Halloween Ends  ★★

IF ONLY David Gordon Greene had stopped at one.

The American director’s 2018 version of Halloween was a strong and inventive direct sequel to the original 1978 film.

At the time Greene claimed it was a one-off, but the final sound was of Michael Myers still breathing, either dying in a fire or surviving it.

The sequel, Halloween Kills, was a ponderous and repetitive affair that ended in ludicrous fashion with Michael surviving a pounding from a riotous crowd that would have killed an elephant.

Now we have another film in this trilogy, Halloween Ends, which is only marginally better than Kills.

It starts well with a nice twist on the babysitter in peril trope and for the first 20 minutes gives the audience hope of providing something a little different.

But sadly it becomes progressively worse and may even be one of the worst entries in the entire franchise.

Why? Well for a start Michael is hardly in most of the film and we are left to follow the story of a young man named Corey who appears to be following the same path.

Problem is that character isn’t very interesting and our heroine, Laurie Strode, once again played by Jamie Lee Curtis, doesn’t fare much better.

Laurie basically goes through the same arc she did in the previous film, but at least here she doesn’t spend almost the whole film in a hospital bed.

Curtis gets a lot of credit as the original scream queen but, to be totally honest, she isn’t that great an actress.

There’s some decent gore but despite the apparent finality in the climax does anyone really think Halloween ends?