/horror/ general megathread - Let's talk about movies and shit.

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Ita Mori said:
Laurie went on a moral tirade at the end of Kills about how evil cannot be physically defeated in Kills and how Michael is the greatest threat to her life so long as he breathes and yet she's baking pies and trying to get her granddaughter laid with incels.
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Probably the most egregious thing Halloween Ends did was totally cuck Laurie Strode.
mensch said:
The problem is that several characters in the movie contradict the idea of evil already being in Corey prior to his meeting with Myers. It's only after meeting Myers that Laurie Strode suddenly does a 180 from thinking Corey's misunderstood boyfriend material to "I see Michael in his eyes". It's a very abrupt shift. A lot of the people who are close to Corey think he is a good boy who dindu nuffin, and indeed the way the character is portrayed before he meets Myers paints a very sympathetic picture to the audience. He is unfairly treated by the town, which causes some understandable resentment, but he is not an evil character by any stretch. He just wants to be left alone. Even the child who died's father gives a monologue in the bar which alludes to the evil in Corey's eyes being a very recent development ie. after his encounter with Myers ("yesterday on my way to work there he is" ... "it's not him").
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I feel like you're almost seeing my point but just missing it.

Yes, everybody who knows Corey sees him as a misunderstood but good kid, because that's what he is. He isn't beaming darkness from his eyes like a drive-in theater. But Michael Myers saw the darkness in Corey's eyes up close in a moment where all he's ever used to seeing is pure fear. Remember he saw this in Corey's eyes at what should've been his final moments alive.

Also the "abrupt shift" that Laurie and the dead kid's father notices in Corey after he meets Michael Myers has just as much to do with the fact that he had just killed a hobo. After this incident he is permanently changed and several people notice it.
mensch said:
Corey's encounter with Myers annoys me for many reasons, because all roads lead to it being supernatural in nature. My original interpretation was of Myers imparting part of his murderous consciousness into Corey. I viewed it almost like planting a seed in Corey's mind, preying on his existing resentments, which would gradually blossom to become a full-blooded killer like Myers. It wouldn't necessarily need to be an immediate, outright mind control. Possession, hypnotism, call it what you will - any scenario of Myers being so mentally influential as to turn someone into his minion, which I assumed happened on my viewing, would imply a supernatural element.

I suppose Myers could just be a 4D chess grandmaster at troubled incel manipulation, but even that would imply Myers had some telepathic powers. If Corey becomes a killer of his own volition because Myers lets him go, that only happened because Myers was somehow able to see all of Corey's past when staring into his eyes. The flashes of images on the screen of Corey's troubled life do convey to the audience that Myers is perhaps 'reading' Corey. If that's how it really was intended by the filmmakers, it would still imply a supernatural element to me.
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Of course all of these events can be interpretted as supernatural, but I would argue that is shoehorning too much logic into a film that is very obviously much more concerned with subtext. Is the director trying to say that Michael Myers literally has special powers, or is he making a statement about how otherizing vulnerable individuals or never forgiving people for their mistakes is bad?

The reason I framed it as a sort of manipulation is because a) Myers is weakened and needed someone to lure victims to him (it seemed like this was the function the hobo served until Corey came along), b) Myers saw some of his own darkness in Corey and knew he had the potential to do evil and c) he knows the whole town treat him as the bogeyman and letting Corey live would make a positive impression on him (because Corey himself knows what Myers has done).

The ultimate point, which I think is more or less supported by every official synopsis I've read, is that Myers sees something of himself in Corey's eyes.
mensch said:
Either way, as you say the result is the same: Corey kills the hobo (in self-defense) and then starts luring people to Myers. In my 'hypnotism' interpretation, Myers was using Corey to lure people to him so that he could kill them and regain his waning power. As Kills established, his power grows with each kill. When the hobo demands to know why Myers let Corey go, that is why. In your interpretation of Corey's self-actualization as his own serial killer, him luring people back to Myers does also make sense because Corey wants to learn how to kill from Myers. The film accommodates both interpretations.
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I agree and I'm not sure if this multiple interpretations element was intentional or just a byproduct of such a shoddy script. However I will say, the fact that Corey is initially so shit at killing people kinda clashes with any idea of possession. If Myers possesses your body, you're just automatically good at murdering lmao. Corey couldn't even get through a glass sliding door as his next victim was calling the cops on him. Fail.
mensch said:
I just think that the explanation of Myers seeing a relatable evil in Corey and letting him go for that reason is quite flimsy. If Myers was capable of seeing into Corey's soul like that, well then he shouldn't really see evil in Corey at all, since a) we know the child's death was an accident and b) Corey's resentment towards the townsfolk is pretty justified because of his mistreatment. I suppose it's trying to riff on the idea Laurie presents later in the movie about how everyone has the potential for evil within them (perhaps the filmmakers were trying to make some ham-fisted point about how "aNyOnE cAn BeCoMe A kIlLeR!")... but then why is Corey necessarily the exemplar of that, and why doesn't Michael let more people go?
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This might be the weakest part of your argument. For one, it presupposes the idea that evil is only ever born, which at the very least wherever you land on that question you have to admit that's the core point of the film. That evil infects people.

