DIRECTOR: John Carpenter
CAST: Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky
HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE: Funny you should mention that. (The answer is yes.)
But when I saw Halloween Ends (2022) last year, I even remarked at the time, “Oh. This one has an auto garage as one of the central locations. That must be a reference to Christine.”
At the time, it had probably been twenty years since I had last seen the film. Upon watching this film again, I realize I may have been underselling it. I even had the patently ridiculous thought while watching this that I wish the powers that be made legacy sequels to all of Carpenter’s library, when I realized that Ends is a slavishly devoted to this film, as Green’s Halloween (2018) was to Halloween (1978).
And that’s good. We may be slightly flirting with the period (long since gone now) where Carpenter could be talked into directing a movie for the money or to position himself better in his career. Dean Cundey might not be shooting things for him anymore (and would only intermittently return), but we have a full Carpenter score to feast our ears upon once again.
Is it a little silly (bordering on Love Bug-ish) to have a car be the unrelenting embodiment (a Carpenter archetype, to be sure) of death and chaos? Sure. That does sap the film of some scares, but there really wouldn’t be a way to adapt King’s novel without making it about a car, so I’m willing to give the man a pass, even though he took this movie as things had stalled on the eventual Firestarter (1984), which he was slated to direct at that point. Any improvement in Firestarter would have been a quantum leap forward (although the recent remake muddles that declaration somewhat).
And yet there is tension—if not terror—in a teenage guy getting his first taste of power and freedom behind the wheel, and that set of wheels eventually completely subsumes him. I can’t deny that.