David Gordon Green's HALLOWEEN Trilogy!
Happy Halloween! This week, the show that talks about stuff on purpose is discussing the recent trilogy of Halloween sequels directed by David Gordon Green that definitively conclude the Michael Myers/Laurie Strode saga once and for all! Again! It's a deep dive into 2018's Halloween (not a confusing title at all!), 2021's Halloween Kills (makes sense) and 2022's Halloween Ends (who are we kidding?), since the big day is right around the corner and we wanted to do something a little special for you, dear listener! Does this reboot trilogy deliver on the terror quotient? Do these three shockers bring the epic slasher saga to a satisfying (and bloody) conclusion? Do any of these fright flicks find a place in the illustrious TRAPPO Essentials Can(n)on? You'll just have to tune in to find out!
The episode is below, and you can also find it on Apple, Google, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic, Spotify and Anchor if you're trick-or-treating and need to listen on the go! So choose your own adventure and evil dies tonight!
Join the spooky conversation! Sound off below and tell us what you think about David Gordon Green's Halloween trilogy! What worked? What didn't work? What would you have done differently? We want to hear from you! If you're feeling a little more verbose, a haunted email is always appreciated, and you can always find us on Instagram and Twitter for the complete TRAPPO experience! That's it for now, dear listener, but you might want to stay tuned because we've heard rumblings around here of something special dropping on October 31st. So keep on the lookout for this mystery delight on the big day, trick-or-treaters.
HALLOWEEN NEVER DIES!
I'm with you guys on Halloween Ends. Although I'd go a step further and keep things mysterious right up until the climax of the film. Corey gets pushed off the bridge and we see "somebody" drag his unconscious body into the sewer, like in the actual movie. But we don't have the scene with old fucked up Michael Myers and all that "maybe it's evil transferring to Corey" bullshit. We just have The Shape pop up in a few scenes during the latter half of the film committing murders. The dickhead cop doesn't chase Corey into the sewer, he chases The Shape, and when he gets into the sewer he finds the relatively fresh corpse of a hobo and he gets stabbed up. Then we have The Shape's third act rampage, only since we never get a good look at The Shape we can't tell it's not really Michael Myers (spoiler alert).
ReplyDeleteIn the end we have the confrontation with Laurie, who thinks she's fighting HER boogeyman, but when she's got him laid out she notices he has all ten fingers, so she yanks the mask off to reveal Corey has been The Shape the entire time! She's shocked (but maybe not too shocked) and we cut to a quick flashback of Corey waking up in the sewer and fighting off the hobo, who tries to either rape or murder Corey because he's a creepy evil dude, and as he's freaking out he finds the corpse of Michael Myers rotting away, still wearing the iconic mask. Turns out Michael eventually did succumb to his injuries on Halloween night, 2018, so the vigilante mob didn't die in vain after all. So Corey takes the mask and as he looks into the empty eye sockets of that rotting latex visage we see... a change... in the young man's eyes.
Back in the present Corey hears Allyson's rattle trap pulling up and he quickly grabs Laurie's hands (she's holding the knife) and plunges the big knife into his chest with a big creepy smile on his face. Allyson walks in and sees the grisly scene, running off screaming. Laurie runs after her, and we hear police sirens in the background, a big commotion out on the lawn. Then we cut to the body of Corey, only Corey's not there. We cut to the spot on the floor where the mask had fallen, only the mask is gone. Then we cut to shots of empty rooms throughout the house with the sound of heavy breathing dominating the soundtrack as one final homage to the original 1978 film. Cut to credits. That's my idealized version of Halloween Ends. Evil doesn't die. It just changes SHAPE.
Happy Halloween, TRAPS!
These movies are all over the map. There’s absolutely no consistency regarding Michael Myers or the town of Haddonfield through this trilogy. The same people made all of the movies, but the sequels feel like they’re were all written and directed by people who didn’t really care about the previous movies in the series. Halloween kills contradicts Halloween. Halloween Ends contradicts Halloween Kills. And Corey sucks. He’s just not a compelling character and his story arc in Ends makes little sense.
ReplyDeleteAnd where the hell is the nudity? You guys are right. That’s a staple in the genre and even in the Halloween series. Why can’t we have nudity anymore? And I’m equal opportunity. Put a swinging dong in the movies too. Who cares? Maybe in a few years we can get a new Halloween reboot that takes place in the 1980’s or something. And there will be a shower scene.
