I think Halloween Ends will be the most polarizing and divisive film in this entire crazy franchise. And I suspect I’m going to be an odd man out for giving it that crazy high a score. I was sitting in the theater thinking that a Halloween movie shouldn’t have this much character development, this much lack-of-slasher storyline. And yet, here we are… and I was loving it.

Halloween Ends picks up a few years after the end of Kills… Laurie is in a better headspace, settled in a normal house with her granddaughter Allyson. Haddonfield itself though is sick… paranoid, worried, angry. It creates its own hell, it creates its own monsters. It can’t help itself. We are introduced to a victim of this sickness in a young man who made a tragic mistake… and this guy comes into Laurie’s life and upends it. And somewhere… somewhere Michael Myers waits.

It’s probably the least Halloween movie since Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (only, you know, actually good). I think hardcore Halloween fans might not forgive it its deviation from the norm though. I admire the balls the movie has for choosing not to be a typical Halloween movie though. Set in the same town, playing with the same themes, but doing something new. Maybe even setting up a path to future films.

This movie exists in two parts and I’ll admit those parts glue together a little unevenly. I loved everything to do with the new character and his relationship with Allyson and Laurie. I love how this movie examines what it is to be a good person pushed to evil by a society that can’t let things go. I was grooving on this new direction… but then the movie shifts focus and gives us a more familiar Halloween.

And that Halloween… the one that Ends… was a little scattershot at times but I love the vibe. The way it provides completion for the themes in Halloween Kills. It’s solid even if it takes a butcher knife to the other half of itself.

I just don’t think the two sides of the film really coalesce as well as I’d like. I suspect the screenwriters had to serve two masters… their inventive, thoughtful new version of what Halloween could be and the needs of this storied franchise. They didn’t necessarily come up with the best solution, but I think they made a good effort.

I think the film needed to be a little longer to flesh out the character growth and change but they probably had to get it under two hours. And I suspect any more stretching of the non-slasher part of the film would have caused some people in the audience to riot.

I suspect I’ll be out here on my own with this one, but I think this is a great film with minor structural flaws. Is it the end of Halloween? I doubt it.

Score: 90