Halloween Ends Features A Meta Reference To Another John Carpenter Classic
Warning: This article contains spoilers for "Halloween Ends."
Despite Halloween being the favorite holiday of horror fans, everyone loves a good Easter egg hunt. John Carpenter's original "Halloween" from 1978 is filled with little moments that in hindsight have become a treasure trove for horror fanatics, the most obvious examples being the William Shatner "Star Trek" mask serving as the base for Michael Myers' face and little Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews) and Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) watching "The Thing From Another World" while being babysat by Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). The latter has become a favorite trivia fact to pull out at parties by horror fans, as John Carpenter would obviously go on to direct a remake of the film, his 1982 masterpiece "The Thing."
Horror movies often sneak in their favorite horror films within the story's universe, usually to serve as additional visual storytelling. 1996's "Scream" contains a memorable scene with Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) watching Carpenter's "Halloween" and his brush with Ghostface mimics what he's watching on screen, while countless films feature characters watching George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" because it's in the public domain and therefore, free.
With the Blumhouse and David Gordon Green trilogy of "Halloween" films coming to a close with "Halloween Ends," it makes poetic sense that the film would include a deeply meta-reference to John Carpenter. In the film's opening sequence, teenage Corey (Rohan Campbell) is spending his Halloween night babysitting a little boy named Jeremy (Jaxon Goldenberg), and decides to show him a horror movie despite the parental warning that scary movies are a bit too much for the boy. The film in question? John Carpenter's "The Thing."
A full circle meta moment
With "Halloween Ends" serving as the alleged completion of the saga between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, it's a thoughtful nod to Carpenter's original "Halloween" by including a scene featuring a babysitter watching "The Thing" with a kid. It's one of those horror easter eggs that have viewers turning into the Leo DiCaprio pointing meme from "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," and serves as a perfect full circle meta moment bringing the beginning and end together after over four decades. Alas, Corey's babysitting ventures end equally as tragic as Laurie's ventures all those years ago, with Jeremy dying in a horrific accident.
"When [John] Carpenter first made his Halloween film in 1978, there was the working title of 'The Babysitter Murders,' and one of the things we wanted to look at was the subgenre of that," Green said to ComicBook.com. "We wanted to have an opening, a cold open that no one knew anyone, none of these players were of the legacy of 'Halloween' so we could start to point towards something that was a little different from our previous two installments."
So the next time you're tasked with babysitting on Halloween, perhaps elect to watch a movie other than "The Thing from Another World" or "The Thing." It may be a beautiful meta moment in a horror franchise, but bad stuff seems to happen whenever these movies play on screen. Just a thought.