Too Smart for Slashers? Halloween Ends Alternate Endings Were Rejected as Too Cerebral

Of all the labels anyone has slapped on Halloween Ends, 'too intellectual' was not on my bingo card. But Jamie Lee Curtis says that exact concern killed two alternate endings that almost made it into the movie.

She lays out the what-ifs in the new book 'Horror's New Wave: 15 Years of Blumhouse' (out now), with excerpts circulating via Bloody Disgusting. Fun tidbit: the finale was at one point titled 'Halloween Dies.'

The endings they didn't use

• The mask factory finale: The original ending was set in a mask factory, with a conveyor belt pumping out Michael Myers masks. The point was pretty on the nose by design: put the mask on, anyone can be a monster. The setting inevitably evokes Halloween III: Season of the Witch (and yeah, you can feel a little Child's Play 2 factory energy in there). Curtis says the idea was a big swing that ultimately felt too heady for a final chapter and didn't quite satisfy as an ending.

  "We're all monsters if we put on the mask. It's not just Michael. It's all of us, if we wear the mask."

• The Laurie-Michael transference: They also explored and even shot a version where, in the act of killing Michael, Laurie briefly becomes him. The victory curdles: she realizes she carries a piece of Michael inside her. That would force her to isolate for the rest of her life, essentially resetting to the guarded, solitary Laurie we met decades ago. Curtis describes it as too dark and too profound to cap off a 40-year journey.

What we got instead

They pivoted to the funeral-like procession: Haddonfield quietly turns out to witness the end of Michael Myers. After that, Laurie goes home for the last stretch of the movie.

The final shot: Michael's mask sitting on a table in her house. Curtis says the ambiguity there is intentional and, in her mind, lands a similar message to the mask-factory concept without turning the finale into a thesis statement.

Quick refresher on Halloween Ends

Directed by David Gordon Green (who also did Halloween 2018 and Halloween Kills), the movie was written by Green, Danny McBride, Paul Brad Logan, and Chris Bernier. Story-wise, we jump four years after Kills. Laurie is living with her granddaughter Allyson and finishing her memoir. Michael hasn't been seen. After decades letting him steer her life, she's trying to ditch the fear and choose something like normal. Then Corey Cunningham gets accused of killing a kid he was babysitting, and that lights the fuse on a fresh run of violence that forces Laurie to face the thing she can't control, one last time.

The irony here is kind of delicious: for a sequel that sparked plenty of debate, the two scrapped endings were tossed for being too intellectual or too bleak. The factory would have been a gutsy nod to Halloween III; the transference would have sent Laurie into exile. Instead, we got the town's quiet goodbye and a mask on a table daring you to read into it.

Which version would you have wanted: the mask factory statement piece or the bleaker Laurie-absorbs-the-evil twist?