Ryan Conde’s review published on Letterboxd:
I expected a lot of things to come from Halloween Ends, but what I did not expect was for this movie to be so polarizing. Seriously, I've seen so many people in the past couple of days who either love this movie or hate this movie. Haven't quite seen a movie this divisive in a while. For me, I just wanted to wait and see how everything was going to play out. After Halloween Kills, the most this movie could do is just be better than that movie and I would be completely fine with that. Unfortunately, Halloween Ends is not better than Halloween Kills. I can't say that it is much worse than Kills, but it is still the weakest of the recent Halloween trilogy that we've gotten. There are just so many things I have to criticize about this movie. Prepare for a long review guys! Anyway, let's start with one of the biggest problems with the movie, it isn't scary or funny. For a film that tries very hard to be funny and scary, it doesn't end up being both. A lot of the humor was falling flat as a lot of it is more awkward than anything else, and the scares are as predictable and ineffective as you could get. Rather they are cheap jump scares or scenes that are meant to be suspenseful but aren't because you know what's going to happen, it all just leads to a movie that isn't scary or funny. Halloween Ends also suffers from some characters that I could not have cared less about. Outside of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, I did not care about any of the other characters in this movie. Most of them are either forgettable or just not that interesting. Andi Matichak and Rohan Campell are the biggest offenders of this. The characters they play just didn't work for me and I don't buy the relationship between the two of them at all. The movie also has to deal with a story that gets more predictable as it goes on, a soundtrack that is just ridiculous and so out-of-place for this kind of movie, a lack of focus on both Laurie Strode and Michael Myers which are easily the two characters we all want to see more of, and the biggest problem with the movie has to be the weird ass direction it takes. To my surprise, Halloween Ends is not just a stereotypical slasher horror film. The movie tries to go in a more dramatic approach and isn't the usual Michael Myers killing people for 90 minutes that was in both the 2018 movie and Halloween Kills. In a way, I should give this movie a lot of credit for trying something different. I mainly expected this movie to be another straightforward slasher horror movie, but it taking a more dramatic approach and focusing on Andi Matichak and Rohan Campell's characters more than just Laurie and Michael, I do appreciate it. Sadly, despite this going in a different direction than the last two Halloween movies, that doesn't automatically mean that it works. I may appreciate trying to do something different with a very standard formula, but if it's handled stupidly and clumsily, I will call it out on it. Halloween Ends does fall into this trap. I just couldn't get into the whole new direction the movie was going in and saying more would go into spoiler territory. I won't say exactly what happens, but I'll just say that you are either going to love this new direction the movie goes in or you are going to hate it. I appreciate it for being different but it still was handled so weirdly that I can't give it a pass. While watching this movie, I was so worried that it was going to end up being a bad movie. Two-thirds in, I was already setting myself up to give this 2 out of 5 stars. However, just as I was about to call this movie bad, the last third finally turned things around. Now the movie went from being pretty bad to just frustratingly mediocre. The last third of this movie is easily the best part of the whole thing. Not only do Laurie Strode and Michael Myers get their time to shine, but it also delivers what we want from a Halloween movie. We get to see some amazing kills that are brutal as fuck, tons of gore and blood that get even more graphic and insane than in Halloween Kills, and a badass showdown between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. It's awesome and it's the only part of the movie that was genuinely thrilling and exciting to watch. I'll also give the movie credit for its acting and cinematography. On a technical aspect, the movie is pretty consistent with the last two Halloween movies. In terms of acting, Jamie Lee Curtis is still fantastic here and the rest of the cast is decent as well. Lastly, I also did like the way the ending was handled. It may just promise that this will be the last Halloween movie with Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. Still though, even if this is the last one, I wish the conclusion was a lot better than it was. Overall, Halloween Ends is a movie that may have gotten out of being bad thanks to a very good third act, but you still have to get through a lot of weird and bad stuff to get to those good parts. I completely understand people liking the new and weird direction this movie took but I also understand that it is not going to work for everybody. This is one of those cases where it just didn't for me and I much rather watch Halloween Kills again than this one. I'm glad to have seen this in the theater rather than Peacock and my audience was thankfully well-behaved which made the theater experience a lot better, but I did wish to get a much better movie. If you've seen all the other Halloween movies, then you might as well just see this one. I can see why someone wouldn't want to see this movie, but when it's the last one, there's not much of a point to skip it, especially when you don't have to travel to the theater to see this one if you have Peacock. I'm sure Michael Myers will find a way to come back in some way again, but for now, let's just be happy that the Halloween franchise is finally being put to rest. We can only hope it will stay that way because no matter how many times Hollywood will revive this franchise, nothing is ever going to top John Carpenter's iconic 1978 original horror classic.
