Four movies, ranging from horror to fantasy

Two Halloween-appropriate horror films, and two first-season finales of streaming shows:

Halloween Ends

Watching "Halloween Ends" made me feel like the 2005 viral meme of Tyra Banks (herself a victim of Michael Myers, in 2002's "Halloween: Resurrection") when she screamed, "I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for you!"

I will still defend 2018's "Halloween" as the best film in the franchise since the 1978 original, and its direct sequel, 2021's "Halloween Kills," started out with all the right ingredients to surpass its predecessor, as we flashed back to Donald Pleasence's Dr. Loomis, more than 40 years before, and then caught up with a group of Myers' other survivors from that night.

While "Halloween Kills" concluded its chapter with a rousing beatdown of Myers by the citizens of Haddonfield, Illinois, there was only one way such a showdown could have gone, which resulted in a number of characters who'd been built up as smarter dying very stupidly.

As a result, "Halloween Ends" opens with so few significant characters left that it has to devote the bulk of its running time to shoehorning in a completely new character, ill-fated former babysitter Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), to serve as a successor to both Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode and the now-50-year-old Myers.

"Halloween" films have made plenty of dumb mistakes over the decades, but "Halloween Kills" and "Halloween Ends" might be the first in the franchise to sabotage themselves by trying to be too complex in their moral messaging, as "Halloween Ends" alternates between echoing Loomis' assertions about evil being innate, while still depicting Corey as damned by his hometown for an accident that was devoid of malice.

For an ostensibly premeditated trilogy, "Halloween Ends" feels far too much like the writers wrapped up "Halloween Kills" and then said, "Shoot, now what do we do?"

That being said, "Halloween Ends" improbably, absolutely delivers the finality promised by its title, because there's no way Myers comes back from this film without another franchise reboot.

The Black Phone

Fortunately, Blumhouse Productions and the Peacock streaming service are here to lift your seasonal spirits with "The Black Phone," which was released in theaters this summer, but feels more suited to the fall.

This film is adapted from the short story by Joe Hill, Stephen King's son and a pretty decent horror writer who's only three years older than me, so believe me when I say the story's setting of late 1970s suburbia is rendered pitch-perfectly, right down to the sepia-saturated aesthetic of everything looking as tobacco-stained as the brown glass ashtrays at McDonald's.

Even the fears evoked by "The Grabber," the black van-driving boogeyman of "The Black Phone," speak to the era when concerns about "stranger danger" went mainstream, with media reports of child kidnappings filtering in from across the country.

Between "The Black Phone," Robert Eggers' "The Northman" and Marvel Studios' "Moon Knight," 2022 has been a boss year for Ethan Hawke, who plays "The Grabber" as a harrowing embodiment of young kids' suspicious beliefs that gaslighting grown-ups are intentionally trying to trap them into engaging in punishable behavior.

We're told that the Grabber's favorite game to play with the kids he's kidnapped and held captive in his soundproofed basement is "Naughty Boy," in which he waits for them to attempt escapes from their deliberately unlocked dungeon, so he can beat them with his belt. Sure enough, one of the most ominous shots in this film is when the camera pans up the stairs to a devil-masked Hawke, sitting with his belt in hand, his breathing growing louder and angrier as he waits for his latest victim to break his rules.

Hawke's intimidatingly mercurial persona is magnified by his distinctive mask, which has separate segments for the mouth, so he can alternate between a vicious Joker grin and a furiously displeased frown.

The Grabber's misfortune comes from abducting Finney Blake (Mason Thames), a young teen who's survived both drunken parental abuse and the bullying of his peers, and who is aided by advice from the spirits of the Grabber's past victims, who call Finney on the titular disconnected "Black Phone" in the Grabber's basement.

Witnessing Finney's well-earned triumph over the Grabber is practically a cathartic release, as is following his underestimated but tough-as-nails psychic sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) over the course of her contributions to her brother being found.

The Rings of Power (spoilers)

One of two first-season streaming series finales from last week, "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" has not yet managed to mangle the established continuity of J.R.R. Tolkien as badly as Kevin J. Anderson's successive "Dune" novels have done to the pre-mortem works of Frank Herbert, but given Amazon Prime Video's literally billion-dollar up-front commitment to this franchise, it's only a matter of time.

While online trolls were whining about Black elves and Black female dwarves, I was sitting here saying, "Um, Celeborn's not dead," and wondering about the TARDIS-like internal dimensions and travel speeds of Númenórean ships.

In a finale that twice attempted the shocking reveal of Sauron's secret identity, it's mildly amusing that the ethereal Galadriel was ultimately humanized by turning her into that one trainwreck of a chick we all know who has catastrophically terrible taste in men.

And yet, even though the entire first season of "The Rings of Power" amounted to an eight-episode-long pilot (credit to Gizmodo's James Whitbrook for that observation), I'm probably sticking with it into season two, because I grew up on far worse medievalist fantasy - shoutouts to 1981's "Dragonslayer" and 1993's "Quest of the Delta Knights" - and I've grown fond of not only proto-Gandalf and the proto-Hobbits, but also Disa, her husband Durin, and her husband's boyfriend Elrond.

She-Hulk (spoilers)

There is no middle ground on "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law." You either love it or hate it, and while the middle episodes of its first season admittedly sagged in terms of pacing (a not-uncommon phenomenon for modern TV shows), the last three of its nine episodes are so good that I can barely summarize them without sounding like a breathlessly enthusiastic grade-schooler.

The Abomination leads a group therapy session of obscure Marvel Comics characters including Man-Bull, El Águila, Porcupine, Saracen and the Wrecker! She-Hulk takes on Leapfrog - who fought Daredevil and Spider-Man in the comics - as a legal client, and faces off in court against Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, Daredevil himself!

As great as it is to see Cox back in the role, and trading lawyerly barbs with Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters, it's even more fun when Matt and Jen a) have their obligatory "superhero misunderstanding" fight, b) team up to fight a common foe, and c) hook up immediately afterward, leading to the iconic shot of Matt, in his Daredevil costume, doing the walk of shame from Jen's place the morning after.

But for me, the absolute best moment was when Jen, in keeping with her fourth-wall-breaking shenanigans under writer-artist John Byrne's pen in the comics, actually managed to break the fourth wall of Disney+, calling out every Marvel Cinematic Universe cliché that audiences have criticized, and asking all the questions that MCU fans want answered.