David Gordon Green’s Halloween Ends has proven to be incredibly divisive, sparking a great deal of internet debate about the creative choices of the final film in the director’s trilogy. On one side of the debate, fans expressed their frustrations at the lack of screen time for series’ boogeyman Michael Myers; on the other side, fans appreciated the choice to take the focus off the slasher and keep it on the impact the ongoing battle between Myers and Laurie Strode had on Haddonfeild.
While both sides would probably agree that the film’s finale gave them the satisfactory conclusion to the Myers-Strode feud that they had been hoping for, it seems that the very cut-and-dried ending that made the final cut of Halloween Ends wasn’t always so cut-and-dried. According to Viewer Anon, the scripted ending played out much differently.
The full thread linked above claims that the film followed a different path with the “evil doesn’t die, it just changes shape” theme explored in the film. In the version that fans have seen, it seems that evil does in fact die with the deaths of Corey and Michael; however, the script apparently saw Laurie infected with the same evil, even after killing Michael in her kitchen. In the original version, that played out by having Laurie attempt to strangle her granddaughter before coming to her senses.
Ultimately, what was put to film in the final cut worked really well as Laurie and the entire town of Haddonfield were able to collectively put their Boogeyman behind them. The trilogy explored the way that Myers’ evil infected every corner of the town where his rampage took place, impacting more than just those who lost people to his evil, so a denouement where they dispose of him and his legacy as a community works well as a definitive ending to THIS trilogy. Of course it’s hard to imagine there won’t be more Halloween films in the future, but Green’s work with Myers is done and taken as one long-form story, it’s a truly terrifying narrative on evil.
