James Rhymer

Overall, I'm a big fan of this Halloween trilogy that started with 2018. The first film is an amazing nostalgia trip that expands the Halloween lore beautifully. The second felt strange on initial viewing because it released years after the first (Covid), despite picking up immediately after. However, watching 2018 and Kills back-to-back before Ends made me fall in love with where this franchise was going and I appreciated Kills much more for expanding the Halloween lore even further. Going into Ends, after watching a strong 2-part story that occurred the same night, left me with high expectations for how it would all end with so many new threads to pull on. Ends is a strong film on it's own, but as a conclusion to this specific trilogy, it felt out of place. All of the build up in the first 2 parts feels like it has little impact on where Ends goes because it chose to focus entirely on a new character that wasn't introduced in the first 2 films. If this character was introduced earlier as key to the story, and then brought into focus here, it might have worked a lot better. If you're coming for Michael Myers (or even Laurie), you'll be disappointed. If you're looking for a solid horror/love story of how communities can easily turn on people and create monsters out of them, watch this movie. Great horror flick, mediocre Halloween movie. There's 2 other paths this trilogy could have taken. 1) have everything occur in the same night, with the town ultimately killing Michael together to build on the strong community themes. 2) Replace the ending of 2018 with the finale of Ends so it wrapped up in 1 movie instead of stretching it out over 3. Wish I could rate this higher, not as bad as everyone is saying :)