Warning: This article contains some spoilers for Halloween Kills.
Few things lend themselves to a countdown quite like Halloween does, and now we have even more reason to count the days now that the first trailer for Halloween Ends has dropped, with a promise to deliver on its title and end the saga.
Of course, the Halloween saga is leaner than it used to be. Dropping the sequels and reboots that littered its 40-year history, 2018’s Halloween refreshed the franchise and acted as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s genre-defining 1978 original. As of 2018, slasher Michael Myers’ annual October trips to Haddonfield, Illinois, were in the bin. So was the family connection. The twist that Michael is Laurie Strode’s brother came in 1981’s Halloween II and has now been rubbed from the canon.
Halloween reestablished Myers as a mysterious, inexplicable force whose fixation on killing people in his old hometown hadn’t been undimmed after 40 years of incarceration. The refresh worked, supporting a Blumhouse-powered trilogy from director David Gordon Green and script partner-in-crime Danny McBride. An impressive take of over $250 million led to the announcement of two follow-up movies to complete the trilogy.
The pitch is that Halloween Ends will complete that trilogy and finally close the story that began when Michel Myers first met babysitter Laurie Strode in 1978. The trailer makes sure it ramps up the idea that this is a final reckoning.
The Halloween Ends trailer
Universal Pictures may have dropped the first trailer for the trilogy at the height of summer, but it’s clear where we’re headed this fall. A classic overhead shot of town trick-or-treaters gives way to a focus on Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode and her long-running battle with Michael Myers. After Myers’ shock murder of her daughter Karen, it looks like Laurie is on a path of vengeance. This may flip the usual cat-and-mouse of the franchise (not for the first time in this modern trilogy), but it’s clear that Myers still has something up his sleeve.
After 2018’s Halloween refreshed the franchise to box office and movie theater highs, 2021’s Halloween Kills divided fans. The twist of the middle film’s final act will leave some not buying into this trailer’s suggestion that Ends intends to do the job. Curtis hasn’t helped with the claim that the trilogy closer will be “shocking” and “make people very angry.”
Producer Malek Akkad has promised a different type of movie, and director Green has admitted that the film acknowledges the pandemic that knocked back the release of Kills and Ends. Halloween Ends won’t follow on directly from its immediate predecessors, but will instead jump forward four years. Elements of the pandemic will impact what Green has described as a more intimate story, something we might get hints of in future trailers. For now, we have the tease of an epic, blood-splattered, hand-stabbing, and potentially final scrap between Strode and Myers.
Who can we expect to see in Halloween Ends, and when does it release?
The Halloween Ends trailer doesn’t mess about ⏤ of course, this is Halloween we’re talking about. There’s another stand-off between Laurie and Michael, and the trailer doesn’t miss the opportunity to match their upcoming fight with the 1978 original.
Although it’s set two years after Halloween Kills, expect many of the trilogy cast to return, despite the slasher-fest at the end of Halloween Kills. Joining Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode is Will Patton as Officer Hawkins, another veteran of the original movie. Of course, Andi Matichak will be back as Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson James Jude Courtney, and Nick Castle, the original menace from 1978, will return to give form to the Shape himself.
Fans will know that the new trilogy has taken a supernatural twist after the end of Halloween Kills. But unlike the messy curse storyline of the “Thorn trilogy” that bogged down the original franchise in the 1980s and ’90s, the new trilogy is making a more mystical and creepy nod to the supernatural.
The set-up may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it promises an unpredictable trilogy-closer. We can’t imagine this is the last we’ll see of Myers in movie theaters, but we can expect the curtain to fall on this chapter when the trilogy closer premieres in theaters Oct. 14, 2022. Start counting down the days, horror fans. Halloween Ends in…
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