot of care or thought was put into it.
On the other end of the spectrum, you’ll see a lot of people defending the film as well. That’s fine. Film enjoyment is subjective. What I don’t understand are the pro-Ends arguments that basically boil down to “because Halloween III!”. I know that the title card of the film is reminiscent of Season of the Witch and it isn’t isn’t strictly about Michael Myers, but it’s not like Halloween III…at all.
I just rewatched Season of the Witch this weekend for the first time in over two decades. It’s fine. I still don’t get the hubbub made by film Twitter, but the score is fantastic, I’ll give them that. Up until my most recent rewatch, I’d hated the film for the same reason that a lot of other people did. As a kid, I had just become interested in the franchise and bought a VHS three pack, only to find that Part III wasn’t about Michael Myers at all. The plot about killer Halloween masks and evil Irishmen just didn’t grab me the same way the two films about an unstoppable murderer did. In retrospect, I think the intention for the series sounds really cool. They just might have erred by initially making multiple movies about Michael Myers before switching to something else. Had they made each new installment about something new, right off the bat, people might have responded to it better. Hell, they could have even brought Michael Myers back in a later installment, perhaps to battle the infamous Pumpkin Boy, or whatever other creatures a hypothetical anthology series might have invented instead of beating Michael to death.
Speaking of which: no matter how much Ends wanted to make Corey the focus, it was still leading to the inevitable final defeat for The Shape. How would they finally stop this geriatric shark of a man? Well, they stab him a bunch and then the whole town (again, I think Green’s depiction of Haddonfield is very bizarre) gets together to feed him through one of those car crusher machines that you see eating stuff on TikTok. It’s a good ending because it leaves little room for resurrection. When we were kids, my brother used to say that they should feed Michael to a polar bear, cut up that polar bear and feed it to a whale, put that whale in a spaceship and blow it up in orbit (or send it to the sun). The Ends ending isn’t quite that definitive, but it’s still pretty good. The Green trilogy as a whole though? I’m still not quite sure why these films needed to be made. I wanted to believe at the outset that they were doing it with the goal of making the best, most mature, most satisfying extension of the series ever — all while telling a story with a beginning, middle, and end. They may have succeeded in the latter part, but, looking back on it, the trilogy just feels like another exploitation of horror IP that the studio knew could draw some eyes in October.
So, what’s the over-under on when the next Halloween film comes out? And what form will it take? Will it be another straight remake? Does Corey Cunningham return from his apparent death? Or does someone say: “the real story is what happened to Paul Rudd’s character after Part VI, ignoring H2O and Resurrection, of course!”.
Is it scary? Halloween Ends? Oh my word, no. Hacks coming out of the woodwork to revamp existing franchises every year until the day I die? Yeah, a little bit.
Streaming: Yep, pretty sure the bulk of them are on Peacock now.
This concludes my 2022 Halloween Spooktacular
