Watched Halloween Ends for the first time at home a few nights ago (the UHD), so the second time seeing it. It was a bit of a different experience given you can process things a bit better.
Getting everything out of my brain from that experience at least for myself even if no one else cares...
-The look wasn't as dingy as in theaters, probably because there's a real lack of good projectionists after going fully digital. The movie still looks flat and boring though, but it's not that what they shot (as in the environments and lighting) were necessarily bad, it's just that the look of the film is so flat and two dimensional and it feels like it focuses on the foreground (which also looks flat), while the environments are barely there. I'll say this, despite all three films having the same cinematographer they all look different which is neat, but H'18 (which i think also looks boring) and especially Kills (which looks pretty good, one of the few things going for it) didn't look this flat.
-It starts off odd with that closeup of the mother of the kid that Corey is babysitting, felt like a comedy shot or something from one of those hyper early to mid 90's kids commercials.
-The kid falling looked so damn goofy, it was actually funny. It reminded me of the scene from the Martin Short/Charles Grodin movie Clifford near the beginning of the film where a dummy of Ben Savage falls on top of Martin Short.
-Jamie Lee Curtis' voiceover after the opening segment sounds pretty close to Orlando Jones' salesman character in Office Space pitching magazines to the main characters, it was that dull and lifeless. She won an Oscar for a movie from that same year....
-It was a bit too on the nose how they had Corey working as a mechanic and so gave him an excuse to have the coveralls (like Michael). I wouldn't doubt if in the early scripting stages they gave him the job for that reason and then snowballed from there with the job being a way to get close to Allyson (or her to him as it turned out) and then giving them the ending with dumping Michael's body into the grinding machine.
-The bully gang being two marching band girls (one fat), a skinny trailer park looking kid and another kid closer to a classic jock bully but a head shorter than Corey is still ridiculous. They should have at the very least cut out the two girls for two guys, but this feels like one of those postmodern subversion of expectations bits that fails.
-Laurie all of a sudden having a filthy mouth seems way out of character, just makes her feel even less like the girl from the original Halloween.
-A butcher with a Georgia accent in central or southern Illinois, at least try to hide shooting the movie in Georgia.
-Corey's parents look nothing like him and his mom comes across as a Jewish lady from Queens. She's almost comically annoying as well, straddles that line as being close to Lin Shaye in the Farrelly brothers movies (Kingpin and There's Something About Mary).
-Allyson falling for Corey on first sight like she did just comes across as absurd. They gave things no time to develop into her falling for him, it was a bit cartoonish.
-A lot of the movie switches from trying to be a more serious character study to these absurd moments that reminds me of a less fun version of Friday the 13th part V (which it has surprisingly a lot in common with).
-Michael can easily drag Corey (say he's 160-170 pounds) into the sewer like nothing but then comes across frail and weak. Later in the movie he easily lifts up and pins that redhead girl to a wall close to the time he loses a struggle for his mask to Corey.
-Likewise later in the movie he's able to easily snap Corey's neck, but struggles with a 60 something year old woman he's 8" taller than.
-And what's up with Allyson easily snapping Michael's arm like it was a dried up corn stalk? They even used a foley sound that sounded like they were snapping celery.
-On that same front where did Corey get the strength to stomp smash the fat girl's head like it was a melon? In the theatrical movie it took one stomp in the deleted scenes it was three, both are absurd (I mean Michael did an even more impressive one stomper in H'18, but you'd expect that from him).
-The movie showed bits of potential until about 44 minutes in, then it just went way off the rails. Up until that point it was at least interesting at points though still having a bunch of comical and absurd moments.
-The whole dance scene in the club was a bit too goofy, they had a ridiculous music video looking dance scene at the high school in H'18 and this one wasn't as stylized and visually out of place but equally ridiculous nonetheless.
