Sean Parker
In the Haddonfield-like city of Larson, residents are accustomed to flyers sporting the word ‘missing.’ The town’s spirited history marred by the long reign of terror wrought by masked serial killer Pale Face has left an indelible mark and an unease that his disappearance was never the end of his killing spree. Seventeen years after the events, his presence continues to be felt throughout the once tormented location. The residents of Larson were told he was gone, but there remains a nagging feeling in every new missing flyer that He Never Left at all.
At a sleazy motel, a wanted fugitive lays low. Gabriel (Colin Cunningham) details the actions that have placed him in this predicament and plastered his face on televisions everywhere to his partner Carly (Jessica Staples), who is on the verge of closing the door on the Gabriel chapter of her life. Gabriel has a means of escaping Larson. All he has to do is stay put for a few days and answer the phone when it rings. That task becomes increasingly difficult when he’s certain that he hears a murder in the next room over.
The atmosphere gets tense in James Morris’ He Never Left. The film melds the slasher subgenre with a police procedural crime thriller, offering two intertwining stories revolving around Gabriel’s pursuit and unearthing something long buried in the process. Like Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, He Never Left explores the criminal and the US Marshalls trailing him. Like Psycho, some shadowy things are happening at this motel. And like Halloween Ends, the trauma of a terrorized town is on full display. The way Morris mixes these elements creates a potently dramatic presentation. Typically, you hear the term slasher movie, and the expectation is on par with teenagers doing teenage things and getting killed for that. He Never Left is the slasher movie all grown up.
There’s no doubt that Halloween Ends is one of the most divisive slasher films of all time, but there are many interesting sentiments expressed in the film that shouldn’t be dismissed. While Laurie Strode is still the front-and-center protagonist, the film attempts to bridge the menacing aspects of Michael Myers’ legacy of terror. While Halloween Ends gets a little too in the weeds with Haddonfield’s citizens, there’s something to be said for the small-town paranoia of waiting for the boogeyman’s return. He Never Left expresses this crippling notion very well through visual cues and momentary interactions instead of Ends empathetic anthological approach specific to the trauma inflicted on specific townspeople. He Never Left follows in the footsteps of When the Trashman Knocks as a rebellion against the final entry in the Halloween franchise (so far) and shows a better way to utilize some of its elements, even building off of its lasting mantra: evil never dies.
Cunningham gives a wonderfully unhinged performance as the uneasy killer on the run. I’ll admit to being a fan since his deliciously creepy portrayal of the conniving Julian Slink in Blood Drive. He genuinely throws his whole self into that role and creates the most charming persona. As the flawed protagonist of He Never Left, he does it again, embodying a different kind of bad guy: one with empathy and regret. The result is paranoid, panicked, remorseful, and angry, which helps create tense interactions between Gabriel and the rest of the characters.
Observational viewers will become keenly aware of the murderous motel aspects of He Never Left’s setup. Morris and co-writers Michael Ballif and Cunningham play the Psycho-tinged opening to offer clues to them on a silver platter. He Never Left welcomes these early suspicions and manages a few surprises through plot and thematic pivots. While complex and well-constructed, He Never Left drifts slightly away from genre storytelling, rarely going for cheap jump scares. The crime elements of the film deliver psychological paranoia while the horror elements move the film along. Philosophical discussions on the lifecycles of cicadas offer a riveting parallel to the serial killer habits in the film. However, the actual stalk and slay portions aren’t as intrusively bold. The movie gets caught up in the initial morality aspect of a fugitive witnessing a murder and doesn’t fully account for some of Gabriel’s choices toward the end.
He Never Left’s conclusion also creates a commentary on unsolved cold cases and the safety of communities where missing flyers may be more prevalent than most. It’s a macabre thought that no one thinks too much about when they see these flyers in passing, quickly forgetting them and going about their business. Regardless, the reality is quite shocking, with Statista reporting more than 500,000 missing person reports filed in the US in 2022. The majority are found relatively quickly, according to a World Population Review report of the numbers from 2021. Still, a staggering 20,000 missing persons and 14,000 unidentified victim cases remain open from that year.
Morris’ film won’t be for every horror fan. Those only watching for slasher kills and gore will be thoroughly disappointed, but He Never Left isn’t interested in inhabiting your head for a few hours before bedtime with the same thing you’ve seen a million times. It hits you with a deep, unsettling uneasiness about the world you live in and imposes thematic reflections on accountability and inaction. Those very real stats on a very haunting issue plant a seed about the lives of the people surrounding you and victims who never return home, and it’s very effective in elevating concern. Though Pale Face’s on-screen kill count may not rise to meet the likes of his predecessors, the dark spot He Never Left leaves on the viewer is akin to that paranoid town. Is it over now? Or should we ignore the problem and hope it all goes away?
He Never Left is currently playing in select theaters and will be available to purchase on VOD on November 5.
