Offbeat Slasher Movies Will Always Have Their Day; ‘Halloween Ends’’ Time Will Come (Commentary)

“Halloween Ends” just opened in theaters, while also being made available on Universal’s streaming platform Peacock, and the response has been divisive to say the least.

The third chapter of the new trilogy (once again directed by David Gordon Green and starring Jamie Lee Curtis) made $41.3 million at the box office opening weekend, a good number for sure but lower than the studio and box office prognosticators were predicting. (Elsewhere, Universal is claiming it was a smash for Peacock.) Critically, the results were just as middling. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie pulled down a 41% critics score, with an audience score of 57%. But “Halloween Ends” took chances; it’s not perfect but it’s more interesting and idiosyncratic than most run-of-the-mill horror fare.

Instead of the nonstop bloodbath of previous entry “Halloween Kills,” “Halloween Ends” takes a more nuanced, mature approach to the subject matter, investing time in the relationship between Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) and her new boyfriend Corey (Rohan Campbell), who has his own Halloween-related past. The movie turns Corey into a kind of protégé for Michael Myers, which is a new concept to the franchise. And it emphasizes the way that trauma can affect the town in different ways. It’s not only the angry mob from “Halloween Kills,” but it can be a kind psychic scar on all that live there. Even the music is more mournful and restrained. Yes, there are still some great (and wickedly over-the-top) kills. But they are farther apart and mean more. An alternate title could have arguably been “Halloween Feels.” If history is any indication, it’ll be appreciated … eventually.

When Vulture critic Bilge Ebiri reviewed “Halloween Ends,” he compared it to another entry in the franchise, 1982’s “Halloween III: Season of the Witch,” the movie that infamously eschewed the Michael Myers narrative for a completely unrelated, vaguely sci-fi-ish anthology approach. (It was supposed to be the start of a new “movement” for the franchise; it wasn’t.) “The new movie is maybe not quite as goofy, but it has a similarly irreverent spirit, a refusal to fit into the demands of the broader slasher genre and a cavalier attitude toward this specific slasher’s so-called lore,” Ebiri wrote. And it’s true, while now rightly considered a classic, “Halloween III” was pilloried upon release. Roger Ebert called it a “low-rent thriller.” Variety crowed, “There’s not much to say about ‘Halloween III’ that hasn’t already been said about either of the other two Halloween pics or a slew of imitators.” (Weirdly, Vincent Canby in the New York Times loved it and said it is “probably as good as any cheerful ghoul could ask for.”)

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Now, it is if not widely beloved then a cherished cult artifact. When Polygon did a rundown of the movies that you should be watching every day in October, they picked “Halloween III” as the one to watch on Halloween night and said the film “is a horror movie worth discovering, revisiting, and most importantly experiencing, if only to fully grasp how far this series has come and just how drastically different it all might have turned out.” The movie’s peculiarities are what make it essential. Nowadays you can buy Halloween masks based on props from the movie along with a slew of other merchandise.

And this phenomenon isn’t relegated to the “Halloween” franchise. In 1986, “Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives” was released. Instead of the standard hack-and-slash approach, writer/director Tom McLoughlin veered into meta-textuality. There’s as much winking as there is stabbing. And, again, while people love it today (some have cited it as the highpoint of the entire franchise), it wasn’t the case back then. Gene Siskel awarded it half-a-star and said it was “the latest chapter of the most offensive series in film history, unless Burt Reynolds makes three more Smokey and the Bandit pictures real quick.” The Los Angeles Times print issue just referred to it as “a sad excuse for a movie.” But, just like “Halloween III,” in the years since, the estimation for “Jason Lives” has grown. By 2009 Slant was acknowledging it as the obvious template for self-aware horror favorites like “Scream” “with its self-aware jokiness.” Last year Collider argued that “Jason Lives” “hasn’t been topped.” And why hasn’t it been topped? Because no other entry attempted what it did.

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This happens time-and-time again: “New Nightmare,” a “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie where they are making a new “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie, gets lambasted (Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly said simply that “the movie is a dud”) and, like “Jason Lives,” is later heralded as a brainy fore-bearer for Craven’s “Scream.” And, returning to the “Halloween” franchise once more, Rob Zombie’s “Halloween 2” (a sequel to a contentious but successful remake) was first reviled (Variety exclaimed that it was “repellent not only in content but in visual style”) but is now applauded (Entertainment Weekly just described it as a “stylistic, often surrealistic detour from the series”). And Tobe Hooper’s “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2,” which embraced a gonzo sensibility that mystified most (The Miami Herald, in the print edition, assured readers that it was “neither funny nor frightening”) has only grown in stature with age; a deluxe 4K Blu-ray is set to come out later this month, just in time for Halloween.

Whether or not “Halloween Ends” receives the same kind of reappraisal remains to be seen. It is certainly audacious, going where no “Halloween” installment had previously gone. And it’s also thoughtfully constructed (with a lovely, somewhat mournful score by original filmmaker John Carpenter, along with Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies). All the hallmarks of a future cult classic are there, including, sadly, the initial wave of critical and commercial indifference.

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