I usually review movies I like at First Draft. I didn’t care for Halloween Ends. It was so ridiculously OTT that laughter was my response, not terror. Instead of jump scares, it had jump laughs. I know that’s not what the producers had in mind but what can I tell ya? I’m glad I watched it on Peacock; some Halloween stans might have made like Michael Myers and knifed me in a theatre.

I knew we were in trouble when I saw that there were four writers credited. My lifetime experience as a film buff tells me that four writers = a muddled script. It typically means that there were more uncredited writers, and these were the ones who were willing to take the fall for this fakakta film.

I had a brief flicker of optimism when I saw that Blumhouse was involved in this flick. They make suspenseful relatively un-gory low budget horror movies such as the Insidious franchise, The Black Phone, A House on the Bayou, and The Manor. Halloween Ends was a big budget stinker.

I’d describe the plot but very little of it made sense. I suspect that if I were steeped in franchise lore some of the goofier moments would have been plausible. I’m not sure why there was a Black owned radio station in a town in which we saw only two Black people. I did, however, dig when the DJs tongue was cut off and put on a spinning record. It should, however, have been a Rolling Stones song such as this obscure one:

I should have said deservedly obscure. Not one of the band’s finer moments. For all I know it inspired this Keef hit piece on Mick:

That was quite a detour from the bad movie under review, but digression is my jam.

Back to Halloween Ends. Somewhere in the middle of this muddled mess, I proclaimed, “Roger Ebert lives.”

This movie has what Roger called an idiot plot. I still don’t understand why the seemingly gentle Corey was somehow inhabited by Michael Myers. It doesn’t matter: they were interested in making cents, not sense. All that mattered was the blood splatter.

As to the acting, there was some. I always enjoy seeing Jamie Lee Curtis who has gone from resembling her mother, Jeanette Helen Morrison DBA Janet Leigh, as a young woman to looking like Bernie Schwartz DBA Tony Curtis today. That’s called a win-win gene pool situation.

I was disappointed that OG Beverly Hills Housewife Kyle Richards had such a small part. Actually, the horror show that was the RHOBH reunion was scarier and more interesting than Halloween Ends. The final act featured Kyle’s sibling rivalry with her older sister Kathy Hilton who is much scarier than Michael Myers and twice as manipulative.

If there are any spoilers in this post, I’m pleading the Rhett Butler defense:

How can you spoil something that was rancid to begin with? They should have combined the title with an earlier and better horror movie, Burnt Offerings. Hollywood Burnt Ends would make sense as a title for this burnt-out movie franchise.

I’m going to be charitable in grading Halloween Ends because it was unintentionally funny and a decent hate watch. I give it two stars and an Adrastos grade of C-.

The last word goes to Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross: