This end to the current Halloween trilogy is still in theaters so I will say upfront that there will be pretty massive SPOILERS through this review. Now, finally, we can see the final confrontation that we’ve been waiting 40 years for. After the previous movie left with Laurie’s daughter being killed by a seemingly unkillable Michael Myers, the stage is set for this showdown to be incredibly personal for both surviving Strode women. At long last we get to see, on the big screen, Laurie Strode confront her nemesis…uh, *checks notes* Corey Cunningham? Wait, what the fuck is this shit?

Out story takes place 4 years after the events of the first two movies in this trilogy. Michael Myers apparently escaped after the events of the last movie and lives in the sewers like a heavy breathing Pennywise. Don’t worry about that, though, because you wont even find that out until 40 goddamn minutes into this movie. Instead we follow Laurie, who has turned into a domestic grandma writing a book so she can narrate the movie like it’s a horror version of Sex & the City and she lives with granddaughter Allyson, who is now a nurse and an idiot. There is also the actual villain of the movie, Corey, a guy that accidentally killed a kid he was babysitting 3 Halloweens ago. For some reason, the entire town of Haddonfield has turned into complete, top-to-bottom assholes where you might root for Corey to kill the douchebags he meets if he himself wasn’t also a sad sack of angry man-feelings. Corey also doesn’t get to be a real big boy killer until almost the end of the movie as, instead, he spends the first few murders shadowing Michael like an unpaid slasher intern.

Jesus fucking christ, I don’t even know where to begin with this. Halloween Kills was not a great movie but it still had some neat characters and kills and, most importantly, it set up the climactic end to the series. I was able to forgive a lot of dumb nonsense from that film because I figured it was all in service of the finale. Then this movie halts all momentum built up and ruins the characters they had previously set up. The obvious one being taking Laurie from a badass, vigilant survivor to a cardigan wearing, pie baking grandma that wants to put all that unpleasantness behind her. She spends 40 years worried about Michael when he is safely locked up but once he is loose with whereabouts unknown after murdering her only child; that’s when she decides to chill out. She does still have some of that Jamie Lee Curtis spunk in her for a couple scenes but she is also completely sidelined for most of this because we need to focus on Corey’s inexplicable transformation into a Myer-alike and his relationship with Allyson.

Hooboy, speaking of Allyson; she has gone full dumbshit boy crazy in this, which is even more annoying than it normally is in a character because she had been set up as fully capable of being independent. She is introduced to Corey 4 days before Halloween. By Halloween night, she is preparing to pack up her life and run away with the clearly unstable gentleman because she got passed up for a promotion and he’s got nice cheekbones, I guess? It’s the whirlwind romance of we went on one date where he freaked out, yelled at me and then left and then one more date where he threatened my ex and took me to the site of his accidental murder. Classic love story! Corey, meanwhile, is presented for the first half hour of the film as a kind, gentle guy that fucked up real bad one night and now the town wont stop shitting on him. However, when he meets Michael in the sewer, he suddenly decides “this dude knows what’s up” and literally asks Myers to teach him how to be like him. Michael, instead of tilting his head and stabbing the shit out of this little prick, decides that, yeah, having a student sounds great and just goes along with this.

I cannot stress enough, how much this movie sucks shit. Instead of the unstoppable Michael Myers, more force of nature than man, we get Corey, sad boy that murders the people that were mean to him and then kills himself because he might have to face the consequences of those actions. Just what the audience always wanted! I understand wanting to do something different with a long running horror series. I do. The finale of a trilogy, however, is not the time. It’s like they just got high and forgot what the fuck they were doing. This wouldn’t have been a particularly good concept even as a stand alone film but it’s made even worse by the fact that this is supposed to be the “end” of the franchise. What a wet fart of a movie to go out on. No atmosphere, no dread, no suspense. Just a couple jump scares and a pretender to the overalls. I honestly just feel bad for Jamie Lee Curtis that this is how they decided to end things.

Score: 1 out of 5