WARNING: There are huge SPOILERS ahead for Halloween.
So if you’re yet to see David Gordon Green’s sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic the please do just that, get satisfyingly terrified, and return to read what the filmmaker had to say about its conclusion.
The ending of “Halloween” is both ambiguous and gratifying.
Having watched Michael Myers murder dozens of people on his way to his showdown with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), Karen Strode (Judy Greer) and Allyson (Andi Matichak), it is hugely satisfying to see Laurie, who, after the events of “Halloween,” has spent 40 years preparing to kill Michael, trap him inside her safe room, which she then sets ablaze.
However, despite the fact that Michael is quite clearly trapped inside the safe room, with no way of escaping past its metal bars, director David Gordon Green never actually shows us his burnt carcass.
I recently had the chance to speak to David Gordon Green about “Halloween,” during which time I brought up its tantalizing, somewhat open-ended conclusion.
Green explained, “Like John left us with a nice nod of ambiguity at the end of his 1978 film, I wanted to make sure that we weren’t hitting the nail too hard on the head. I wanted to give satisfying closure but not a definitive ending. That’s our goal, if we did our job right.”
Matichak also opened up about the conclusion during our discussion, adding, “This was an ending that just had the most power and felt right.”
“There definitely is a nostalgic value to it, considering what the ending to the original was. It stands on its own, though, and was just the most compelling ending for our story.”
But while it was intense, Matichak admitted that shooting the sequence was rather easy because of the caliber of actresses she was working with.
“Once I had read it, it is really awesome. It is a really great ending. Once we were there, everyone was really prepared and everyone knew the story really, really well.”
“Everyone just let it rip. Especially when you are working alongside Judy Greer and Jamie Lee Curtis, they made my job rather easy. Because their commitment was unparalleled to anything I have ever seen.”
“Every take, it didn’t matter who it was focused on, everyone was going full out. That created a great organic energy, which was very generous of everyone who was there.”
“Halloween” is now in cinemas.
