“Halloween Ends”You can find it here. And whether you think it’s ultimately satisfying, it does provide a conclusive finale for the trilogy that started in 2018 with David Gordon Green’s “Halloween” and continued with the blood-soaked sequel, 2021’s “Halloween Kills.” Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode, a part she first played in John Carpenter’s groundbreaking 1978 original, has her final confrontation with Michael Myers, the unstoppable serial killer who has haunted her for all of these years.
Did good vanquish evil? Or did evil triumph? And what if the ending you saw in theaters or on Peacock wasn’t the ending that was originally intended?
Talked to David Gordon Green, co-writer and director, about possible alternate endings. “Halloween Ends.”
MAJOR spoiler warning “Halloween Ends.” If you haven’t seen it yet, grab your butcher knife and head back now!
During our conversation about “Halloween Ends,”I brought up the premier of “Halloween Kills,”The same thing happened at Beyond Fest in the previous year. He mentioned in the introduction that he had just rewritten the ending of the film. Green couldn’t remember what he was specifically referring to but said that “there are two radical reinventions of the ending.”
How “Ends”It’s Over
The very end of “Halloween Ends,”Michael Myers and Corey, her emotionally disturbed boyfriend (Andi Matichak) put Laurie Strode under pressure. Corey attacks Laurie at her new house, but he kills himself before Laurie can recover. Allyson returns home exactly at that time, believing her mother murdered her boyfriend. Michael strikes again and Laurie subdues, eventually subduing him. Allyson and Allyson tie him to their car’s roof and drive to the junkyard, where much of the action takes place and some of the most brutal kills. The body of the victim is seen by the townspeople, who follow him around the neighborhood night after night. They want revenge as much as healing. Laurie and Allyson dump him in the grinder at the junk yard. His body has been turned into jelly. Evil has now died (tonight).
Laurie dies in The Version
The first alternative ending is the best. Laurie Strode was not going to kill Michael Myers or lift the curse from Haddonfield Illinois. “There was a version where Laurie didn’t make it,”Green stated it clearly. Green will go into more detail, but it’s worth considering what a bummer this would have been. She’s been stalked (literally, psychologically and spiritually) for more than four decades, epitomized the Final Girl and then ended up as another dead body during a Halloween night warpath? Tragic!
The Version where Corey Lives
Then there’s an ending that imagined a different fate for Corey, Allyson’s morally compromised boyfriend. He ends up being just as vicious as Michael until a very bad confrontation with Laurie. “And there’s a version where Corey did make it,”Green said. While Green was watching, “Halloween Ends,” you could see how that could work out – he establishes them as a kind of doomed romantic duo. He and Allyson might have taken to the road. “Natural Born Killers”-style. Thankfully, he doesn’t get away so easy.
How they got there
If you’re wondering how Green and his collaborators (including fellow co-writers Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier and Danny McBride) arrived at these vastly different outcomes, it seemed to come as a natural part of Green’s creative process.
“As we started our path, we did a pass of just Laurie, me and the writers were sitting down, and then when we got to the moment where Laurie puts a gun in her mouth, we had a big decision to make,” Green explained. “And so then we decided to get playful and see what we could do to surprise each other, and that’s where it becomes Choose Your Own Adventure. What happens if you open this door, and does it unravel this in a good way? What happens if you open that door, does it unravel it in a bad way? And in trying to retain the anticipation and the intimacy of that final confrontation brawl that Laurie and Michael are going to have when they face off finally became the beacon of catharsis for us, and what we were really working towards was to make that as satisfying as possible.”
As for Corey’s possible still-very-much-alive future, there was an alternate version that could have returned the character to a more “normal”After his murderous spree on Halloween night, state. “There’s that version where he could have, yeah, that would’ve been his arc. He dabbled in it, he stuck his toe in the water and he stepped back,”Green stated.
There’s also the option of Corey taking on the legacy of Michael Myers more directly, something that Green also took into consideration. “If you’re going to continue the franchise in some form beyond me, then you take him and he dons the mask and it’s Shape 2.0 or whatever the variation might be,”Green stated. “But I kind of felt like the more specific my vision for this film got, the more possessive of Corey I got. Once I met Rohan, I fell in love with what we could do with that character, and then I wanted to make sure we didn’t leave it so open-ended.”
It’s there! That’s how we wound up with the “Halloween Ends”We have to see what lies ahead of us, and where it could have led.
“Halloween Ends”You can see it in theaters or on Peacock at the moment.
