While the first two Halloween movies are focused cat-and-mouse games between Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and faceless killer Michael Myers, but Halloween III: Season of the Witch blew all that apart. After a ludicrous, wonderful attempt to turn the Halloween series into an anthology, the series made increasingly silly decisions. Michael Myers would never again approach the pure, archetypal evil of the first Halloween. The screenwriting team behind the new Halloween want to ensure they don’t make the same mistakes.
Bloody Disgusting listened to the Jim Norton & Sam Roberts show so you don’t have to, relating an interview with Danny McBride, who is writing the new Halloween with David Gordon Green. The two have collaborated on Eastbound & Down, Vice Principals, Your Highness and Pineapple Express. And now they’re doing a slasher, with the full backing of Halloween director John Carpenter, who might even contribute a score.
“It’s not a reboot, it’s not going to be a rehash. It’s a continuation of Michael Myers — where we’re choosing to continue it from, you’ll have to see when the movie comes out,” McBride said.
Like Superman Returns, which ignores most of the Superman sequels that followed Superman II, the 2018 Halloween will sync with original continuity somewhere. Maybe. But really, that’s not the point, as McBride explains. It’s more about flensing Halloween back to the bone:
“I’d already seen all these movies, but I’ve really been studying them now and just thinking about all the people that have been hired to make a Michael Myers movie. Just trying to avoid any mistakes that those people might’ve made. The first Halloween is scary as shit. And the second Halloween is scary, but not as scary. And then from there, it isn’t as scary. And I really think what happens with it is that he basically becomes Frankenstein. No matter what anyone hits him with, he’s not going to die. There’s no suspense.”
That means no more supernatural, invincible Michael Myers and no more Cult of Thorn. It also means cutting away the personal links between Strode and Myers. “We’re just trying to play with that. Make him real. Not make him real by giving him some crazy backstory either. Just getting back to the basics. Even the moment they made Laurie and Michael Myers siblings — it also makes it not quite as scary. So all that kind of stuff to us… those are the things that took an amazing idea and took it somewhere it wasn’t quite as effective.”
While many horror remakes and reboots have been disasters, one that succeeded with a similar strategy was 2009’s Friday the 13th. But achieving the same trashy brutality as the original Friday the 13th is unambitious in the face of Green and McBride chasing the perfect slasher movie.
Slashers have been on the decline for years. We’re far removed from Scream ’s 90s. But maybe it’s time again. Time for the killers to rise. A new Halloween could be a great flagbearer for the intensely misanthropic genre. It’s up to Green and McBride. We’ll see how they did Oct. 19, 2018.
