HALLOWEEN ENDS
Making the Michael
RELEASED OUT NOW! 18 | 111 minutes
Director David Gordon Green
Cast Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak,
Rohan Campbell, James Jude Courtney
Can you make a good Halloween film without Michael Myers in it? And does anyone really want a mature, thoughtful take on this franchise?
Both questions float through your mind on watching David Gordon Green’s capper to his Haddonfield trilogy. Like the first two entries, it tries to invest the ageing formula with at least a modicum of intellectual weight. A Halloween film can’t just be a mechanism for delivering gnarly kills now, it has to be “about” something. Halloween was about trauma (or “trowma”, as Jamie Lee Curtis would say). Halloween Kills was about the effects vigilantism has a population. Halloween Ends is about the effects of scapegoating an individual.
That first question’s been answered before, of course – many would say, in the affirmative. Ends doesn’t go anywhere near as far as 1982’s Season Of The Witch; however, slasher scholars may initially suspect it’s doing a Friday The 13th: A New Beginning, with ol’ Shatner-mask somewhat sidelined. Fear not, though: Laurie Strode and Michael do get to cross kitchen knives. And despite his revival’s fondness for philosophising, Green never forgets that he needs to cater to our bloodlust and splash the ketchup – although nothing here is quite as wince-inducing as, say, the strip-light stabbing in Kills.
The result is a film which strives to say something meaningful about how violence infects our society, but is also not averse to pounding someone’s skull against a hard surface to the strains of The Cramps. And if that’s not reason enough to tip your hat to Green, it should also guarantee a new variant action figure. Ian Berriman
In the 1978 film, Laurie and Tommy Doyle watch The Thing From Another World. Here, a kid watches The Thing.
Tries to invest a modicum of intellectual weight