SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains mild spoilers for Halloween Ends. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy is a series of movies chock full of cool behind-the-scenes stories and interesting trivia. From Jamie Lee Curtis voicing the crying baby in 2018’s Halloween, to Bob Odenkirk’s unusual cameo in Halloween Kills, the filmmakers clearly had a lot of fun making adding special ideas to the projects. The newly released Halloween Ends very much continues this trend – with one standout moment including the double-whammy of cameo and deep cut reference.
The next time you watch Halloween Ends, pay attention during the Halloween party sequence – specifically the moment where Allyson (Andi Matichak) gets “flashed” by another party-goer. The actor playing the Flasher is filmmaker Nick Castle, who is forever tied to the Halloween franchise having played Michael Myers a.k.a. The Shape in John Carpenter’s original movie. Castle previously reprised his slasher role for one scene in 2018’s Halloween and again for 2021’s Halloween Kills, but David Gordon Green wanted to do something special for his trilogy-capper, including Halloween Ends' ending.
As featured in the video above, I recently interviewed the Halloween Ends co-writer/director at the film’s press day in New York, and at the end of our conversation I specifically asked about Nick Castle’s cameo. Green started by explaining that he wanted to let James Jude Courtney play Michael Myers for the entirety of the film (the actor having played the character the majority of the time in the previous two movies), but he felt a particular loyalty to Castle and still wanted him to be on screen. Said the filmmaker,
I'm so passionate about the extraordinary work that Jim Courtney has done with our Shape that I wanted to make sure that our final presentation of his performance in this role was a hundred percent him. And I've become very close to Nick and I love him. He reads first drafts of my scripts now. He's a mentor of mine, and I love to get his notes. I love to keep him creatively involved, and he's just a wonderful, optimistic personality that if you come to know him, you come to love him.
Continuing, David Gordon Green said that he decided to get together with Nick Castle to ideate a role he could play in Halloween Ends. Castle was reticent to take on a role without a mask, but Green convinced him to put on a trench coat and a skin-tone bodysuit with human organs on display:
I'd ask him, I said, 'Michael Myers is taken care of. I want Jim to be a hundred percent Michael in this movie. What can we do with you? Because I can't not have you in the movie.' So he's like, 'Well, I've never acted before. I'm not an actor.' And I said, 'Oh, we'll see about that.' So we gave him a fun cameo in like this Slim Goodbody kind of outfit. It was great to get him in front of the camera without a mask being Nick. And you can see that infectious smile that he has.
The Nick Castle cameo in Halloween Ends – which he teased back in June – is by itself a wonderful Easter eggs for fans… but it doesn’t stop there. While showing off his costume, Castle’s Flasher asks Allyson, “See anything you like?” which is a quote from the original Halloween (specifically when P.J. Soles' Lynda sees Michael Myers with a sheet over his head pretending to be John Michael Graham's Bob). If you don't recall, you might want to rewatch the Halloween movies in order. David Gordon Green gave full credit for the line to Castle, saying,
Oh, and it was his idea for the line, which is a call back to the original.
Should you care to revisit this fun cameo/reference moment in Halloween Ends, the film is now in theaters and available to stream for Peacock subscribers. Our 2022 Movie Release Calendar has the full list of features set to come out between now and the end of the year, and if you’re interested purely in those of the scary variety, our Upcoming Horror Movies guide has you covered.
