A year after the events of 2018’s (rather lackluster) Halloween Kills, mild-mannered Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) is asked to babysit a boy named Jeremy (Jaxon Goldenberg) on Halloween night. Usually employed by his parents, the Allens (played by Candice Rose and Jack William Marshall), to do yard work, Mr. Allen jokes that he hopes Corey’s a better babysitter than he is at yard maintenance. The joke turns out to be all too prescient as Jeremy starts to play a little game of hide and seek with Corey after warning him that Michael Meyers kills babysitters. Even “ugly-ass” ones like Corey. Panicked when he hears a series of doors opening and shutting after Jeremy goes missing from the living room, Corey follows the sound of Jeremy crying out for help into the attic. Once he’s lured there, Jeremy locks him in and starts taunting him about how, sooner or later, Michael is going to get him. As it turns out, Jeremy’s prediction will come true in ways he couldn’t have imagined. And will never be able to… for as Corey proceeds to kick the door repeatedly to open it, when it finally does, it causes Jeremy to fly over the staircase railing and plunge to his death just as the Allens arrive back home. Almost makes the sexist case for women being better caretakers, doesn’t it?
Although Corey had big plans to go to college, wanting to use some of that babysitting money toward the funds, three years later, we see he’s still stuck in Haddonfield, working at his father Ronald’s (Rick Moose) mechanic shop and living at home. Much to the schadenfreude-oriented delight of his mother, Joan (Joanne Baron). Having turned into something of a DC villain origin story (think: Joker) at this juncture, we can see that the main focus of Halloween Ends will be on Corey’s “transformation”—from innocent youth to jaded adult to full-tilt evil entity. For many, that’s the main beef with this particular “final” installment (at least, as far as this trilogy is concerned). That it doesn’t focus “enough” on Michael Meyers. And yet, the entire purpose of Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green’s script is to emphasize that Meyers remains omnipresent. Not just in the sense that he’s a boogeyman feared whether he’s truly around or not, but in the sense that evil never dies—it just transfers and reanimates (e.g., Stalin to Putin).
This is something Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, especially “on her game” throughout)—in all her wisdom about coming face to face with evil—can sense and recognize in Corey. But before she realizes this fact, it’s already too late. She’s quite literally dragged him into the doctor’s office where her granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), works as a nurse. Now living together, Allyson and Laurie have grown even closer after the death of Karen (Judy Greer) a.k.a. Allyson’s mother and Laurie’s daughter. Having sacrificed herself to Michael to spare Allyson in Halloween Kills, it’s a guilt she lives with every day. Much like the guilt Corey lives with, albeit of an entirely different variety. From the second they see one another in the office, it’s a guilt and sadness that connects them right away. And from that moment on, their relationship becomes the stuff of Lana Del Rey songs.
At first, Laurie, who rescued him from the bullying torment of local high schoolers Terry (Michael Barbieri), Stacy (Destiny Mone), Billy (Marteen) and Margo (Joey Harris), is glad to see Allyson opening up to someone. That is, until she catches sight of Corey standing next to the bushes ominously outside her house the exact same way Michael did all those decades ago. In that instant, she understands that something evil has been born inside of Corey.
But by that time, it’s already too late, for Corey has come to apologize to Allyson about the night before, when he completely went off on her for bringing him to a public space (namely, Lindsey Wallace’s [Kyle Richards] bar) for a Halloween party. Because the second he took off his scarecrow mask (you’re seeing where that little detail is going, right?) to go order more drinks, he runs into Mrs. Allen, who berates him for daring to have a good time. To display joy of any kind while she suffers every day over her loss. It’s this reminder that sends Corey into what will become a permanently dark place… one, it can be argued, that was likely always there behind the “sweet disposition.”
Perhaps that’s why there’s a seemingly innocuous moment at the beginning of the movie when Corey grapples with the urge to pull a beer out of the refrigerator after Jeremy verbally abuses him or, instead, opt for the chocolate milk. At that point, when he’s still pure, he ends up choosing the chocolate milk—a very symbol of wholesomeness. Later on in the movie, at the convenience store, he buys some in a glass bottle that eventually shatters as he squeezes it in his hand, buckling under the rage of being bullied by the aforementioned quartet of high schoolers. Tired of his pariah status—seen by the entire town as a monster—it’s as though he decides to just fully embrace being one, since nobody will ever look past the myth of him being a kid killer anyway.
It’s a sudden “fuck it” attitude that an encounter with Michael Meyers in a sewer beneath a Haddonfield bridge solidifies that night after leaving Allyson at the Halloween party. Meyers, who ordinarily kills anyone that he manages to entrap in that lair, lets Corey go, for “whatever reason.” But, of course, the reason is clear: evil recognizes evil. And it’s obvious he’s found a conduit to transfer his own to, perhaps finally sensing the frailty of his old age and wanting to ensure there’s a “successor.” Except that little theory is negated when Michael shows up to one of Corey’s killings (by now, he’s embraced wearing the scarecrow mask to do so) and seems to be competing with him in the kill—this being the least credible aspect of the storyline and its “universe.” Though some disgruntled viewers would say the entire story is a load of hooey. Not so. For the message behind Halloween Ends is a timelessly resonant one, especially as we watch the frequent swapping of world leaders that result in no change, just a different mask (see: British prime ministers). Fittingly enough, Halloween III: Season of the Witch was also among the least well-received in the Halloween series for its lack of Michael Meyers appearances (which, again, Halloween Ends has plenty of).
In lieu of that, writer-director Tommy Lee Wallace put the focus on the idea of masks themselves, how people act when wearing them—and this time involving the ritual sacrifice of children. The special effects artist for the movie, Don Post, appropriately commented, “Every society in every time has had its masks that suited the mood of the society, from the masked ball to clowns to makeup. People want to act out a feeling inside themselves—angry, sad, happy, old. It may be a sad commentary on present-day America that horror masks are the best sellers.” And, undoubtedly, both Michael Meyers and Corey Cunningham (notice the alliteration in each name) are just another product of that commentary. The opening credits to Halloween Ends featuring a series of pumpkins with ever-changing faces of malevolence only further speaks to that motif: evil merely shifts from one husk to another, like an infection.
