SPOILER WARNING! Go no further if you don’t wish to know about the ending of Halloween Ends.
When it comes to trilogies, the endings of endings are always fascinating. How will the capstone film not only conclude its own individual story, but the story that has been unfolding over the previous two chapters? It’s a challenge for filmmakers that always earns complex and divisive results, and the latest title to go under that particular microscope is David Gordon Green’s Halloween Ends.
The movie has promised closure to the end of the war between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, but how does Halloween Ends end, and what does it tell us about the nature of the evil serial killer? And is this really the last Halloween film? We’ve put together this feature to address those questions and more, and we’ll start with a quick recap:
One last spoiler warning, if you have yet to see Halloween Ends, it's now playing in theaters and streaming on Peacock.
What Happens At The End Of Halloween Ends
Halloween Ends ramps up to its big conclusion as Corey (Rohan Campbell), wearing Michael Myers’ mask, breaks into Laurie Strode’s home. Jamie Lee Curtis’ legendary final girl pretends to go through the motions of committing suicide – including making a call to the police and firing her gun – but it’s just a ruse to trick Haddonfield’s newest homicidal maniac. As Laurie and Corey fight, shots are fired and the latter flies through the second floor bannister, but their tussle continues in the house’s foyer.
Corey is fatally wounded, but he laughs as he sees Allyson (Andi Matichak) pulling up in her car. The former babysitter tells Laurie, “If I can’t have her…” and proceeds to stab himself in the neck with a knife. As Corey hoped, Allyson comes in at the exact wrong moment and she assumes that Laurie has killed him to stop him from taking her away from Haddonfield. She screams and runs back to her car as rain starts to pour.
As Allyson drives away, Michael Myers enters Laurie’s house and retrieves his mask and takes Corey’s knife. When a still-alive Corey grabs his wrist, Michael grabs his head and snaps his neck. Laurie, meanwhile, sneaks around and hides from her boogeyman.
When Allyson gets to the radio station and sees it burning, she gets a call from Officer Frank Hawkins (Will Patton) about Laurie’s suicide call. Back at the house, the bold grandmother and Michael Myers begin their final battle in the kitchen. They exchange blows, Laurie gets thrown around, and there is violence with a garbage disposal and a knitting needle – but eventually the heroine gets the upper hand. She stabs him in the chest and in the hand, she pins him to the counter with a knife, and she uses a cast iron plan like a hammer to drive the blade in deep. Not satisfied, she topples her fridge to trap his legs.
Laurie recounts all of the horror that Michael has brought to her life as she stabs him in the armpit, slices his arm, and cuts his neck – all wounds made with the intention of getting him to bleed out. When Frank arrives and sees Laurie with the “dead” Michael, she declares him not dead “enough.” The body is brought outside to where Sheriff Barker (Omar J. Dorsey) approves the proceedings, and it is strapped to the hood of a car that leads a parade to the local junkyard. The industrial-sized scrap metal shredder is turned on, and Michael Myers is turned into hamburger meat while Haddonfield residents watch on.
In the aftermath, Allyson does decide to leave Haddonfield, and Laurie finishes her memoirs. The doorbell rings and it’s Frank dropping off some vegetables, and Laurie brings back their earlier conversation about cherry blossoms while they sit together on the porch. Inside the house everything is still and peaceful, and then the title card pops on screen.
What Happened To Corey?
Haddonfield, Illinois becomes a dark, dark place in the aftermath of Michael Myers’ savagery on the night of Halloween 2018. With the killer never caught and memories of the terror he instilled still fresh, the community is disturbed and the presence of evil is persistent in the town’s atmosphere. The horribleness has an effect on everybody, but Corey Cunningham basically gets a concentrated dose of it from the source.
Corey is traumatized and scarred following the horrible incident on Halloween night 2019 when an accident resulted in the death of the child he was babysitting, and in 2022 he is balanced on a knife’s edge emotionally. He has people who care about him and connect with him, but there are others, like the high school bullies, who torment him. Like Laurie and Allyson, Corey doesn’t wanted to be defined by his terrible past, and he’s trying to move on… but then he ends up getting taken over by the darkness when he is ostensibly infected by the evil of Michael Myers when he gets dragged into the serial killer’s sewer lair.
All three Halloween movies in the David Gordon Green trilogy are about the lasting impacts of trauma, and while the journey ends up seeing Laurie Strode finally become free of her demons, Corey is the example of what could have happened had Laurie taken a different path in dealing with her past than the one depicted in Halloween, Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends – and obviously it’s a whole lot darker. For all practical purposes he becomes the new Michael Myers, though in the end he’s not quite as powerful as the original.
Will This Really Be The End Of The Battle Between Laurie Strode And Michael Myers?
If you’re a person who reacts to the title of Halloween Ends with cynicism, that’s wholly justified. Between Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, Omen III: The Final Conflict, The Final Destination, and more, there are a whole lot of horror sequels that have promised firm conclusions and then been followed by subsequent stories. It’s reasonable to believe that this will not be the last time that movie-goers get to see Michael Myers up on the big screen… but this new film certainly is the finale of the franchise’s current era, and it’s believable that this will be the last time that we see the killer do battle with Laurie Strode.
Given the depicted death and destruction of Michael Myers in Halloween Ends, not to mention the closure earned by Laurie and Allyson, it’s made very clear that this is the firm conclusion of this particular timeline in the Halloween canon. Unlike its immediate predecessors, it doesn’t leave unanswered questions or leave us with a big cliffhanger. It closes the arc, and while Jamie Lee Curtis isn’t willing to say that she’ll “never” play Laurie again, it’s hard to see where her story would go next after this chapter.
Even if we don’t see another sequel in this canon, however, that doesn’t mean we’ll never see another Halloween movie again. If Hollywood thinks that there is money to be made with the brand, then Michael Myers will be back. Will that mean another remake a la the Rob Zombie approach? Will it mean catching up with Danielle Harris’ Jamie Lloyd from Halloween 4 and Halloween 5? Or will we see a whole new approach taken with the beloved slasher villain? Time will tell.
Earning expected mixed reviews from critics, Halloween Ends is now playing in theaters and is available to stream with a Peacock subscription. You can learn about all of the films set to come out in what remains of the year with our 2022 Movie Release Calendar, and keep track of all of the scary movies on the way via our Upcoming Horror Movies guide.