It infected the townsfolk in Halloween Kills, it infected the kid Corey was babysitting (in the sense that Michael's spectre turned a harmless prank into a death), it infected the townsfolk yet again now that they had another killer around (Corey) that they could mistreat, and the reason Corey is the exemplar of that is to serve the subtext about loneliness, bullying and isolation leaving someone vulnerable to acting evil. It's retarded and preachy but it's ultimately the director's point. Or at least in my (autistic af) opinion it is.

Michael not letting more people go is easy; none of his victims were being so mistreated like Corey was. For all we know he's a functioning sociopath and that's what Michael saw in his eyes. After all we got so many seemingly unnecessary scenes with his overbearing weirdo mother, which is prime 'future serial killer' signs.

So much of what's wrong with Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends can be narrowed down to the film itself playing second fiddle to the director's lame socio-political subtext tbh. First one ruled though.

Edit: Also holy shit I don't expect you to respond to all of that. My bad!
 
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Doctor of Autism said:
I will say when thinking on about it. Ends at least is passable quality in terms of being a movie, only because it's really hard to be lower than the bar set by 5 and 6, and on the same quality with the Zombie movies. Resurrection is only slightly better because it was at least funny bad.

But this franchise had so many duds.

It probably won't be my last time discussing this shit movie, but I will watch better horror movies to cleanse the taste out.
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IMO 1 and 2 are the only good movies in the franchise. Some of the others can be entertaining, but as far as being genuinely good, almost all of them suck, remakes included.
 
Cistern Rumbler, Kiwifarms is censoring my Halloween opinions and I can't reply directly for some reason, so here goes:

I feel like you're almost seeing my point but just missing it.

Yes, everybody who knows Corey sees him as a misunderstood but good kid, because that's what he is. He isn't beaming darkness from his eyes like a drive-in theater. But Michael Myers saw the darkness in Corey's eyes up close in a moment where all he's ever used to seeing is pure fear. Remember he saw this in Corey's eyes at what should've been his final moments alive.

Also the "abrupt shift" that Laurie and the dead kid's father notices in Corey after he meets Michael Myers has just as much to do with the fact that he had just killed a hobo. After this incident he is permanently changed and several people notice it.
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I hadn't considered that it was more the hobo killing that changed him and not just Myers letting him live (I agree now it's the combination of the two events). My problem with that though - and I fully admit this is me projecting my own values onto the film - is that the hobo killing was just self-defense. It's a lot like him accidentally killing the child, in that it wasn't Corey being intentionally malicious. I guess what the film tries to show afterward is Corey coming to terms with being ok with killing and then wanting to transfer that murderous energy - justly in his mind - to the townsfolk who mistreated him.

I think the film needed to sell that idea way better though, having more of a graduation from the hobo kill to becoming full blown Myers apprentice. That seemed a bit too unnatural to me if Corey did that of his own volition, which made me think he was being controlled when I watched it. The way the film presents it seemed like "his latent evil just dun-diddly woke up" after the hobo kill, and now he's luring people like that off-duty cop back to Myers' lair. If the filmmakers maybe shifted one of the bully revenge killings earlier up in the movie, that could have acted as an additional, more believable bit of catharsis for Corey to further embrace being a serial killer - and then start helping Myers the way he does.

Perhaps they also could've shown Corey visiting Myers again before he lured that cop there. I just think it's not believable that, in only his second ever encounter with Myers, Corey is acting like the lair is his house too and they are tag teaming this dude like it's no big deal. I viewed Myers as more like an animal that would need some habituation first, since he was this 'force of nature' that the films told us he is.

Of course all of these events can be interpretted as supernatural, but I would argue that is shoehorning too much logic into a film that is very obviously much more concerned with subtext. Is the director trying to say that Michael Myers literally has special powers, or is he making a statement about how otherizing vulnerable individuals or never forgiving people for their mistakes is bad?
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It is the latter, but I think my problem with both Kills and Ends is that the director is of course trying to make a statement, but is doing it so poorly that he also needs to use seemingly fantastical leaps to sell his ideas. For example:

Ita Mori said:
Laurie went on a moral tirade at the end of Kills about how evil cannot be physically defeated in Kills and how Michael is the greatest threat to her life so long as he breathes and yet she's baking pies and trying to get her granddaughter laid with incels.
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Kills says at one point that the fear of Michael is the true curse ie. the director tries to say that there is lasting trauma that lives on beyond a mass killing. It's meant to be like a wow so profound philosophical thing. But then moments later the movie has Michael surviving dozens of mortal wounds and goes "btw we meant that literally, he's truly invincible because he's just so evil". As if just the memory of what he did wasn't enough to terrorize the town, he actually has to still literally be out there.

