Editorials

[Editorial] ‘Halloween Ends’ and Horror’s Love Affair With “Final Chapters”

Published

5 years ago

August 2, 2019

For a genre so heavy on gruesome death, horror certainly struggles with endings.

Horror franchises often simply refuse to die, extending infinitely into the future. This is certainly true of the Halloween series. Since it started in 1978 with John Carpenter’s undoubted slasher classic Halloween, the bedlam in Haddonfield has extended over four decades, with Michael Myers apparently dying on many occasions, only to emerge from the ashes with a kitchen knife in his hand. At the recent San Diego Comic-Con, Blumhouse unveiled two more movies in the spooky saga, following up the 2018 franchise reboot. Halloween Kills will arrive in 2020, followed by Halloween Ends in 2021.

It’s the second one of these that’s most interesting, suggesting that it will bring the franchise to a close – 43 years after it first graced cinema screens. But horror doesn’t like to say goodbye that easily.

The trend for declaring horror franchises to be dead, before reanimating them into a shambling, undead version of themselves is something that dates back many years. Perhaps the first example of the phenomenon is 1984’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, which was the fourth entry in a franchise that now comprises a dozen movies in total. At the time, Paramount Pictures was acutely aware of the declining popularity of slasher films and used the title as a marketing hook for a movie that was genuinely intended to be the climactic entry.

In what would become a trend for movies billed as “final chapters”, Friday made solid money at the box office. It tripled its budget and still sits as the fifth highest-grossing movie in the entire series. Not even a year later, they went back to the well with another outing for Jason Voorhees’ hockey mask, albeit with someone else behind it. Less than a decade after that, in 1993, Paramount sold the franchise rights to New Line Cinema for Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. This one didn’t get the same box office bump and did put an end to the franchise for a good few years until Jason X in 2001.

That box office spike is a crucial reason why the gimmick of finality so often rears its head in successful horror franchises. 2009’s The Final Destination remains the highest-grossing entry in that particular series, while Resident Evil: The Final Chapter raked in $312m globally in 2017 – the franchise’s best total to date. Sure enough, neither of these films are truly final. Final Destination 5 hit cinemas in 2011 and a reboot of the Resident Evil franchise is currently being developed, with 47 Meters Down director Johannes Roberts on board as writer-director. The reboot was announced just four months after The Final Chapter was released.

It’s not always a foolproof strategy, though. Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, which was released in 1991, reversed the disappointing box office decline of the fifth Elm Street movie, but did not hit the heights of the third and fourth installment. When Robert Englund’s iconic serial killer made his return for the meta New Nightmare, the box office plummeted, but the crossover event of Freddy vs. Jason in 2003 returned him to franchise-high takings, leaving the supposed “final nightmare” in the dust.

As with the first supposedly definitive Friday the 13th franchise closer, the idea of labeling a movie as final is sometimes done out of pure commercial necessity. Sometimes people are just tired of seeing a franchise over and over again, but might see one more if it means they never have to return to that world. Certainly, many will be hoping that The Last Sharknado marks the final time they have to see Tara Reid as a shark-slaying cyborg…right?

This was the case with 2010’s Saw: The Final Chapter – also known as Saw 3D. Lionsgate had originally planned a two-part finale for the franchise, but rolled all of the ideas into one movie after the miserable box office performance of Saw VI – well in excess of the gradual decline that had been playing out at the multiplex since Saw III featured John Kramer’s death by power saw.

The gambit didn’t necessarily pay off, with The Final Chapter beating the meager box office of its predecessor, but falling below even the total of the first Saw movie in 2004 domestically. When the franchise returned with Jigsaw in 2017, it was yet another step back, with that film landing considerably short of The Final Chapter. With Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson on board for yet another revamp though, rumors of Saw‘s death have certainly been greatly exaggerated.

While delivering a supposed “final chapter” is a commonly used marketing ploy to inject life into a flagging horror franchise, it’s clear that it isn’t always a success. Genre audiences are wise and cynical enough now to see through the transparent fiction that such titles often prove to be. No one will be surprised if another Sharknado is announced, or if Tom Six decides to return with a follow-up to The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence), despite the promise in its title.

So on that note, will Halloween Ends actually mark the last of Michael Myers? The honest answer is that it probably won’t.

In fact, Danny McBride – co-writer of the 2018 Halloween and the upcoming sequels – has already declared his own certainty that their movies will not be the final outings for Michael Myers and the Halloween universe. He told SlashFilm that there is “no way” their films will mark the end and said that “10 years from now there’ll be another group of knuckleheads” who will put together their take on the series.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. And that’s the final word on this.

Or is it?

Tom Beasley

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Editorials

Finding Faith and Violence in ‘The Book of Eli’ 14 Years Later

Published

1 day ago

April 22, 2024

Luiz H. C.

Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.

To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.

Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.

After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.

SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?

Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.

For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.

Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.

Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?

AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?

Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.

From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.

The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.

Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.

With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…

There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.