Halloween Kills is the title of the next entry in the never-ending horror franchise, and sure enough, Michael Myers looks ready to get up to some malevolent mischief in this new image from the sequel.
Now that we’re in January, we can officially say that Kills is on its way this year, after it was pushed back by 12 months due to the pandemic. And to promote one of the horror highlights of 2021, Total Film has released a fresh still from the pic, and also shared a new interview with director David Gordon Green.
The creepy image depicts The Shape in his natural habitat, skulking around in the dark in some poor, unsuspecting citizen’s house, butcher’s knife in his hand and ready to dice and slice. If you look closely, you can see that he’s a bit worse for the wear thanks to being trapped in Laurie Strode’s burning house in the last movie. And we know how he manages to escape from that thanks to the sneak peek clip released last year.
While chatting with Total Film, Green teased that the themes of Kills are very different from the norm for the franchise as it’ll examine not just the fear of being an individual against Myers but the paranoia that spins out of a whole community being under threat of a serial killer on the loose.
“It’s one thing to be afraid of the Bogey Man, to have someone who might be in the closet, under the bed, creeping around your house. But what we wanted to explore next was confusion, misinformation, and paranoia. What happens when fear goes viral? You can’t just stick your head under the covers any more.”
2018’s Halloween was innovative in some ways, but was also very consciously a familiar experience, harking back to the 1978 original. For Kills, though, Green wanted to throw audiences into the deep end and deliver something “explosive.”
“When we made the last one we wanted to find a way for someone who’s never seen the original to get up to speed with the story,” he continues. “But this one gets right to the action. It’s very aggressive. It’s more efficient. We wanted it to be an explosive middle before things get streamlined and personal again.”
Like Green reminds us above, Kills is the middle chapter in a trilogy. A year after it arrives, Halloween Ends will conclude the Michael/Laurie saga for good. We’ve heard that before, of course, but this time they really mean it. Jamie Lee Curtis is expected to have limited screen time in the next film before featuring in a starring role again in Ends, and as of now, Halloween Kills is scheduled to release on October 15th.
