Halloween Ends

On Halloween night 2019, 21-year-old Corey Cunningham babysits a boy named Jeremy Allen. Jeremy locks him in the attic as a prank. When Jeremy's parents come home, Corey kicks the door open, and it knocks Jeremy over the stair railing to his death. Corey is charged with aggravated manslaughter and cleared by the judge, but Haddonfield treats him as a monster anyway.

In 2022, four years after Michael's rampage, the town is still hurting and nobody has seen Michael. Laurie Strode lives with Allyson and is writing a memoir. Corey works at his stepfather Ronald's salvage yard. High school band kids led by Terry Tramer bully him, and he gets hurt. Laurie sees it happen, takes him to the doctor's office where Allyson works, and plays matchmaker. Allyson invites Corey to a Halloween party.

At the party, Jeremy's mother recognizes Corey and confronts him. He walks out, and the bullies throw him off a bridge. Unconscious, he is dragged into the sewers where Michael has been hiding. Michael chokes him but lets him go. As Corey crawls out, a homeless man threatens him, and Corey stabs him to death in the struggle.

Corey and Allyson fall for each other and ride around on his motorcycle. At dinner, Allyson's ex-boyfriend, Officer Doug Mulaney, harasses them. He is the officer who arrested Corey. Corey later lures Mulaney into the sewer, holds him, and lets Michael kill him. Allyson loses a promotion to Nurse Deb, who is sleeping with their boss, Dr. Mathis. Corey kills Mathis at his home while Michael kills Deb. Allyson knows none of this and makes plans to leave Haddonfield with Corey.

Laurie talks with Jeremy's father and becomes convinced Corey has been infected by Michael's evil. Her warnings drive Allyson away. On Halloween, Laurie finds Corey where Jeremy died and offers to help him if he breaks it off with Allyson. Corey refuses and says if he can't have Allyson, no one will. He goes back to the sewer, overpowers Michael and takes the mask.

Wearing the mask, Corey lures the bullies to the salvage yard and kills them. Terry accidentally shoots Ronald dead with a shotgun, and Corey burns Terry's face with a blowtorch. Corey kills his own mother, Joan, and then Willy the Kid, the radio DJ who had taunted him.

Laurie fakes a suicide to draw Corey to her house and shoots him down the stairs. When Allyson arrives, Corey stabs himself in the neck so it will look like Laurie killed him, and Allyson runs off. Michael walks in, takes back his mask and snaps Corey's neck. Laurie and Michael fight all through the kitchen. She pins his hand to the counter with a knife, holds him down with the refrigerator, pulls off his mask and tells him he is not the boogeyman, just a man. She cuts his throat. Hawkins calls Allyson with the truth about Corey, and she comes back in time to break Michael's arm while Laurie slashes his wrists. Michael bleeds out and dies.

Laurie and Allyson take Michael's body to the salvage yard with a police escort, and the people of Haddonfield follow in a procession. Laurie drops the body into an industrial shredder while Haddonfield watches. Later, Allyson leaves town, Laurie finishes her memoir and starts a romance with Frank Hawkins. The last shot shows Laurie kept the mask.

Story notes

• Four years after the events of Halloween Kills, Laurie is trying to rebuild her life with Allyson.
• Corey Cunningham's involvement in a babysitting tragedy draws him into Haddonfield's lingering fear and toward Michael Myers.

Release facts

• Rated: R for bloody horror violence and gore, language throughout and some sexual references
• Budget: $33 million (Wikipedia); $30 million (Box Office Mojo); $20 million (The Numbers)
• Worldwide: $105,400,796 (The Numbers); $104,374,176 (Box Office Mojo)

The premiere was at Beyond Fest at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on October 11, 2022, the day before Curtis got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame outside the theater. Universal opened it October 14, 2022, in 3,901 theaters, a year later than planned, and put it on Peacock's paid tiers the same day.

It was projected at $50 to $60 million. Thursday previews made $5.4 million, the first day $20.4 million, and the weekend $40.1 million. It was number one but under projections, which was blamed partly on the Peacock release. Universal said it was the most watched film or series on Peacock over a two-day span. Audiences skewed 18 to 34, and only 26% were 35 or older. It fell 80% to $8 million in its second weekend, finishing fourth. Its 88% Friday-to-Friday drop was near a record.

It grossed $64.1 million domestic and about $105 million worldwide. That makes it the lowest of Green's trilogy but still the third-highest Halloween film worldwide in unadjusted dollars, with about 6.1 million domestic tickets sold. Samba TV counted 920,000 households on Peacock in its first week, down from 1.7 million for Kills. It was still number eight on Nielsen's streaming chart for October 10 to 16, 2022.

Rotten Tomatoes has 40% from 266 reviews, averaging 5.1/10. Metacritic has 47 from 46 critics. CinemaScore gave it a C+, the franchise's lowest since Halloween III, and PostTrak showed 64% positive. Richard Roeper gave it 1.5 stars and Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave it 1.5 stars, calling it barely a Halloween movie. K. Austin Collins of Rolling Stone called it the best of the trilogy, and Red Letter Media predicted a Halloween III-style cult following. The Hollywood Reporter later ranked it second on its list of the best slasher movies of the decade.

