Halloween Ends review: Overloaded with therapy-speak, Ends could use more edge

Before it lumbers to its big showdown — halfheartedly, with all the excitement of a third installment of a third reboot cycle — Halloween Ends is an unusually Michael Myers-free affair. Where's the big guy? He's lurking in the sewers while a completely different drama plays out, one we're supposed to be just as into. You have to go back to 1982's cult-accruing Halloween III: Season of the Witch, about a killer TV broadcast, to find an approach as daring, though don't confuse that for successful.

The good people of Haddonfield, Ill., still talk about Michael (weirdly, they live in a universe that has John Carpenter's The Thing on streaming, but not Halloween). All the talking may be the problem: Ends plays more like a psychodrama than a full-fledged horror movie. Career survivor Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, deserving of a smarter sendoff than this) is typing out a book, one she narrates like a morbid Carrie Bradshaw: "I made a promise not to let fear rule my life anymore." Even a bratty preteen knows enough local lore to snap, "Michael Myers kills babysitters, not kids."

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Unfortunately for that boy, he doesn't make it past the film's prologue, though he is technically correct. He falls from an upstairs landing to his death, an accidental victim of a kicked-open door, while his watcher for the night, Corey (Rohan Campbell), gets blamed, if not jailed. Corey enters a shadowy half-shaven existence, dreams of college on hold, as the town — zoomer bullies, cops, random people on the street — channels its rage toward him.

That's already too much backstory for a concept that, per Carpenter's model, should be as minimal and sleek as a shark. Meanwhile, there's Laurie's adult granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), romantically drawn to Corey's pout, even as we suspect there's something not quite right about him. (Let's just say Halloween Ends doesn't have to end, should the producers decide otherwise.)

While Carpenter's percolating theme music emerges unscathed, director David Gordon Green — originally a savior to the franchise after Rob Zombie's missteps — wobbles with his vision, overcompensating for draggy bits with unmotivated gore (ah, the old snipped tongue on a spinning vinyl platter) and surprise blasts of noise. Curtis goes through her final dance, crosscut with scenes from the prior movies, and while it would be bad form to reveal more, you can't help but come up with something better in your head. Perhaps that's the point. Grade: C

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