The overall story arc in this trilogy is a mess if you break it down. Laurie Strode spent 40 years living as a survivalist nutjob who alienated her own family because she was sure Michael Myers was coming for her, but nothing of note happened in Haddonfield for four decades, because Michael Myers was locked up the whole time. But of course the events of Halloween 2018 unfold and she was right to have been so paranoid! A-ha!
ReplyDeleteThen in Halloween Ends, Laurie's spent the four years since the 2018 massacre trying to live a quiet, normal life in a normal house in a normal neighborhood, making up for lost time with her granddaughter, despite the fact that Michael Myers is still at large... and he brutally murdered Laurie's own daughter on that night. But since she learned Michael was never specifically targeting her, Laurie just... let all that go?
Shouldn't that arc have been reversed? Laurie lived a relatively normal life for 40 years because her boogeyman was behind bars, then he breaks out and murders half of Haddonfield and disappears, so she spends the next four years building a murder house with her granddaughter since they both have a personal axe to grind with this evil prick? I don't know. Maybe that's crazy talk. How could either Laurie or Allison just get over the events of that horrible night? I know Halloween Ends shows that neither of them ever REALLY got over those events, but why would either of them just move on with their lives knowing this psycho killer is still on the loose?
I have to agree with your opinions that the final chapter in this trilogy stumbled across the finish line. The movie had to clear paths it could follow, and it chose to try and follow both of them at the same time, and in the process it basically screwed up both plots. We don't get the "evil changes shape" narrative taken to its logical conclusion, and when we're given the final cathartic end of The Shape, it feels like an afterthought tacked on to the end of a movie that wasn't even really about Michael Myers.
So that climax and denouement don't have the emotional punch they needed, since we spent 90 percent of Halloween Ends following the barely-there character of Corey Cunningham, and the movie has to condense his character arc into the time span of a few days when as one of you mentioned, it should have unfolded over the MONTHS leading up to Halloween 2022. Spend some real time with Corey. Get to know him. Watch his love affair with Allison blossom. Give it time to feel real. Then watch his descent into madness as the weeks and days to Halloween tick by and the weight of that tragedy will feel real and the pain of witnessing his fall into darkness and evil will strike like a wrecking ball.
I applaud what Halloween Ends was going for, but it essentially fails to stand as a cohesive and satisfying narrative. Halloween Kills is enjoyable trash that only works as a counterbalance to Halloween 2018, and that movie is a perfectly serviceable slasher and a solid do-over of the mediocre Halloween H20, and if it had ended right there it would have been better regarded. As it currently stands, we have an ambitious but fundamentally flawed legacy trilogy that will be hailed by some as genius in the years to come and condemned as a frustrating exercise in futility by others. The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle. And the real tragedy lies in the question: what could have been? We see the foundation of something great there, but that potential will never be realized.
That's the real curse of Michael Myers. ;)
Honestly I feel like this whole trilogy has really just been a waste. So much fanfare over what? One decent legacy sequel and a bunch of half-baked concepts that never go anywhere or come together in a meaningful way? Even Halloween 2018 was okay at best. It’s never great. Half of the time it’s barely good.
ReplyDeleteI get David Gordon Green’s passion for the franchise, but I don’t think he ever really had a great concept for where to go with this reboot beyond the murder house climax of his first film. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in these movies, but they never satisfy. It’s just pointless I’m left shrugging when my friends ask me how I feel about these stupid movies. No passion one way or another. Just apathy. I have no enthusiasm for this guy’s upcoming Exorcist trilogy. Jesus, that sounds exhausting. A trilogy? Fuck me.
This timeline sucks.
Since we’re so into the legacy reboot thing, why can’t the next HALLOWEEN movie follow the same template? I’m thinking we finally follow up on the ending of Halloween IV: The Return Of Michael Myers and catch up with Jamie Lloyd as an adult, played by Danielle Harris again, of course. Halloween IV ended with little Jamie infected with the family “evil”, seemingly stabbing her foster mother to death with a pair of scissors while wearing a very similar clown costume to the one her dear uncle Michael wore back in the day. Now we pick up things in the modern day, with Jamie breaking out of Smith’s Grove as the new Michael Myers. I don’t know HOW to make the story work, but that’s not my job. There are intelligent people out there who could write a killer screenplay with this concept. Why not? It couldn’t be worse than these last three movies. Jamie Lee Curtis is back! Wow! And? That’s it? Great job.
ReplyDelete