As fans have been prepared to expect, Blumhouse’s new Halloween will remove every previous movie in the series from continuity except the 1978 original, meaning that the 2018 edition will be a direct follow-up to the events of John Carpenter’s iconic horror flick, tuning into the lives of Laurie Strode and her tormentor Michael Myers 40 years later.
However, director David Gordon Green and his writers have promised that, though they might not be canon anymore, the new movie will be filled with easter eggs and references to all those sequels of varying quality that fans nonetheless hold dear. In fact, in today’s new trailer, a neat callback to the events of 1981’s Halloween II can be found.
In the opening scene of the trailer, Michael Myers sneaks into the backdoor of a house to find himself his weapon of choice: a butcher’s knife. The unfortunate owner of the house is a woman with a pink robe and curlers holding a sandwich. We don’t see what happens to her, but the following shriek tells us all we need to know.
This is a close homage to a similar scene in the 1981 sequel in which Haddonfield resident Mrs. Elrod, likewise dressed in robe and curlers, is making a sandwich for her dozing husband. In the background, the viewer sees that Myers has gotten into her home and pinches a knife. On this occasion, Mrs. Elrod only gets a fright when she notices blood on the cutting board. Check it out in the clip below and you’ll see what we mean.
Of course, something that won’t be replicated from Halloween II is the reveal that Laurie and Michael are siblings, a long-held fact that’s been waved away for this movie. It’s been explained that the filmmakers wanted to bring back some of the mystery that made Michael Myers so chilling in the original, which was perhaps dimmed when we found out about his backstory in later entries.
We’ll see if that was the right move when the Shape returns to theaters when Halloween arrives on October 19th.