'Halloween Ends' review: It's a bloody shame Jamie Lee Curtis didn't get a better sendoff

Just four years ago, Michael Myers stabbed his way to the top of the horror world again with the runaway hit “Halloween.” The fact that he's now falling down and impaling himself on his own blade (figuratively speaking) is both disappointing and head-scratching.

The success of the 2018 film lifted the franchise – and Jamie Lee Curtis’ iconic survivor Laurie Strode – to new heights, though last year’s “Halloween Kills” sidelined her for much of the bloody slasher action. Ambitious to a fault, director David Gordon Green’s trilogy closer “Halloween Ends” (★★ out of four; rated R; in theaters and streaming on Peacock now) essentially does the same thing to the series’ other best asset, taking masked Michael off the board until he’s needed for a gnarly climactic fight.

The best part of “Ends” is its well-crafted cold open: On Halloween 2019, babysitter Corey (Rohan Campbell) – a callback of sorts to Laurie in John Carpenter’s 1978 original film – watches a young boy while his parents attend a party down the street. The night ends with the kid dead of a ghastly fall and Corey blamed for it. It’s an unnerving, unexpected scene that revels in a sense of parental dread right from the get-go.

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Fast-forward to present-day fictional Haddonfield, where Laurie is working on a book, living with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) and seemingly enjoying a normal (for her) existence. Michael murdered her daughter four years prior (see: “Halloween Kills”) but hasn’t been seen since.

As time has passed, “The Shape” of evil instead has seemingly infected the town full of jerks, who blame Laurie for the past bloodshed and abuse Corey on the regular. Seeing him bullied, Laurie befriends this young guy who’s seen his share of trauma, but she also sees something strange in his eyes and worries when he starts dating Allyson. Naturally, all of this coincides with yet another Halloween in Haddonfield that turns extremely violent.

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"Ends" is a “Halloween” film – complete with one brutally visceral kitchen fight for all the marbles between Laurie and Michael – that for much of it doesn’t want to be a “Halloween” film. There are a couple of standout kills, yet the movie embraces a more domestic drama angle as Laurie and Allyson's household friction rises higher on the priority list than the scary-movie aspects.

More so than the OG slasher classic, this trilogy of “Halloween” films have intriguingly leaned into social commentary, from women taking back their power in the 2018 film and the exploration of mob violence in “Kills.” This time, it’s about evil as a virus that can affect a community and Michael as a cancer eating Haddonfield from within rather than being a relentless bogeyman – a nifty variation on a theme that’s left undercooked amid so much else going on.

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Concluding a fan-favorite saga dating back more than 40 years is no easy feat – as “Star Wars” can attest – and introducing a new main character and high concepts this late in the game increase the degree of difficulty, especially for a story that at its core is simply about a woman surviving a villain who just won’t stop. In that vein, “Halloween Ends” deploys Curtis in ideal fashion. The horror legend brings new humanity to her longtime role and just when she thought she was (somewhat) safe, emotional pain and anguish are again heaped onto Laurie’s solid shoulders until she unleashes hell in a furniture-busting finale that gives the “Halloween” faithful a conclusion with just a hint of ambiguity.

That’s how “Ends” rolls, though: It’s a denouement that ventures too far afield from familiarity, a good-vs.-evil slugfest more complicated than it needs to be, and a “Halloween” flick that should go out with a roar but instead closes with a masked wheeze.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Halloween Ends' review: Jamie Lee Curtis can't save her bloody finale