Halloween Ends

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Halloween but I really disliked Halloween Kills so I didn't know what to expect when I went to see Halloween Ends, the final movie in the trilogy, last night.  It ended up being a mixed bag for me because the concept is very compelling but, in my opinion, the final resolution is anticlimactic.  It is once again Halloween in Haddonfield and a college student named Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) is babysitting a young boy named Jeremy (Jaxon Goldberg).  When Jeremy accidentally falls to his death, Corey is cleared of any wrongdoing but the town holds him responsible and he is often bullied and harassed.  Four years after his latest killing spree, Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney) seems to have disappeared while Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is trying to put her past behind her and live a normal life with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak).  Corey begins a relationship with Allyson and, while Laurie is initially sympathetic to Corey's plight as the town pariah, she comes to disapprove of the romance because she senses evil inside him.  After a particularly brutal confrontation with a group of students in which he is severely injured, Corey encounters Myers in the sewer where he has been living for the past four years.  Myers sees himself in Corey and eventually helps him kill everyone who has persecuted him which culminates in an attack on Laurie.  It is an interesting twist to sideline Michael for most of the runtime to focus on Corey and how he becomes a serial killer but it worked for me because I was very intrigued by what the filmmakers had to say about the nature of evil.  However, this narrative is basically abandoned in order to get to the expected confrontation between Michael and Laurie so there is no payoff (I wish the filmmakers had been fully committed to Corey's character arc and the idea that evil doesn't die but just changes shape).  Furthermore, I was so disappointed by the final showdown between these two iconic characters because Michael's death seems much too easy after all of Laurie's previous attempts to kill her nemesis (I think the saga should have concluded with Halloween because the scenes where Laurie stalks Michael through her house are incredibly suspenseful and terrifying).  I liked this more than the previous installment but the bar was set pretty low.