Every new Halloween film is another chance to deliver a sequel that won’t be shamefully retconned out of existence by later installments. This year’s release managed to pique fan interest early with the announcement that Jamie Lee Curtis will be reprising her role as legendary scream queen Laurie Strode. If her return means cleansing the series timeline of 2002’s hugely unpopular Halloween: Resurrection – which opened with the death of the franchise’s original heroine – then it’s a sacrifice that most of us will be willing to make.
That being said, we’re getting slight echoes of Resurrection’s reality TV storyline with the upcoming slasher, with a new synopsis suggesting that the murderous Michael Myers’ tenth outing (that’s eleven Halloween films minus the Myers-free third chapter) could possibly be taking something of a film-within-a-film, meta-horror approach:
A British documentary crew comes to the States to visit Michael in prison for a retrospective of the maniac’s night of terror — but their project becomes way more interesting when Myers escapes custody, retrieves his signature mask and seeks revenge on Laurie, with others naturally being part of his impressive career body count along the way.
In the decades following the fateful Halloween night that forever altered the former babysitter’s life, Laurie has armed and prepped herself for Michael’s inevitable return — to the detriment of her family, including daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak).
While you could hardly be blamed if the franchise’s rocky history has left you a little skeptical about this next one, there are certainly reasons to be optimistic. For starters, David Gordon Green is easily one of the most acclaimed directors to handle a Halloween film, earning plaudits in recent years for his award-winning indie dramas like Stronger and Prince Avalanche. He also worked with Vice Principals cowriters Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley to pen the script.
Granted, it’s not a creative team you’d expect to be working on a horror movie, but we’ll see how they handle the latest (and purportedly final) clash between Laurie and Michael when Halloween arrives in cinemas October 19th, 2018. In the meantime, you can expect the first trailer to hit this Friday.