Nominations: The Drama Movie of 2022 and Drama Movie Star of 2022 (Curtis) at the 48th People's Choice Awards; Original Score in a Horror Film at the 2022 Hollywood Music in Media Awards. The score won at the 2023 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards.

Press and marketing

• Theatrical key-art / poster campaign reference: IMP Awards — Halloween Ends poster archive.

Cast

Crew

Production

Green, McBride and Jeff Fradley planned two sequels and grew them into a trilogy. After the 2018 opening, McBride and Green outlined both sequels at once with separate teams: Scott Teems on Kills, and Paul Brad Logan and Chris Bernier on Ends. Green and McBride drafted the stories and brought in the other writers to focus them. The early working title was Halloween Dies before Universal renamed it Halloween Ends. Universal announced both titles on July 19, 2019. The Ends team finished a first draft in 2019 and a final script in 2021, pending Carpenter's approval. COVID-19 pushed the release back a year.

Green wanted each film to feel different: Kills as an action movie and Ends as a love story. He created Corey to show how Michael and Laurie had changed Haddonfield and how a shunned kid can turn to evil. The character echoes Arnie Cunningham from Carpenter's Christine and real school shooters. Corey kills messily, unlike Michael. Carpenter approved and praised them for not repeating the same plot. Green said it would take place four years after Kills and include the pandemic. Other influences he named were Willard, My Bodyguard, Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker, Blood Rage, Bad Taste and Fallen Angels.

Many endings were considered. Curtis later said the original had the final fight in the factory that made Michael's mask, like Silver Shamrock in Halloween III, but it was dropped as too meta. Other versions included Laurie killing herself, Corey surviving and running off with Allyson like Natural Born Killers, Corey backing away from murder, and Corey becoming Michael's successor. One partly filmed ending had Laurie take on Michael's evil after killing him and shut herself away again. Curtis thought it was too dark, and the procession and her romance with Frank came after.

Curtis was confirmed in July 2019 and was paid $3.5 million. Judy Greer did not return because Karen died in Kills. Kyle Richards was brought back in December 2021 with a bigger part after fans liked her in Kills. Michael O'Leary joined in January 2022. Rohan Campbell did not know he was auditioning for a Halloween film and thought his babysitter would die early. Green picked him from hundreds for his tough but sensitive face and kept him away from the press before release. Green and Curtis warned him about backlash. Nick Castle announced his non-Michael cameo in June 2022. Green hinted that McBride asked for a cameo.

Filming was once planned for Wilmington, North Carolina, back to back with Kills. Courtney said it would start January 10, 2022, but it began January 19, 2022, in Savannah, Georgia, under the working title Cave Dweller. Curtis shot from January 25 to February 22. Extra scenes were filmed in Sylvania, Georgia, and the shoot wrapped March 9, 2022. Campbell did his own stunt for one bully kill. Green let the actors improvise for humor. The final Laurie and Michael fight was rebuilt many times during the shoot, which led to continuity errors.

Blum said in June 2022 that the film had tested internally and would be Blumhouse's last Halloween. Two weeks of reshoots were planned in Savannah that June, but they took four days. After test screenings, the original final fight and ending were thrown out and new scenes were shot about four months before the premiere. The procession to the shredder was added around August 2022 because Green wanted something bigger. Castle finished Michael's ADR in August. In July 2022, Carpenter called the film a departure from the first two.

Michael Simmonds kept Alexa cameras and Cooke anamorphic lenses so reused footage would match, switching from Kills' Hawk anamorphic zooms to spherical zooms with an anamorphic adapter. Richard Wright built a practical opening with jack-o'-lanterns coming out of each other, but the released version was redone digitally. The blue opening titles nod to Halloween III. At the radio station, the neon sign was real and the tower was digital. Paul Daley's second unit filmed the DJ downstairs while Simmonds' unit shot on the roof. Simmonds found the reflection of Laurie and Michael in a pool of blood while operating camera on the final fight.

Simmonds retained standard Alexa cameras and Cooke anamorphic lenses to keep the trilogy’s reused footage visually consistent.

Richard Wright filmed a practical nesting-pumpkin title sequence, but Simmonds said the released version was created through visual effects.

The radio station’s neon sign was practical, while its transmission tower was digital.

Paul Daley’s second unit filmed the DJ downstairs while Simmonds’ unit worked on the radio-station roof.

Simmonds discovered the reflection of Laurie and Michael in pooled blood while operating the camera during the final fight.

The score was recorded at John Carpenter’s home studio and Daniel Davies’ studio, with Davies and John Spiker handling the mix.

