JOHN CARPENTER, CODY CARPENTER & DANIEL DAVIES
Halloween Ends OST (Sacred Bones)
If we pretend for a second that prehistoric slasher franchise Halloween will definitely come to a close with Halloween Ends – the third film in David Gordon Green’s mixed bag of a legacy trilogy – then what a corker this soundtrack would be to go out on. As with the last two, the Halloween Ends OST is the combined stylings of series architect John Carpenter, his son Cody, and Daniel Davies, and while you might think there can’t be much more to squeeze out of a four-decades-old saga (much like the films themselves), this delivers in shovel loads.
While Halloween Kills’ soundtrack, which I reviewed previously, felt more like ambient spookiness to set the seasonal mood, Ends has a sonic narrative structure that deserves your full attention. Opener Where Is Jeremy is a deliciously dark nailbiter with a rich, pulsing bassline accompanying strangled strings and Carpenter’s signature harping synths. Other standouts include slowburner Evil Eyes, the broilingly aggressive Kill The Cop and the menace-filled Before Her Eyes – which, given its late placement in the running order, could well be the post-climax of Michael Myers and his forever victim Laurie Strode’s last standoff.
The penultimate Cherry Blossoms, meanwhile, is a pleasant surprise. Hinting at a bittersweet aftertaste to whatever this final confrontation will entail, you can almost see the petals falling from autumnal Haddonfield trees, maybe signifying the Myers/Strode family feud has indeed been laid to rest and the Illinois town can enjoy more fragrant things ahead…
Accompanying lyrical track Burn It Down, from Massachusetts’ dark synthwave duo Boy Harsher, is a perfectly-matched chaser, as well as the polar opposite of Hunter’s Moon by Ghost, a karaoke hair-metal throwback that featured on …Kills. Like all artists of the genre, and the silent ‘Shape’, Carpenter looms inescapably large in Burn It Down and its instrumental remixes, the timelessness of both his cinematic and musical work clear. Even if Halloween Ends really is the end of Michael Myers, he and his creator’s mythology and influence will, like evil, never really die.
words HANNAH COLLINS
