A director, having directed the Halloween reboot and its two sequels, doesn't want to make the same movie over and over again (and his trilogy is the 10th, 11th and 12th iteration of the original). I mean, if he can pull it off injecting something that isn't solely the fear of taking a large knife to the body or the experience of taking a large knife to the body, then I'm right behind him. But Halloween was never a broad canvas for profound emotional empathy and concern. We loved Laurie because she was resourceful against an inhuman foe but it's not a playground for thoughtful relationships. Green tries hard to inject a little romance (and an evil bromance) into the mix with, ahem, mixed results. The extraordinary 1978 original was, for a while, the most successful movie ever made if budget and profit were to be measured against each other. It made 215 times its budget back and that's not counting its VHS and disc sales. For Avatar (the 'most successful film ever made') to perform similarly, it would have to have made 50.9 billion dollars and it limped home just shy of 3 billion. But those numbers, as if you need to be told, mean sequel after sequel until the cashflow runs dry. Avatar's sequels start this December and I just cannot muster up too much enthusiasm at all for more Na'vi larks. David Gordon Green rebooted the Halloween franchise in 2018 kickstarting a new trilogy for modern audiences. Heaven forfend they would have to be exposed to a 40 year old movie that still has not been outshone in so many areas.

And when the evil, unkillable, superhuman bogeyman with no agenda except to stab people and traumatise an ex-babysitter are the mainstays of the movie, there's not a great deal of room for variety. The only character left to root for is Laurie Strode, still played by Jamie Leigh Curtis and knowing her to be a terrific and thoughtful actress, you have to wonder what the incentive was to star in 7 of the 12 sequels, offshoots and reboots. After all, psychopath Michael Myers is nothing without Laurie just as the murderous alien xenomorph never registers too much without Ellen Ripley as the protagonist. Maybe too many people made a living from the franchise and as long as a profit was made, everything just chugged along. And Jamie Leigh was an integral part of that. I hope she was handsomely rewarded.

In Halloween Ends, Corey Cunningham takes up his role as a babysitter in Haddonfield, an endangered species methinks. This fresh faced, butter wouldn't melt, straight as a dye character is taunted by his nasty little charge who tricks him into wandering into the loft where he's locked in. Being a responsible chap and also having had the Haddonfield babysitter murderer planted in his mind, he mildly panics but manages to smash the locked door outwards. He must have been relieved for all of a split second until the force of the door rams into the child he's supposed to be looking after and, head first, the boy flies off the third floor landing and, as his parents arrive home after their night out, dies on impact with the hallway. Corey becomes persona non grata. You think? He is subsequently bullied by kids too young to buy beer who ask a favour and after an altercation, he ends up under a bridge being dragged into the drains by an unseen figure. That figure recognises during Corey's routine strangulation (for Michael Myers, that is) a fellow evil soul and allows Corey to live and go on to play 'Michael'. The idea that evil might be infectious is frankly silly but in this open vein of slasher horror any new idea is like a spark from jumper cables to a moribund engine. What is not explained of course is how Michael survived the ravenous fire he was subjected to at the close of Halloween Kills. So knitting needles, bullets and fire won't do it. What might finally finish off this stabbing psychopath once and for ever? The film teases his fitting finale more than once throughout the film. I'm such an old hand at spotting set-ups for later pay-offs that I will say we weren't smashed over the head with the signposting, something I really did appreciate.

Laurie's granddaughter Allyson gets attached to Corey regardless of the poor boy's atrocious luck and despite the evil brewing inside him, she stays loyal. This leaves Michael Myers to concentrate on finishing off Laurie. Corey (convincingly played by Rohan Campbell) really does subtly change from an innocent young man dogged by the worst luck to accepting that this luck was probably pre-ordained so he could take a murderous path and not give a shit about anyone anymore and just hunt down his tormentors. The romance with Allyson (again, another affecting performance from Andi Matichak) is never strained but you fear it won't end well. Jamie Leigh is always captivating and ageing is something she does with grace and unapologetically. The nuanced and understated potential of her own romance with Officer Frank Hawkins (a welcoming and warm Will Patton) is a small optimistic pleasure in a naturally dark movie. And Laurie has lost none of her action-woman smarts. Yes, she's a little bit too indestructible, bouncing up after wounds and blows that would floor marines but by the time she and Michael face each other for the final time, you feel her physical prowess is earned.

The sound work is as effective as both previous instalments' being all the more scary the less sound on offer. There are two jump scares which are silly but fun and a few sound transitions that are masterful. John Carpenter's original and striking main theme resurfaces (he's credited with the score along with his son Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies). There's another next generational credit. The film is produced by Malek Akkad, presumably original Halloween producer Moustapha Akkad's son. Moustapha's faith in the original presumably made him a very rich man. As a Syrian-American Muslim, he funded and produced works that tried to re-educate his fellow Americans to see Muslims in a vastly different light. In a horrible irony, he and his daughter were killed in a series of Al Qaeda suicide bombings in Jordan in 2005, innocent bystanders in the lobby of one of a series of hotels targeted. His son Malek dedicates the latest trilogy to his father.

If you're a Halloween devotee, there's no point in me saying anything as you'll see it anyway. For those looking for an evening's diverting entertainment without cinematic baggage, it helps to have seen the first two but you'll get the gist soon enough. Well made, well performed with the requisite amount of gore and tension, Halloween Ends is a step up from the usual rip-me-off-quick reboot sequel but still can't travel too far from the DNA of the franchise despite the 'love story' B plot… But it has opened very strongly and will no doubt go on to make a healthy profit and you know what that means, don't you? One for the die-hard fans and those undemanding horror lovers.

* https://www.indiewire.com/2022/10/david-gordon-green-halloween-kills-leads-to-halloween-ends-1234771405/