UPDATE: The embargo has lifted and “Halloween Ends” has a 45 MC score (based on 22 reviews). I probably won’t be reviewing this pile of junk.
Bad reviews didn’t stop Director David Gordon Green’s “Halloween Kills” from doing killer business at the box office, at the time it is was the biggest debut of the pandemic era for a horror film or a movie opening simultaneously on the big screen and a streaming service.
“Halloween Kills” earned around $50 million on opening weekend. These are staggering numbers especially since audiences also had the option to watch it on Universal’s sister streaming service Peacock.
Green was, at some point in time, a filmmaker I respected, but he’s now gone so far off the deep end in Hollywood claptrap that, I’m not afraid to say it, he’s sold out. He’s set to now start production on Universal and Blumhouse’s reboot of “The Exorcist.” Dire times in the industry and I don’t necessarily blame him for going the paycheck route, you either have to make a living or suffer with your art — he’s chosen the former.
Once upon a time, the 46-year-old filmmaker was heralded as the heir to Terrence Malick with his first four films, “George Washington,” “All the Real Girls,” “Undertow” and “Snow Angels.” Then the business changed, there were less opportunities for independent visions to thrive and Green went the mainstream route, albeit, at first, successfully with “Pineapple Express,” and the underrated comedy “The Sitter.”
Green has since dabbled here and there with more-than-decent indies (“Joe,” “Stronger,” “Prince Avalanche”), but now he’s become a full-on whore for Blumhouse. His latest, “Halloween Ends” is cheap, exploitative and not scary at all. It’s even worse than the first two films of the franchise.
This is an especially concerning film from Green since it comes out at a time of exciting daring for the horror genre (Ari Aster, Jordan Peele, Robert Eggers, Jeremy Saulnier, David Robert Mitchell). In fact, he’s made exactly the kind of cheap sequel that ruined the franchise in the ‘80s and ’90s. He hasn’t reinvented anything, he’s just using cliched slasher tropes and two-dimensional characters to nab a lucrative paycheck.
As I said, you can’t blame a guy for wanting to make a living. Not Everybody is Martin Scorsese or Ridley Scott, just walking into a studio or streamer and saying "Give me truckloads of money so that I may realize my vision" while the executives just stare in starstruck silence, honored to be in their presence. Green's earlier movies never made much money at the arthouse, than he went the R-rated comedy route but that genre’s dead theatrically now as well.
The ‘Smile’ franchise has a new director. David Bruckner, who made “The Night House” and the 2022 “Hellraiser” reboot, has been hired to direct “Smile 3” for Paramount.