David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills is the latest installment in his horror trilogy which reinvigorated the franchise by eschewing the continuity of Halloween II and all the films that came after it, starting anew with 2018’s Halloween as a direct sequel to the 1978 original. Or did it?
The film sees the original scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis reprising her role as Laurie Strode, the babysitter who was terrorized in the original film. Other characters from the film also make a comeback, such as Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards), and Marion Chambers (Nancy Stevens).
In a scene where Tommy is recounting his survival story, he mentions Lindsey’s babysitter was executed. We then see a flashback of Annie from the original film spliced in with footage from 1981’s Halloween II, a sequel that is no longer considered canon in this timeline, as ComicBook notes.
The footage is of Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers) seeing his daughter’s body on a stretcher, a key moment for the character. We can now consider that one part of the 1981 film canon to the new trilogy, despite throwing out other plot threads from Halloween II, such as Laurie Strode and Michael Myers being long-lost siblings.
Producer Malek Akkad even addressed the reference in a recent interview.
“Well, we reference so many nice little moments in the franchise I would say. That’s really down to David and the writers just being huge fans. I know the fans love it, the die hard fans go crazy when they see one of these references,” he told Showbiz Cheat Sheet.
You can catch Halloween Kills in theaters and streaming on Peacock now.