Filming locations

• Savannah, Georgia: Haddonfield; principal photography January 19 to March 9, 2022, and June 2022 reshoots
• A real Savannah house with a large staircase: The Allen house opening. The staircase became the center of the scene, and the filmmakers reworked the script and camera plan around it
• Bridge underpass, Sylvania, Georgia: Michael's hideout under the bridge. Green could not find a big enough bridge in Savannah, and Sylvania let the crew shut the bridge down for a few nights
• Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Los Angeles: Beyond Fest world premiere, October 11, 2022
• Principal photography moved to Savannah, Georgia in early 2022, with Forsyth Park and residential Savannah locations standing in for Haddonfield; additional material was photographed in Sylvania, Georgia, and later reshoots returned to Savannah.
• The opening staircase was a real Savannah-house location; finding it prompted the filmmakers to rewrite the child’s death as a fall.
• The production chose a Sylvania bridge underpass for Michael’s underground hideout after Green could not find a suitable location in Savannah.

Effects and makeup

Christopher Nelson returned as makeup effects designer. The Trick or Treat Studios mask sold by Miramax credits the sculpt to Nelson and Vincent Van Dyke.

Nelson's prosthetics show Michael's scar tissue, burns and weather damage after four years in hiding. The production notes say Courtney talked with Green about how those injuries should change the way Michael moves.

The Twisted Deaths featurette on the disc covers how the death scenes were made.

Rohan Campbell said the thing he learned on set was that blood is very sticky.

Christopher Nelson returned as makeup-effects designer with Vincent Van Dyke as co-designer. Vincent Van Dyke Effects produced the film's prosthetics, body duplications, kill effects and the Shape mask/makeup as a coordinated practical package.

The production also carried dedicated finale-unit and additional-photography makeup/effects crews, reflecting the reworked final confrontation and later-added disposal sequence.

Props and costumes

Corey takes Michael's mask from the sewer and wears it for his rampage. Michael takes it back before the final fight, and the last shot shows Laurie kept it.

Emily Gunshor designed the costumes. The production notes say her Michael wardrobe was key to Courtney's transformation. Corey's motorcycle and leather jacket come from Green's idea of an 1980s bad boy love story.

Trick or Treat Studios made an officially licensed Halloween Ends Michael Myers mask, sold through the Miramax shop.

The Shape mask was again a Nelson/Van Dyke effects build, continuing the damaged-mask lineage established in 2018 and Kills rather than resetting Michael to a pristine classic mask.

Because the finale was repeatedly revised and partially reshot, mask, wardrobe, wound and blood-state continuity had to bridge principal photography and later finale-unit/additional-photography material.

Production artifacts

Art and design

• The IMP Awards poster archive catalogs five designs; the primary one-sheet is credited to LA, with a later illustrated variant credited to Bob Gleason.

Scripts and documents

The killers

Deaths

John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies scored the film, recording at Carpenter's and Davies' home studios. Scoring started after late 2021 and finished by September 2022. They brought back the 1978 themes and wrote a new theme for Corey. Carpenter said Green challenged them on some things and gave them freedom on others. The electronic duo Boy Harsher also wrote original music.

Halloween Ends (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), Sacred Bones Records. iTunes on October 13, 2022, then all platforms on October 14. Twenty-one tracks, including Where Is Jeremy?, Halloween Ends (Main Title), Laurie's Theme Ends, The Cave, Kill the Cop, Corey and Michael, The Junk Yard, The Fight, The Procession and Halloween Ends. Davies mixed most tracks and played guitar. John Spiker mastered and mixed.

Singles: The Junk Yard (September 13, 2022) and The Procession (September 27, 2022).

Boy Harsher's song Burn It Down came out October 14, 2022, as a non-album single.

Vinyl came out January 20, 2023, including Waxwork Records' Sewer Hideout color with gatefold packaging and a printed inner sleeve. An expanded score with ten unreleased tracks came out October 3, 2025.

Chart peaks were 22 on US Soundtrack Albums and 36 on UK Soundtrack Albums. It won Best Score at the 2023 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards and was nominated for Best Original Score in a Horror Film at the 2022 Hollywood Music in Media Awards.

Soundtrack releases

Home Media

• Digital: November 15, 2022.
• Universal 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD: December 27, 2022. Dolby Atmos on 4K and Blu-ray, Dolby Digital 5.1 on DVD. Subtitles are English, Latin American Spanish and French Canadian. Runtimes are 1:50:41 on 4K and Blu-ray and 1:50:48 on DVD.
• Deleted and extended scenes: Michael Shakes Things Up, Joan's Bunny Slam, Corey Reflects Upon Himself, Ronald's Stuck at Work, Margo Gets the Boot, and Joan's Recipe for Disaster.
• Featurettes: Ending Halloween, Final Girl, No Place Like Haddonfield, A Different Threat, The Visions of Terror and Twisted Deaths. Also a gag reel and a commentary by David Gordon Green, Andi Matichak, Rohan Campbell, co-producer and first assistant director Atilla Salih Yücer, and production assistant Hugo Garza.
• Home video sales estimated by The Numbers: $3.4 million on DVD and $4.5 million on Blu-ray.

• Halloween Ends: The Official Movie Novelization, Titan Books, 2022.
• Waxwork Records and Sacred Bones Records: soundtrack LP, including the Sewer Hideout variant, January 2023; expanded score, October 2025.

Books and publishing

Replica props and masks

The catalog

Trailers & clips

Gallery

Posters & Key Art

Film Stills

Behind the Scenes

Press & Promo

Effects

Props

Alternate Art