Warning: Major spoilers ahead for Halloween EndsWhile Halloween Ends made an undeniably daring decision by demoting Michael Myers, this big twist failed for a variety of reasons. Halloween Ends wrapped up the trilogy that began with 2018’s slasher reboot Halloween. That movie ignored everything after 1978’s original Halloween and Halloween Ends didn’t bring back the franchise’s previous twists, instead telling a straightforward slasher story with one major revelation.
Although Halloween Ends was advertised as the final Halloween franchise installment, for the majority of the movie’s runtime, the iconic villain of the slasher series was not the one doing the killing. Masked murderer, legendary bogeyman, and scourge of Haddonfield Michael Myers does appear in Halloween Ends and the character does kill a handful of victims onscreen. However, the lion’s share of the movie’s kills are committed by a new character, Corey Cunningham. An outcast blamed for a recent tragedy, Corey Cunningham meets Michael Myers after he is beaten up and left for dead by bullies and this prompts him to start a masked killing spree of his own. Although Michael does help him at times, Corey commits most of his murders alone and even beats up Michael to steal his mask shortly before the end of Halloween Ends. It is all very ambitious and surprising but, unfortunately, the twist also doesn’t really work as it both undermines the way Michael had been portrayed in previous Halloween installments while simultaneously failing to fully commit to the new killer shtick. As such, the revelation that Michael Myers isn't the main killer in Halloween Ends feels somewhat anti-climactic and falls flat – especially given what's at stake in the wider narrative.
Halloween Ends’ Corey Cunningham Twist Explained
For a surprisingly lengthy portion of the runtime of Halloween Ends, no one kills anyone. Four years have passed since the events of Halloween Kills, Michael Myers is thought to be dead, and Allyson and Laurie Strode are attempting to get on with their lives. To this end, Allyson starts seeing Corey, a local boy whose once-bright future was destroyed by a tragic accident that left a boy he was babysitting dead, and Corey a local pariah. Allyson and Corey’s courtship is cut short when the people of Haddonfield make it clear that they despise Corey, with teen bullies beating him and leaving him for dead at the movie’s mid-point. Corey is saved by Micheal Myers and soon takes inspiration from the elderly killer. Before Corey Cunningham kills himself in Halloween Ends, he kills Allyson's boss and co-worker with Michael’s help and brutally massacres the teens who harassed him. In contrast, Michael himself is massively underpowered compared to earlier movies in the Halloween reboot trilogy, providing a stark contrast with his previous, almost demonic presence.
This Halloween Ends Twist Could Have Made Sense
The decision to have any character other than Michael Myers act as the villain of the Halloween reboot trilogy’s final movie was always going to be a risky surprise for audiences. However, this might have worked if the filmmakers were willing to lean into this shock factor and fully replace Michael Myers. If Corey had killed Michael Myers and taken his place early on in the sequel, for example, Halloween Ends would have answered the oldest Michael Myers mystery by confirming that the character was mortal and could be killed. While Laurie killing Micheal in the ending of Halloween Ends does technically provide some closure, it is nowhere near as surprising since Michael has appeared to die at the end of almost every Halloween movie (to be more specific, Halloween II, Halloween 2018, and Halloween H20 all ended with Laurie seemingly killing him).
However, if a character other than Laurie had killed Michael and done so much earlier in the movie, this would have made the twist of Halloween Ends genuinely shocking. This would have proved that Michael was just a man in a mask and would have left Laurie unable to fulfill her vendetta against the character, leaving franchise fans unsure where the now-unpredictable story was heading. Instead, the disappointing ending of Halloween Ends was the inevitable, umpteenth "final" face-off between Laurie and Micheal that the franchise had promised for decades, and Corey Cunningham never became more than a distraction since the character never succeeded in dethroning the original villain of the series.
Why Halloween Ends Twist Would Never Have Worked
From a storytelling perspective, the smartest choice that Halloween Ends could have made would have been killing off Michael early on to prove that Corey really was the movie’s main villain. However, this was never really an option for Halloween Ends. Halloween Ends was touted as the much-publicized final showdown between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, so there was no way that Michael wasn’t going to be the movie’s primary antagonist. Like the Friday the 13th sequel that replaced Jason and outraged fans in the process, Halloween Ends was stuck in an impossible bind. Giving viewers something fresh and new meant providing something other than a drawn-out fight between Michael and Laurie. However, failing to give viewers this long sought-after battle would arguably go past the realm of playful subversion and into flagrant false advertising since the trailer for Halloween Ends promised a straightforward fight between the pair.
Halloween Ends Makes A Michael Myers Plot Hole Worse
The second movie in the Halloween reboot trilogy, Halloween Kills, depicted Micheal as a seemingly supernatural, un-killable force of nature who could withstand being beaten to a pulp by a mob and still stand up again and slaughter all of them without flinching. By the time Michael killed Karen in Halloween Kills (a twist Halloween Ends sadly confirmed as canon), he had endured a bullet to the shoulder, a bullet to the jaw, being trapped in a burning building, a pitchfork stabbing, and a beating from an entire armed angry mob. Despite this, he was still fit to kill the mob’s members, find Karen, kill her, evade detection, hide in the sewers, and eke out an existence for four years before Halloween Ends.
As such, while Halloween Ends began by depicting Michael semi-realistically as an elderly man who struggles to beat Corey in a fistfight, this potentially fascinating, bizarrely sympathetic reinvention of the character soon fell flat since the same person was a superhuman monster in Halloween Kills. If it weren’t for Halloween Kills all-but-stating that Michael was more than human, this twist might have been a welcome shock. However, instead the Halloween Ends villain Corey Cunningham ended up feeling entirely superfluous since Michael was still able to kill when he is called upon and proved during his final fight with Laurie that he had lost little of his strength. Why another killer was deemed necessary becomes unclear since Halloween Ends didn’t take the genuinely unexpected path of outright replacing Michael Myers, instead opting to mostly write him out while still predictably bringing back the original Halloween villain once the sequel began to wrap up. As a result, the bold narrative decision ended up feeling nonsensical, given the previous events of the series.