I also realize as i'm typing this that the whole idea of Ends being styled as, well, the 'end', kind of flies in the face of these sequels' previously established idea of lasting trauma. All it took was a medieval style procession and seeing Michael's corpse ground up for the town to apparently find closure. And that was in spite of the whole movie preceding it laying the groundwork that other boogeyman can easily be manufactured with the wrong conditions. Gah.

This might be the weakest part of your argument. For one, it presupposes the idea that evil is only ever born, which at the very least wherever you land on that question you have to admit that's the core point of the film. That evil infects people.
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Whether it's born or not is up for debate IRL - i'm not personally smart enough to be equipped to answer which it is. As I say, the idea that we already have some evil inside us was already put forward in Laurie's monologue about the two kinds of evil. Laurie stops short of saying we are explicitly born with it, but does say people can be infected and not know it. I guess it raises the question of whether the film believes that evil can be an innate quality, or whether it needs to be spread to someone first, in some way or another. The problem is that Dr Loomis in the '78 film, which these new films do canonically follow, did make a pretty strong case for Myers being born just plain evil. Taken as a whole, I guess the series could be trying to say evil can be both something you are born with or infected by - but then it's so fucking muddled and contradictory in its messaging that I don't think even it knows what it wants to say any more.
 
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BrunoMattei said:
It looks like a movie. It sounds like a movie. That's not saying much. Anything more competently made than Things (1989) is not a bragging right.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=a0PEgUgM9f0
Worst Halloween movie. Without question. If they truly wanted to be "bold and experimental" then do another Halloween 3. Or, if Myers absolutely positively have to be in the movie then work up some bullshit that Myers is a part of another evil thing that wants to take over. Fuck it. Any fan fiction sequel would be better. And even though the idea behind Ends is very fan fiction-y (because it's eerily like my idea for a Friday the 13th movie) I guarantee you that such fan fiction would not belittle Myers to some weakened shriveled and pathetic killer. He would still be Myers. He would still be the unstoppable thing.
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This movie is like "hold my beer":
 
Rip Ted white 1926-2022

Jason vorhees in part 4 and stunt double for Clarke gable, Richard Boone and John Wayne
 
The ultimate point, which I think is more or less supported by every official synopsis I've read, is that Myers sees something of himself in Corey's eyes.
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The score that plays during the choking scene leaves all subtlety at the door.


I also realize as i'm typing this that the whole idea of Ends being styled as, well, the 'end', kind of flies in the face of these sequels' previously established idea of lasting trauma.
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Again reinforcing that the trilogy was meant to be and should have stayed as Halloween night 2018. It justifies Laurie's initial paranoia, the movie titles, the town's knee jerk reactions, and keep the story condensed enough that frivolous pseudo-intellectual topics are kept at bay. No need to establish lasting trauma; it's all about what happens on one night and that's it.

Incidentally Halloween Ends' original title was Halloween Dies. Much cooler sounding IMO and better fits the intended trilogy.
 
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Ita Mori said:
The score that plays during the choking scene leaves all subtlety at the door.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=shQae9cHD1o:65

Again reinforcing that the trilogy was meant to be and should have stayed as Halloween night 2018. It justifies Laurie's initial paranoia, the movie titles, the town's knee jerk reactions, and keep the story condensed enough that frivolous pseudo-intellectual topics are kept at bay. No need to establish lasting trauma; it's all about what happens on one night and that's it.

Incidentally Halloween Ends' original title was Halloween Dies. Much cooler sounding IMO and better fits the intended trilogy.
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That song sounds like it should be used for a Usual Suspects style twist where Michael Myres turned out to be Jaime Lee Curtis' tranny son.
 
The blumhouse Halloween trilogy would have been a lot better if they could have just kept Michael's power level consistent throughout. (And obv without all the preachy bullshit in Kills). Ends was fine on its own it's just nearly incompatible with Kills.
 
Orkeosaurus said:
The blumhouse Halloween trilogy would have been a lot better if they could have just kept Michael's power level consistent throughout. (And obv without all the preachy bullshit in Kills). Ends was fine on its own it's just nearly incompatible with Kills.
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That's just one of the problems I think.
 
I've only watched 2018 and Ends out of this trilogy and honestly, I'm in the camp of people who love Ends.

