„If you take a dollar sign and attach it to anything … It will live“, John Carpenter poignantly explained his Halloween franchise spawning a dozen subsequent installments scattered over multiple timelines. The one kicked off in 2018 by David Gordon Green’s Halloween andcontinued by last year’s Halloween Kills is finally finished. Or so promises the title of a decidedly messy sequel feeling anything but conclusive and only perfunctorily interested in its key characters. Laurie Strode (always reliable Jamie Lee Curtis) and Myers (Nick Castle sharing Michael’s mask with James Jude Courtney) are all but replaced by much younger, generic alter egos.
Those are Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) and Corey (Rohan Campbell), an awkward local outsider. Their bonding is paradigmatic of the nonsensical narrative mixing pseudo-psychological prejudice with social stigmatization. While it is bullying pushing Corey literally over the edge, his – also absurdly literal – infection with murderous mania confirms the supposed contagiousness and destructiveness of social deviance. Any suspense is sacrificed for smug clean-up killings of the sexually, verbally or mentally unsteady. The patchy plot’s constant demonizing of an originally very human villain culminates in an act of dehumanizing violence both ridiculous and repugnantly reactionary – like this embarrassingly exhausted endeavor.
- OT: Halloween Ends
- Director: David Gordon Green
- Screenplay: John Carpenter, David Gordon Green, Chris Bernier, Paul Brad Logan, Danny McBride
- Country: USA
- Year: 2022
- Running Time: 111 min.
- Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Kyle Richards, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Stephanie McIntyre, Nick Castle, James Jude Courtney, Rohan Campbell, Michele Dawson, Candice Rose, Emily Brinks, Marteen, Joey Harris, Keraun Harris, Dillon Belisle, Destiny Bostic
- Release date: 13.10.2022
- Image © Universal
