For years now, we’ve known that David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy would close with an entry titled, appropriately enough, Halloween Ends. Fresh from revitalising the slasher saga with 2018’s confusingly-titled Halloween – a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 original that ignores the rest of the films in the series – the filmmaker most recently sent Michael Myers on another murderous Haddonfield rampage in last year’s Halloween Kills, setting up a concluding chapter of Laurie Strode’s story for the upcoming threequel. But even though we know that Halloween Ends will bring some kind of ending, quite how that plays out is still in flux.
Speaking to Empire in the Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery issue, Green claimed that he’s still tinkering with Halloween Ends’ ending. “It changes every day,” he says. “In theory, the picture is locked, but this morning I called the editor and said, ‘What if we do this one thing…’” There is, after all, pressure to get it right – Ends not only marking the end of this Halloween continuity, but the end (again) for Jamie Lee Curtis’ iconic scream queen Laurie. “I speak wth John [Carpenter] and Jamie Lee Curtis regularly about it,” says Green, who promises big things for his final slice of Halloween. “It’s exciting, uncertain, satisfying and sad. I’ve enjoyed the ride but it’s probably time to get off. I think we’re gonna go out with a bang.”
Still, after the ultra-gory murder-fest of Halloween Kills, the director claims he’s reining himself in a little more this time. “If our second film was free-for-all, violent chaos, this is a more intimate, atmospheric conclusion,” he says. With the ending just around the corner, here’s hoping Green gives it a real good stab.
Read Empire’s full Halloween Ends story in the October 2022 issue, on sale Thursday 1 August and available to order online here. Halloween Ends hits UK cinemas from 14 October.