‘Halloween Ends’ with a ‘Huh?!'

“Evil dies tonight!”

Those infamous words from last year’s baffling slasher sequel, “Halloween Kills” can’t be ignored in “Halloween Ends,” the so-called final installment of this new Michael Myers trilogy from director/co-writer David Gordon Green.

The (admittedly clunky) take away from “Kills” was that “Evil never dies.” Instead, it changes shape. “Halloween” Ends explores that change in the story of Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a quiet Haddonfield teenager who accidentally kills the child he’s babysitting on Halloween Night.

Wait, what?! Am I watching the right movie?

In some ways, I can appreciate the curveball taken here by Green and his writing team, especially after the disastrously executed hysterics of last year’s installment. “Ends” takes place four years after the events of the previous films (including 2018’s OG installment, simply titled “Halloween,” which served as a direct sequel to the 1978 classic and ditched the previous run of follow-up movies).

Thankfully, Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode remains in Haddonfield as well, still processing the death of her daughter in the previous movie. She now lives with her adult granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), who was orphaned by Myers’ killing spree.

The Shape, meanwhile, hasn’t been seen in years, and “Ends” takes a good long while before bringing him back into the fold. Instead, the movie focuses on a burgeoning relationship between Allyson and Corey (an idea Laurie initially encourages before realizing young Corey might be a little too screwed up from that whole “accidentally killed a kid” situation).

The romance eats a hefty chunk of runtime, leaving the series’ marquee attraction (Curtis) absent for long stretches once again (an especially fatal mistake in “Kills”). The why of the Corey-Allyson dynamic makes sense once Michael Myers reappears, but the execution of that idea can’t bridge into the movie’s larger ideas about trauma and how a community ultimately breeds the evil it fears. The two actors lack chemistry too, though, to be fair, the believability of their relationship isn’t really apparent in the script either.

Those looking for gnarly gore will be left waiting a while (not a personal complaint, as I prefer this movie’s inert romance over the mindless bloodletting in “Kills”). When Laurie and Michael Myers finally face one another, the confrontation delivers, and the last 20 minutes conjures some striking imagery as Green attempts to provide a genuine sense of finality to his Haddonfield saga. It could have been far more impactful, however, had the rest of “Ends” been more focused on Laurie and Myers in the first place.

Looking back at all three of Green’s “Halloween” installments, the underutilization of Curtis becomes the most glaring takeaway. The marketing for each movie certainly frontlined the presence of Laurie Strode, and yet Green repeatedly chose to focus on less-compelling characters. While “Ends” is a considerable improvement over “Kills,” the entire trilogy never really takes the Shape (ta-ha) of anything close to the standard set forth in 1978.

Tyler Wilson is film critic and member of the International Press Academy. He has been writing about movies since 2000, including a regular column in the Press since 2006. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.