‘Halloween’ finale could be just smoke and mirrors
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As soon as you heard there would be another “Halloween” film pitting Jamie Lee Curtis’ horror heroine Laurie Strode against iconic villain Michael Myers, you could guess one of them probably wouldn’t be standing at the end. And the newest go-round doesn’t disappoint, with a fiery, action-packed climax.
So who made it out alive? Well, that’s a complicated question.
Spoiler alert! We’re discussing plot points integral to the end of “Halloween,” so beware if you haven’t seen it yet.
After 40 years of preparing for Michael’s return, Laurie has finally turned the tables on her foe from the original 1978 “Halloween” and lured him to her isolated house in the woods. Her daughter, Karen (Judy Greer), and granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), hide in a secret basement under the kitchen while Laurie faces off with Michael, a fight that goes through the home and ends with Laurie being thrown off a second-floor balcony.
Here’s the thing: The house is a Michael-ready deathtrap. Michael goes after the other women, superhumanly ripping the kitchen island off the floor so he can find Karen and Allyson. Karen screams for her mom to help, but it’s a ruse: When Michael gets ready to enter the bunker, Karen’s scared face turns stone cold, she says, “Gotcha,” and
shoots him in the head.
While Michael’s stunned, Laurie (who’s totally OK!) comes out of nowhere to send him flying down the stairs so Karen and Allyson can quickly exit, though Allyson has to find a knife and stab Michael when he grabs her mom’s leg so Karen can get away. Laurie blocks his exit and turns on a slew of hidden gas spigots, and with a “Goodbye, Michael” final message, throws a lit flare at him. The bunker, followed by the whole house, goes up in flames and Michael quietly and inexplicably sits there while the women escape.
“Anytime you slay the dragon, it feels amazing, because you’ve removed this obstacle from you moving forward with any life that you could possibly have. You at least have a chance at life,” Curtis tells USA TODAY about the ending.
“That last shot of the movie is three women who’ve slayed the dragon. And the youngest of them has the knife in her hand. And there is poetry and beauty in that imagery. And a very satisfying feeling.”
But is this really curtains for Michael? “As we’ve seen before, I can’t really even say what happens to him,” Curtis says. She points out that Laurie thought she decapitated him in 1998’s “Halloween: H20,” yet it ended up being the wrong guy, and Michael returned (as he normally does) four years later in “Halloween: Resurrection.”
There are two key pieces of evidence that Michael’s still alive: When the camera shifts back to the house during the women’s escape, he’s not in the bunker anymore. And just as the final credits roll, there’s heavy breathing – a sign also used in the ’78 original that denoted he wasn’t dead yet.
“If it’s a hit, you know he’ll be back,” says Nick Castle, who wore the mask in the first “Halloween” and has a cameo as Michael in the new film. (He also is responsible for the aforementioned heavy breathing.) “They’ll milk this thing until the last bit is wrung out of that poor fella.”