New Halloween Footage Description, Plus Jamie Lee on Justice for Laurie

With the new Halloween, Universal and Blumhouse continues the story of the original Halloween movie, bringing back original characters to face what could be a final confrontation.

At San Diego Comic Con 2018, Hall H attendees got to take their first real look at Michael Myers in David Gordon Green‘s Halloween, which seeks to put a timeless terror in our modern day. The Jason Blum produced project is co-written by Green and Danny McBride, the duo known for Pineapple Express and Eastbound and Down, which has garnered interest in the film being a seeming departure from a genre they’re known for. Not only that but it’s a direct sequel to Halloween 2.

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In the footage we got to see during the presentation, the brutality of Myers is showcased as he creeps into various homes on Halloween night. Totally jarring, Myers targets women in their homes while the kids are out trick or treating. First, a woman in the kitchen with a hammer while a baby cries in the other room. The action for that one mostly happens off camera making the violence unimaginable, but you’re on the edge of your seat as he picks up his signature knife and passes the crying baby. Making his way through the costumed crowds, Myers approaches teenagers in a car, very reminiscent of his usual M.O. but lets them drive away. That subversion of the trope, at least in this scene raises questions about whether the kills are more calculated or a message. Mostly because the second kill we see is another mother, at home alone, who he watches from outside and then stalks around the house, letting himself in to murder her at her window in a very bloody and disturbingly unsettling way.

Green completely nails the tone and tension building cut by the violence. Any doubtful fans should concede that in comedy its all about timing and delivering the punchline, in that way it’s not so dissimilar from what makes horror great and believable. In what we’ve seen so far, they deliver on that and what makes Michael so terrifying. It’s probably better we didn’t see a scene with Laurie as a lot of reboot-quels tend to bank on the nostalgia of returning characters. The scene we saw was the most on edge I’ve seen a Hall H audience be, completely quiet as the scene unfolded with jumps at the kills.

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It was awesome and you see why John Carpenter gave the film his blessing and a new score. We didn’t hear a full musical cue in the footage but more like a blending of classic themes with a little bit of new in a piano key. During the panel Green mentioned that they had asked Carpenter to lean into inspirations from not only the original score but also a little bit of Christine and Big Trouble in Little China.

Afterwards we got a chance to find out some more about the film from Jamie Lee Curtis and learned what brought her back on board was perhaps justice for Laurie Strode.

“Justice for Laurie is a great hashtag but justice only comes when you face the threat head on. She was 17 years old when she faced Michael Myers in a random act of violence. This is a girl who 40 years later didn’t have any mental health services, she’s carried the trauma and PTSD.”

To Curtis, Michael represents an evil that seeks to make victims out of women, out of girls like Laurie who had to cope with a world that discarded her after the incidents of the original films. Proud to return to a character who is ready to fight she shared, “She’s taking back her narrative. You get justice when you fight for it. Justice isn’t given to you without fighting and demanding it. And I think that what you see in the movie and it’s very exciting.”

Halloween opens October 19th.