We don’t want to know what really exists out there in the dark. 

If you’ve noticed I’ve been vague about the plot details of Halloween Ends up until this point. That’s because the actual hook of the picture, and even its several inciting incidents, are spoilers. So suffice it to say that, in the broadest details, it’s been four years since Michael Myers’ killing spree in the 2018 movie and last year’s Halloween Kills (which took place on the same Halloween 2018 night), and the Boogeyman has not been seen since. Nonetheless, the town of Haddonfield, Illinois has been unable to forget the scars Michael left in his wake.

While Laurie Strode (Curtis) is unconvincingly set up by the script as putting away her paranoia and choosing to play homemaker for her newly orphaned granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), the rest of the town is haunted by the madness. You can see it in the gaunt face of Officer Hawkins (Will Patton) and in the way goofy boy next door Corey (Rohan Campbell) becomes so easily spooked.

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None of Haddonfield’s residents are spared from Michael’s ghost, whose thrall we will study for a long, long, long time before the Shape makes his belated and, if we’re being honest, anticlimactic return.

As hinted in our synopsis, Halloween Ends is an ambitious sequel that for nearly a full hour abandons the slasher movie formula. If Halloween Kills seemed like Green reacting to criticisms about not enough gore or grisly set pieces in the 2018 flick, Ends attempts to course correct again after the overindulgence of slaughter in Kills.

This close to Green’s trilogy is about waking up in the ugly light of the morning after—and how that hangover can last years. After staring into the countenance of evil, whether that be in the shape of a man or a community descending into a murderous mob, how do you heal?