David Gordon Green’s “Halloween” series has officially come to an end –– if you can believe such a thing. The invincible serial killer Michael Myers has been terrifying audiences since John Carpenter’s “Halloween” (1978) when we first met The Shape alongside Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. The never-ending slasher films have finally solidified Michael’s death by grinding him up in a car-crusher

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Michael began as a small-town killer and transformed into A Force Larger Than Himself. But in “Halloween Ends” (2022), Michael is barely in the movie –– he’s more of a lingering totem of evil. Although it isn’t the scariest of the series, it’s one of the more entertaining films.

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“Halloween Ends” opens in Haddonfield on Halloween night in 2019. Corey Cunningham, played by Rohan Campbell, is the film’s lead character. He’s hired as a babysitter for a little boy and when the child runs away and hides, Corey searches the house for him and puts the audience on the edge of their seats thinking Michael will pop out at any moment. 

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Instead, the child locks Corey in the attic. When he finally busts the door open, Cunningham knocks the child over the balcony of the staircase –– right when the parents come home of course –– and he plummets to his death. Corey ends up being acquitted of manslaughter, but he is now known in Haddonfield as the “psycho babysitter” who killed a child. 

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Campbell plays Corey in an attractive and sympathetic way. He comes in contact with Laurie’s granddaughter who lives with her –– Allyson, played by Andi Matichak –– and they instantly hit it off. Local bullies end up dragging Corey into a sewer pipe where, unfortunately, Michael Myers, played by James Jude Courtney, has been hiding out with the rats. But surprisingly Corey doesn’t end up as another one of his victims.

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Instead, Michael and Corey exchange a long meaningful stare, and the audience is meant to believe that Corey absorbed the spirit of Michael Myers at that moment. Michael doesn’t want to kill him, he wants a disciple … a partner.

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Green has directed all three films of this most recent series, known as the H40 trilogy. His 2018 “Halloween” was a nostalgic flashback to the original because the storyline was as important. But “Halloween Kills” was overkill. Green was trying too hard with the action and kill shots and ended up making the storyline very surface-level and thematic –– forgetting to scare the audience. In “Halloween Ends,” Corey adds a little spice. Although he isn’t as threatening as Michael, a partner is something the 13 films haven’t done yet which made it interesting. 

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Laurie and Michael obviously fight to the death in a kitchen-utensil brawl. But because the franchise has cheated death so many times since the end of the 1978 original, they gave audiences a satisfying feeling that it’s impossible for Michael to ever come back again –– well, at least for this series. 

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“Halloween Ends”... but the very essence of the “Halloween” series is that it never does. That’s how truly powerful Michael Myers is. It doesn't matter how many times you kill him –– he will return.

OOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo (ghostly noises)

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The official trailer