Halloween Ends

Michael hasn't been seen since the night he killed Karen Strode.

Nobody.

No arrest.

No confirmed sightings.

Nothing.

Haddonfield has been left to live with the possibility that Michael could still be somewhere nearby.

But the absence of the Shape hasn't healed the town.

Fear remains.

Suspicion remains.

People still need somewhere to put their anger.

Michael Myers may have disappeared.

The damage he created hasn't.

The story introduces Corey Cunningham, played by Rohan Campbell.

On Halloween night in 2019, Corey agrees to babysit a young boy named Jeremy.

The evening ends in catastrophe.

A prank goes terribly wrong and Jeremy dies.

Corey insists it was an accident.

But Haddonfield doesn't forget.

Years later, he's still known as the young man accused of killing the child he was supposed to protect.

Wherever Corey goes, people see a monster.

Eventually, Corey begins wondering whether that's exactly what he has become.

This Laurie is noticeably different from the woman we met in 2018.

The fortress is gone.

Weapons no longer define her existence.

Laurie lives with Allyson and is writing a memoir.

She cooks.

She tries to reconnect with ordinary life.

After decades of letting Michael decide how she lived, Laurie has finally decided she won't give him that power anymore.

But Haddonfield hasn't necessarily made the same choice.

People remember what happened.

And some of them blame Laurie for bringing Michael's violence back into their lives.

Allyson survived the previous two films at an enormous cost.

Her father is dead.

Her boyfriend Cameron is dead.

Her mother Karen is dead.

Michael Myers tore through almost everyone around her.

Now Allyson works as a nurse and lives with Laurie.

She appears functional.

But like everyone else in Haddonfield, she's carrying something underneath.

Then she meets Corey.

Two young people damaged by the same town find one another.

Laurie sees Corey being harassed and approaches him.

Rather than judging him by Haddonfield's reputation, she tries to help.

She introduces him to Allyson.

Initially, Corey seems like someone Laurie understands.

Another person whose life has been defined by one terrible night.

Another person Haddonfield refuses to allow to move forward.

But Laurie gradually notices something changing.

Something familiar.

She has spent too many years looking into Michael Myers' eyes not to recognise darkness when she sees it.

After an attack leaves Corey injured, he ends up beneath Haddonfield.

And there, hidden inside the town's sewer system, is Michael Myers.

Older.

Weaker.

But alive.

The confrontation doesn't unfold the way anyone might expect.

Michael doesn't simply kill Corey.

Something passes between them.

Whether it's recognition, corruption or simply Corey's interpretation of the encounter, the effect is profound.

Corey emerges changed.

Michael Myers has returned to the story.

But for much of Halloween Ends, he isn't its only monster.

The central idea of Halloween Ends is considerably stranger than another straightforward Laurie-versus-Michael rematch.

What happens when evil spreads?

Michael terrorised Haddonfield for decades.

People feared him.

Hated him.

Obsessed over him.

Now Corey begins absorbing that darkness.

He becomes more aggressive.

More confident.

More violent.

The film asks whether Michael Myers is simply one murderous man or whether the fear surrounding him has infected Haddonfield itself.

Allyson grows increasingly close to Corey.

Both understand what it feels like to have tragedy define their lives.

Corey wants to leave Haddonfield.

Allyson begins imagining going with him.

For Corey, escape seems like salvation.

But by now something darker is happening.

His relationship with Michael is changing him.

The victim Haddonfield rejected is becoming capable of creating victims himself.

Eventually Corey confronts Michael again.

This time he wants the mask.

The moment deliberately plays with one of the franchise's most sacred icons.

For decades, the white mask has meant Michael Myers.

Now Corey puts it on.

He begins committing murders while wearing the face of the Shape.

The implication is unsettling.

Maybe Michael doesn't have to live forever.

Maybe the thing he represents can simply find someone else.

Laurie becomes increasingly convinced that Corey is dangerous.

Allyson sees Laurie's suspicion differently.

To her, it looks like the old Laurie returning.

The Laurie obsessed with evil.

The Laurie who allowed Michael Myers to control everything.

That creates a painful divide between grandmother and granddaughter.

Laurie has spent years trying to escape her obsession with Michael.

Now, recognising danger makes her look obsessed all over again.

But this time Laurie isn't imagining it.

Halloween arrives.

Corey puts on Michael's mask.

And he goes to Laurie's house.

But Laurie Strode has been surviving masked killers for a very long time.

She's ready.

Their confrontation ends violently.

Yet Corey isn't the final threat.

Because Michael Myers has come for his mask.

And after forty-four years, Laurie Strode and Michael Myers are finally alone together.

No mob.

No burning compound.

