John Carpenter Thinks The New Halloween Score Is Better Than The Original

A few months ago, Halloween director David Gordon Green recalled how composer and filmmaker John Carpenter was apparently so attached to the theme music of his original 1978 slasher film that he’s kept it as his ringtone. So when Carpenter implies that the score for the new Blumhouse movie might be even better, it’s not to be taken lightly.

Granted, it’s probably in Carpenter’s best interest to hype up the upcoming movie’s soundtrack, seeing how it was also composed by him. Still, speaking to Revolver, the renowned auteur explained how modern technology has helped improved the process of recording, leading to higher quality audio.

“Well, we started by getting the themes from the original movie and moving them into the computer. Using new technology, we just brought them back to life — we put new life into it, really. The sounds that are available to us today, they’re just so much more modern and so much better than the original stuff. I mean, even the audio quality of the sound is improved.”

While the original Halloween saw Carpenter do much of the work himself, including but not limited to the soundtrack, this next flick was a more collaborative process for which the composer took ongoing pointers from Green.

“The strategy of the soundtrack was I took my cues from the director, David Gordon Green, who in spotting sessions told me, “I want something here, I want something there,'” the filmmaker confirmed. “Cody [Carpenter] and Danny [Davies] and I were there to please him. So it’s a combination of the old music, refurbished and reinvented, and new music.”

Not only was Carpenter pleased with the score, but he also seems very happy with how the film as a whole turned out, calling the Halloween sequel the best entry in the series since the first installment. Sure enough, the critics seem mostly on board with Carpenter’s assessment, and based on recent box office projections, the feature should be faring even better on a commercial level. At this rate, future outings for the infamous Michael Myers seem all but inevitable, with plans reportedly already in motion for the sequel.

We’ll let you know more about that when we hear it, but in the meantime, you can find out if the new Halloween, along with its soundtrack, is as good as Carpenter says it is when the movie hit theaters on October 19th.