If you think about it, this movie is a remake/mash-up of Christine and elements from F13 Part V and a bunch of other impostor/apprentice slashers. You just have to replace the car with Michael, while Corey is a Roy Burns/the guy from Christine type of character.

I agree that it doesn't fit as an ending to an already messy trilogy, as the director originally wanted to make two movies, but the studio demanded three. I found Halloween 2018 to be enjoyable, as I watched it in theaters with friends and we were nerding out the whole time, as we loved the callbacks and kills.

I skipped Kills completely and only watched a few reviews and the infamous Mortal Kombat Michael scene, as well as kills compilations.

While watching Ends, I found myself enjoying Corey a lot as an incel protagonist, he literally has a Chris Chan like mother who coddles him, yells at him for living his life, fucking kisses him after a slap while the fat step-dad (Mexican Robertchu) does nothing except hope that his step-son finds love.

I really liked sick and old Michael, it felt realistic to me that the story would take a U turn and nerf him so much. It's all due to the damage he sustained throughout the two previous films.
A lot of people demand a supernatural angle to be explicitly explained in this finale, as it was hinted at a lot in Kills. Well, we've already had the Thorn Cult and honestly, I liked this story's demistification of Michael Myers. It humanized him, with him being a frail old murderhobo hiding in a sewer, literally cooming after stabbing the cop Corey lured to him and also closing his hand while Laurie was holding it after their final fight, which I interpret as MM being an absolute braindead fucking retard who was unable to receive the feeling of love unless he stabbed people. It was all a game to him, as he had a childish mind. He just loved to play with Laurie. This movie did more for exploring MM's motivation than Rob Zombie's films and their MM backstory ever could, with way less.

I look at this movie as a standalone and I enjoyed it a lot more for that. Call me a fanboy but once I saw the 80s blue font used in Season of the Witch, I knew this wasn't going to be a conventional Halloween film. I also knew it was going to be about Corey before watching.

I do agree with some criticism, like the shoddy dialogue at places, characters (mostly Corey) changing their personality on a whim to serve the plot, an underdeveloped message about the infection of evil and so on and so forth. Some scenes were left vague on purpose (the Michael and Corey staredown) and might feel pretentious to some people. I'm not saying the movie and it's message is smart in any way, however all I need is a cool bar scene, bike ride, neon and some coldsynth to at least get a whiff of the fact that they were going for an arthouse Halloween for once.

I wouldn't go as far as Brianna Who to say that this is a Halloween movie for the sophisticated gentletroon, but it was a fun and daring film that spiced things up for the finale of a trilogy that was never planned and was also changed even more due to Covid. It turned out better than the new Star Wars trilogy at least.

As my closing words, I find people who complain that the final showdown between MM and Laurie was meh to be completely in the wrong. Sure, 2018 did it better. Hell, maybe even H20. However, when I was watching the movie, I expected nothing but a nerfed cripple fight, as both characters are in their fucking 60s. I didn't need Laurie shooting a rocket launcher at Michael and he just shrugs it off because muh supernatural niece rape cult. What I got was Halloween: Corey in the House.
 
Why does everyone insist Corey is an incel when the movie literally shows he got, voluntarily, laid?
 
White Devil said:
Why does everyone insist Corey is an incel when the movie literally shows he got, voluntarily, laid?
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Doctor of Autism said:
Because he’s an autistic sperg that literally gets bullied by the Highschool marching band, cries about how his sweetheart is only meant for him, and generally is pathetic overall.
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It's also funnier to call him an incel.
 
Corporal Lewis said:
A lot of people demand a supernatural angle to be explicitly explained in this finale, as it was hinted at a lot in Kills. Well, we've already had the Thorn Cult and honestly, I liked this story's demistification of Michael Myers. It humanized him, with him being a frail old murderhobo hiding in a sewer
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I like that they 180'd from making him the Jasonator, but it just makes Kills seem even dumber and more pointless in retrospect. Only now after magically hiding in basically plain sight for four years is the fact that Michael took ten times the damage he did in the originals catching up to him, and Kills really did just amount to filler, with Michael aimlessly wandering around killing idiots after they're done shouting the writer's political messages.
 
BiggerChungus said:
I like that they 180'd from making him the Jasonator, but it just makes Kills seem even dumber and more pointless in retrospect. Only now after magically hiding in basically plain sight for four years is the fact that Michael took ten times the damage he did in the originals catching up to him, and Kills really did just amount to filler, with Michael aimlessly wandering around killing idiots after they're done shouting the writer's political messages.
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I say make him full Jason. Bring this nigga back from the dead with lightning or a chick with telekinesis or have a black dude eat his heart. Fuck it. Do it.
 
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