Inverting Trilogy Structure in David Gordon Green’s ‘Halloween’ Films
Halloween Ends was a surprise to everyone, especially considering the fact that the entire plot had been expertly hidden by the film’s marketing. Nobody knew what it was going to be about and it was a complete 180 degree turn from what Halloween Kills had been. That’s one of the smartest things about it, in hindsight, looking at the two films back-to-back. Halloween Kills is a Halloween sequel on steroids. It is, in many ways, the ultimate Halloween sequel. Michael is truly the boogeyman in a way that had never really been depicted before.
Michael had never been shown more explicitly to be an unstoppable force of nature than in this film. The body count is bigger than it had ever been. In fact, it boasts easily one of the biggest on-screen body counts of any slasher film ever made. From beginning to end, that movie is pure chaos as the town reacts to the news of Michael Myers’ return, leading to the creation — and destruction — of a frenzied mob.
By stark contrast, Halloween Ends is a quiet movie. It is a story about one person’s gradual transformation into a monster, sparked by both the town’s perception of him, Haddonfield’s need to have a boogeyman because they clearly don’t know how to have anything else, and his own bitterness toward the world and everyone in it. It’s a dark, indie romance that is partially a possession movie and partially about the gradual creation of a serial killer. It is so different in tone and style from what Halloween Kills had been.
Knowing that the two movies were announced at the same time and planned in advance, that difference in tone is clearly intentional and as a result, the two movies complement each other very well. But when you look at the entire trilogy together a very interesting structure becomes noticeable. When you compare David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy to other cinematic trilogies, it’s clear that this one doesn’t follow the normal trilogy structure whatsoever. In fact, it completely inverts it.
From the beginning, the 2018 Halloween feels like a final chapter. This is a movie that goes out of its way to tell you that it is completely about the final showdown between Michael Myers and Laurie Strode. We’re rooting for it. We spend the entire movie waiting for the fight to happen because they build it up so well. One of the lines uttered just before Laurie is even introduced is, “Perhaps the only hope of rehabilitation is through confrontation.” There’s a thread running through the movie that’s literally about characters within the film itself wanting to force this confrontation into happening.
The podcasters give Laurie a kind of disgusting interview in which they try to manipulate her into agreeing to talk to Michael, bringing up her daughter, and Laurie doesn’t fall for it whatsoever. Dr. Sartain takes it much further, basically delivering Michael to Laurie’s door because he wants to see this reunion so badly. Laurie has spent the past forty years in the grips of paranoia, preparing in case Michael ever returned and now he has. She has rigged her home, her entire life, to be a trap for him. Everything in her world was designed to serve this one purpose. In the context of this movie, the trap works. Michael burns, and Laurie is free. There is no tease of a sequel, just a shot of the three Strode women riding away to safety. That’s a finale. More than most sequels in the franchise, this feels like an ending.
Halloween Kills, of course, undoes all that. Unlike the first and third, there’s no real subversion here. Halloween Kills totally and completely feels like the middle chapter of a trilogy. This was absolutely designed to be the Empire Strikes Back of Halloween sequels. The intent is obvious, but it works. When inverting a structure based on three movies, by nature of that fact, the second one is always going to be the same. Still, this fulfills the dire stakes of a middle chapter, completely.
The first film had a sense of closure and, even more than that, victory. This one is fundamentally about failure. Haddonfield residents organize an angry mob that winds up killing the wrong man and that doesn’t stop them or even slow them down. When they find Michael Myers they gang up on him, basically lynching him, but it does absolutely nothing. He gets up, and he kills every single one of them, and then simply vanishes into the night. The previous Halloween ended with the three Strode women, who had all been kind of distant with one another, together and at peace. Halloween Kills ends with the death of Laurie’s daughter.
Finally, we have Halloween Ends. The title itself gives an obvious statement of finality, but it’s deceptive. Even if this movie does seek to bring a concrete conclusion to the story of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode, it is very much a beginning. The hook of the story is basically “What if, just when Haddonfield finally thought it was finished, it started all over again?” What if whatever happened to Michael Myers to make him stab his sister back in 1963 happened to somebody else? And this time it’s an accident.
The town played a part, the largest part, even, in the way Corey Cunningham is perceived by everyone around him. They’ve had their town legend since 1963. Haddonfield does not know how not to have a Michael Myers. He’s a killer in the eyes of everyone long before he actually, intentionally kills someone. Of course, on the most textual level, Corey’s transformation truly begins the moment that he locks eyes with Michael Myers, and that influence, that darkness, whatever passes between them in that moment, begins to grow inside of him.
This is a beginning. This is world-building. Halloween Ends introduces a brand-new protagonist/antagonist, who had never even been mentioned in the previous movies. And that’s huge to note because many of the new characters in Ends, from radio DJ Willie the Kid to the skeezy Dr. Mathis actually had been mentioned in the previous movie.
Still, those characters feel like organic world-building here, and in general Halloween Ends provides a truly lived-in feel of the town. Almost as if we’re being introduced to it for the first time. Just as much as Halloween 2018 had been about a climactic confrontation, Halloween Ends is about the cycle beginning anew.
It is not jarring to watch these three films back-to-back. From beginning to end, this Halloween trilogy does flow naturally, it does tell one continuing story, more or less. But at the same time, it perfectly inverts what we think of as standard trilogy structure.
The beginning is an ending, the second lays waste to the town and its characters, and the end is a beginning. You would think, on paper, that the structure would not work, but it is honestly is one of the most endearing things about it. It’s incredible, intentional or not, that they managed to pull that off. It still focuses on the characters and their arcs, just like any good trilogy does, but nonetheless, its shape is entirely its own.
