Were it not for COVID-19, we’d be enjoying Halloween Kills right now. David Gordon Green’s 2018 reworking of the franchise breathed new life into Michael Myers, ignoring the sequels and positioning itself as a direct continuation of the 1978 original. In 2021, Michael Myers will be back once again (after having escaped being trapped in a burning house) to menace not just Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode, but some old friends from back in the day, too.
Universal released a new promo for the film yesterday teasing the returning characters, which include Kyle Richards as Lindsey Wallace, Nancy Stephens as Nurse Marion Chambers, Robert Longstreet as Lonnie Elam and Anthony Michael Hall as Tommy Doyle. They all survived Michael’s initial rampage, but something tells me only a few of them will make it into Halloween Ends in 2022.
Green laid out his philosophy for the movie in an interview with Empire, saying that:
“The first one was more about Laurie’s life of isolation after Michael and her attempts at revenge. It was personal. This is more about the unraveling of a community into chaos. It’s about how fear spreads virally.”
That sounds pretty damn topical for 2020, though honestly, I’d probably rather deal with a homicidal knife-wielding maniac in town rather than a killer virus (at least the maniac can be run over with a car, exploded or shot). Then again, Michael Myers is at least happy to comply with wearing a mask in public.
Halloween creator John Carpenter is also back with a new synth score, which is awesome given that his work for the 2018 film was one of the best things about it. Over the summer he said that the movie is complete and hyped up the carnage that’s coming our way next year, saying:
“The cut is done. They’ll mix it in New York in the next week or so. Then it will be in the can. My work is all done. The movie is something else. It’s fun, intense and brutal, a slasher movie times one hundred, big time. It’s huge. I’ve never seen anything like this: the kill count!”
That’s music to my ears. After all, you can’t half ass the blood n’ guts if you’re going to title the film Halloween Kills. Here’s hoping the year flies by and we see Michael back on the big screen where he belongs in 2021.