Film review: Jamie Lee Curtis looks bone-tired of it all in Halloween Ends
Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween Ends
★★☆☆☆
Halloween Ends (18s), the umpteenth installment in the slasher-horror franchise that spawned a thousand imitators, opens in the notorious town of Haddonfield with model student Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) babysitting his neighbour’s bratty kid.
The evening does not end well, although not for reasons we might expect – for once the tragedy doesn’t involve a knife-wielding maniac – and soon Corey is being ostracised by the locals.
Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) takes pity on Corey, and introduces him to her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), whereupon the pair begin dating. But has Corey been ‘infected’ by the homicidal urge that seems to have permeated Haddonfield in the wake of Michael Myers’ various killing sprees?
This is director David Gordon Green’s third outing for the Halloween franchise, and the story begins promisingly as it explores the cumulative effect of repeated trauma upon a town’s population.
‘Why don’t you just leave?’ Corey asks Allyson at one point, and it’s a very good question, albeit one that goes unanswered in the movie’s second half, when the effect of repeated trauma, etc., manifests itself as the desire to run about skewering folk with kitchen implements.
Rohan Campbell is pitiably plausible as the town outcast until he starts grinning like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, while Andi Matichak offers fiery flashes as the victim who desires nothing more of Haddonfield than to ‘burn it all to the ground.’
Jamie Lee Curtis, on the other hand, looks bone-tired of it all at this point, and little wonder; all originality has long since departed this franchise, leaving behind little but a disturbing fetishization of big shiny knives.
(cinema release)