No army of firefighters.

No elaborate mythology.

Just Laurie and Michael.

Their confrontation is brutal and intimate.

Michael attacks.

Laurie fights back.

Allyson eventually returns and helps her grandmother.

Together, they overpower the Shape.

This time Laurie isn't interested in assuming Michael is dead.

She's going to make absolutely certain.

Michael's body is taken through Haddonfield.

The town follows.

Everyone who lived under the shadow of Michael Myers gets to witness what happens next.

Laurie and Allyson bring his body to an industrial shredder.

Michael Myers is placed inside.

And the Shape is destroyed.

Not shot.

Not stabbed.

Not burned.

Not left lying somewhere he can mysteriously disappear from.

Destroyed.

After decades of fake deaths and impossible returns, the film makes its intention unmistakable.

Michael Myers is dead.

Michael's destruction isn't private.

That's important.

Haddonfield witnesses it.

For decades, Michael existed partly because nobody could ever be completely certain he was gone.

He disappeared from lawns.

Survived fires.

Rose after beatings.

Walked away from things that should have killed him.

This time there is no ambiguity.

The town sees the body destroyed.

The boogeyman finally has an ending.

With Michael and Corey gone, Allyson finally makes a choice.

She leaves.

Not because she's running from Michael.

Because she needs a life beyond everything that happened in Haddonfield.

For three films, Allyson inherited the trauma that shaped Laurie's existence.

Her departure offers the possibility that the cycle can actually stop.

She doesn't need to become another Laurie Strode waiting for the Shape to return.

Frank Hawkins visits Laurie.

Their relationship has quietly existed around the edges of the trilogy.

Both survived Michael.

Both lost decades to what happened in 1978.

Now Michael is gone.

For perhaps the first time, Laurie can imagine a future that isn't built around preparing for Halloween night.

It's a small ending.

After everything that has happened, that's exactly why it works.

Halloween Ends was positioned as the conclusion of the modern trilogy and the final confrontation between Laurie and Michael.

Jamie Lee Curtis first played Laurie Strode in 1978.

Across multiple continuities, she returned to the character repeatedly, transforming Laurie from a teenage babysitter into one of horror cinema's defining survivors.

The timelines changed.

Michael's mythology changed.

Laurie's relationship to him changed.

But Curtis remained Halloween's human face.

This film gives her version of Laurie something the character rarely receives.

Closure.

James Jude Courtney returns as the Shape, completing the version of Michael he began playing in 2018. Universal's official credits list Courtney alongside Curtis, Andi Matichak, Rohan Campbell, Will Patton and Kyle Richards.

His Michael is noticeably diminished here.

Years hiding beneath Haddonfield have taken their toll.

But when the mask returns to his face, the Shape remains recognisable.

That makes the final confrontation feel less like Laurie fighting an invincible supernatural force and more like two ageing figures reaching the end of something that began decades earlier.

John Carpenter returned with Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies to score the final chapter of the trilogy.

That connection matters.

The story may have travelled through thirteen films, several continuities and numerous filmmakers, but Carpenter's original musical identity remains inseparable from Michael Myers.

The piano theme survived almost as stubbornly as the Shape himself.

David Gordon Green's three films take surprisingly different approaches.

Halloween (2018) is the return.

Halloween Kills expands Michael's violence across Haddonfield.

Halloween Ends jumps forward four years and focuses heavily on what remains after the violence.

The decision to make Corey Cunningham such a major part of the final film proved divisive, but it also prevents Ends from simply becoming another two hours of Laurie waiting for Michael to arrive.

The film is as interested in Michael's legacy as in Michael himself.

Within this continuity, the story is remarkably simple.

Halloween (1978).

Halloween (2018).

Halloween Kills.

Halloween Ends.

Everything between them belongs to other timelines.

The Laurie Strode who walked across Haddonfield carrying schoolbooks in 1978 eventually becomes the woman who watches Michael Myers physically destroyed forty-four years later.

Few horror rivalries have lasted anything like it.

The title promises what horror franchises rarely dare to promise.

Halloween Ends.

Of course, the Halloween franchise itself may never truly end.

Michael Myers is too recognisable.

The mask is too iconic.

John Carpenter's original is too influential.

Future filmmakers can reboot the story again.

Create another timeline.

Start from the beginning.

But this story ends.

This Laurie Strode gets to stop running.

This Michael Myers doesn't disappear when someone looks away.

And this Haddonfield finally watches its boogeyman die.

In 1978, Laurie looked across a classroom and saw a silent figure standing beside a car.

Forty-four years later, she finally gets to live in a world without him.

The night he came home lasted a very long time.

But eventually, Halloween had to end.