For better or worse, the Halloween franchise will arguably never be as good as it is right now. Regardless of any narrative avenues the series is exploring, the merits of which are understandably up for debate, this David Gordon Green-directed trilogy of films focuses on Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, while also featuring original director John Carpenter as a producer, and seeing Carpenter collaborating with Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies on the score. In a number of ways, this trilogy shares the most DNA with what made the original 1978 film so successful. It’s hard to imagine that, once this trilogy concludes, Curtis or Carpenter would be up to return to the series for any reason. This means that, while Halloween Kills has its fair share of shortcomings, it might be the best version of the exploration of the mob mentality of Haddonfield we’re ever going to get, with the base components of the slasher series all being handled relatively effectively, even if it fails to push the narrative into any surprising avenues. Halloween Ends, however, still has the potential to truly shatter the status quo when it arrives in 2022.