-For all David Gordon Green did with denying anything supernatural with Ends (and Kills before it), they sure did everything in their power to make it seem like Michael transferred some sort of evil essence to Corey. From the actual visuals when he looked into Michael's eyes to his very sudden character change after that to Laurie's writing and talks about evil as a force, to Laurie suddenly seeing evil in Corey's eyes (she says like Michael, but we only ever know of one time she even saw Michael's face/eyes and that was in the '78 movie and it was a brief moment where he was trying to get his mask back on after she pulled it off. They did the same sort of thing with Kills, denied anything supernatural while portraying things as being supernatural..
-Corey just stabbing the hobo and then doubling that (so it wasn't just self defense) and killing him seemed out of place and they had no real character development around it, it felt like he went from 0-60, they gave him no moments thinking about it no peering into his psyche or development, it was just like "he's a killer now, that's it".
-Corey going after the doctor and nurse, I get why they did that what with Allyson not getting the promotion but Corey going after them himself just seemed out of left field with no build up. So much of the film was missing character development despite it being a few minutes shy of 2 hours long.
-Allyson's change and the Corey and Allyson romance plot was another thing that felt like it went from 0-60 and they legit made parts of the film like some sort of Romeo and Juliet type of romance film in the middle of your weird/bullied kid becomes a killer type of film (like Christine, Martin, 976 Evil, Trick or Treat, Friday the 13th part V, May, Carrie, etc.). Christine was obviously an inspiration yet they took none of the lessons they should have from it.
-The UHD had a handful of deleted scenes (one being the super ridiculous over the top death of Corey's mom), but I know there were a bunch of re-shoots so I wonder if the movie feels so disjointed at times due to things cut out due to reshoots and not just the ineptness of the writing and directing team (though there is precedent there).
-The luring and killing of the cop was another thing that felt like it went from 0-60. There were what two interactions with the cop and Corey, and the confrontation in the second one had more to do with Corey than the cop. It was like hey you were inviting my girl and I over for cake and paying a bit of extra attention to her (your ex) so commence to killing.
-What's with the cop seemingly being in his late 30's to mid 40's too, the man looked to be Sheriff Brackett's age that he was in the original Halloween. Seems a bit odd given Allyson was 20-21 or so.
-As has been noted previously the black lady that was stabbed through the neck with the tube lighting surviving was pretty absurd.
-On that note it seems like every time there was an interesting moment in the film there was some annoying loudmouth that popped in and screwed up the scene like the above lady's sister or Corey's mom.
-Shit I'm getting lost now so I'll end it while I'm still remembering what I can. Ok well Michael just did not seem like Michael whatsoever even less so than H:20 Michael so when his death scene came it didn't even feel like the character died. H:20 Michael felt off and the ending with him reaching out to Laurie was absurd but the total depiction wasn't so out out there to make you feel as emotionally vacant as the one in Ends did.
-Oh damn, forgot about the whole almost orgasmic shaking Michael had after killing the cop was another out there absurd moment. Shoot we didn't see him kill the mechanic in the original Halloween, but after similarly long or longer bouts sans killing we see his first kills in Halloween IV (not in this continuity but there's some precedent there) after 10 years without killing and more importantly in H'18 after 40 years without killing and there was no such reaction. It looked cartoonish. Then after that stabbing he suddenly regains his strength so that's another "hey we're depicting something supernatural-esque even though we're saying there's nothing supernatural in this movie". I mean it's not blatantly supernatural but it felt like they were depicting it like a weak and frail vampire finally draining someone.
-I laughed out loud at the whole "funeral procession" ending. My first viewing I was just pissed at this waste of a Halloween film, but this was Halloween: Resurrection levels of goofy. The film had several unintentionally goofy moments like that but this felt like the height of it.
I think overall the film (like Kills) is just disappointing because there was potential there in concept and bits and pieces of the film showed some of that. H'18 to me was less uneven and absurd than Kills or Ends, but overall less interesting because it fulfilled most of its' potential (though there is a LOT I'd change, it's not about that and more so about a less bumpy ride), there were less flashes of "hey this could turn out to be something" even though the end result after those moments in Kills and Ends usually ended up ridiculous. So I didn't hate Ends as much in this viewing so much as I pitied it as it could have been so much better.