After a year delay, Halloween Kills, the direct sequel to 2018 Halloween retconned reboot, will premiere October 15th, 2021 at the Venice Film Festival and, if the recently released trailer is any indication, it’s going to be killer. David Gordon Green’s Halloween retcon, taking place after the events of the 1978 original Halloween, has its detractors but has been celebrated for its return to form. And in the trailer for the upcoming Halloween Kills, the writing team of Green, Danny McBride, and Scott Teems have dug even deeper into the roots of Michael Myers.
While John Carpenter’s Halloween is not the first slasher movie, it did create the template on which the most familiar slasher films were built from Friday the 13th to Scream. David Gordon Green’s reboot and retcon Halloween played with this legacy by starting from the beginning and ignoring all of the sequels. Effectively, the events of 2018’s Halloween (the eleventh installment) occur forty years after the events of the original 1978 Halloween. 2018’s Halloween, top to bottom, featured references and echoes to the original film from the score to the beloved tracking shot (a nod to the opening tracking shot in the Carpenter Halloween). But that wasn’t quite enough for the retconned reboot to outrun criticism.
A popular horror series can’t disregard decades of entries without some pushback and Green’s Halloween left some die-hards disappointed over the “inversion” of Michael Myers to Laurie Strode being too prepared to it having too many jokes for a slasher. However, the most recent Halloween Kills trailer cuts straight to the point out the door and proves the Green team aren’t purists and this is a reboot that knows where it came from.
Among the homage cuts like Michael Myers escaping death through emergency personnel and, of course, the iconic score are pieces of the previous entries. Entries that are sometimes nonsensical when lined up in order but have nonetheless added a new dimension and definition to the whole.
Tommy Doyle, one of the kids babysat by Laurie Strode in the 1978 original, is back and all grown-up. Fans of the “Thorn Trilogy” section of the Halloween franchise will be disappointed by the lack of Paul Rudd, whose Ghostbusters Afterlife schedule unfortunately conflicted, but may be bolstered by the casting of Anthony Micheal Hall in the role. An honestly thoughtful choice in that if fan-favorite Paul Rudd isn’t available, rather than casting a Paul Rudd-like person, cast someone who can evoke the feeling of the era slasher films were most popular.
However, there are two other scenes in the intensely spoiler-heavy trailer for Halloween Kills that raise expectations that this may be the sequel to silence the haters. The reference to Halloween III: Season of the Witch and the unmasking of Michael Myers.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch technically exists outside the Halloween universe and is the only Halloween entry to not feature Michael Myers. For a minute, the Halloween concept was planned to go an anthology route with different stories under the Halloween umbrella but only the third installment, Season of the Witch, made it out under that concept. Season of the Witch is the bizarre tale of robots and cursed masks known as the Silver Shamrock Masks (paraphrased as the plot is intricate) in three designs. A skull, a jack-lantern and a green witch. While it’s hard to imagine what plot points from Season of the Witch can be included believably into Halloween Kills, the image alone is a nice tip of the knife to fans of the ambitious addition to the franchise.
The unmasking of Michael Myers has scared up the most interest, after all, the unmasking of any killer in a slasher film is the ultimate power move. Giving an unmasking to just any character or placing it in any sequel is a quick run to turning off an entire fanbase. But interesting to note, Halloween Kills unmasking is not the first Michael Myers unmasking. The 1978 original concluded with an unmasking and then Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers included an unmasking in 1989.
A point of contention with some fans with this retcon was the exclusion of the supernatural elements layered in through the “Thorn Trilogy" of installments 4, 5, and 6 (with the sixth entry Curse of Michael Myers featuring Paul Rudd). A hint in the Halloween Kills trailer of Laurie acknowledging there’s something other about Michael might mean this retcon isn’t completely done with the Thorn Story Arc.
Or maybe it’s all a big memory box of a film and no matter what, with the clear love David Gordon Green’s team has for this franchise, any fan will find something to like in 2021’s Halloween Kills. Getting Jamie Lee Curtis back for Laurie Strode and teasing Judy Greer as the next Halloween final girl has already been gift enough. A slasher unmasking has to be earned.
Halloween Kills premieres October 15th, 2021.