Yeah, I struggle to find much positive to say about Halloween Ends. It is astonishingly weird to me that we began a new timeline trilogy with a solid endeavor in 2018 before two equally absurd and overly stuffed films that each are so oddly jammed with new or weirdly reappearing characters and as-bunt-as-a-baseball-bat-to-Michael's-masked-head subtext and meaning.
Before Ends came out I was wondering if Kills would just be a super weird, offbeat second film in this trilogy that would regularly get swept under the rug. Instead it was a foreboding warning that we would just be getting more of the same. I don't know how you could overthink a series of Halloween films this ridiculously but here we are. Nor do I understand how there's been one central core of creative thought throughout this entire trilogy yet we now have three films that each feels like they've had to start over with a different writer every time. Each one introduces new characters, stakes, plotlines and subtext to the point where it seems like there was just no overall plan at all. Which I kinda get because I doubt there were super strong plans for a trilogy before the 2018 was a definite success but come on, guy.
I honestly might struggle to decide which film is worse between Kills and Ends. Ends is badly directed (it literally looks like a sitcom for most of its run time until we lose daytime), is chock full of nonsensical character and 'arcs' (I literally can not stand the Corey and Allyson plot) if you can call them that and feels like a really, really wet fart of an ending for anything, let alone a series for Michael Myers. It's crazy to me that we needed this trilogy that skipped over literally every single sequel to focus on Laurie and her family and the town when the original Halloween - Halloween II - Halloween: H20 already tell a much more cohesive and better executed story and H20 was pushed out in the lazily made late 90's hot teen slasher craze!
2018 is a solid film and the Carpenter family and Co. do some amazing, amazing work on these soundtracks but man did they really, really miss the mark with this second and third film from a creative standpoint. As soon as the opening of Ends closed and the main titles started playing I knew I was in for more of the same. There's no way nobody in this script sessions brought up what they tried to do in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning and Jason Goes to Hell and how those are widely regarded as two of the lesser parts of that franchise.
I'll take A New Beginning and JGTH over Halloween Ends though, at least those films know what they are and, at the end of the day, are actually fun (GTH moreso, New Beginning has always been eh outside of the sweet electric slide dance).
