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Everybody loves the iconic intro themes for Hulu (“vuuuUUUWAH!”) and Netflix (“BuhDUMMM!”), but horror-based streaming service Shudder is looking to put those little noises to shame with an actual theme song written by John Carpenter. Apparently, Shudd…
Everybody loves the iconic intro themes for Hulu (“vuuuUUUWAH!”) and Netflix (“BuhDUMMM!”), but horror-based streaming service Shudder is looking to put those little noises to shame with an actual theme song written by John Carpenter. Apparently, Shudder is not content to just stick it to its competitors with a…
Just about every horror movie is enhanced when it’s accompanied by one of John Carpenter’s tense, synth-driven theme songs. Carpenter’s latest jam will now be the intro music you hear before every horror movie you watch on the streaming service Shudder.
Carpenter composed the theme music, a two-minute long track and a five-second version, that will pre-roll before movies on Shudder, a streaming service that specializes in horror cinema. The moniker will accompany the site’s logo and intro animation in front of both movies and TV shows on the service.
Hear the eerie, pulsating theme music via Entertainment Weekly.
Also Read: ‘Halloween’ 40th Anniversary: John Carpenter Says Why One Scary Scene Made Jamie Lee Curtis Laugh
Carpenter is the director and composer for “Halloween,” “Escape From New York,” “The Thing” and many more, and recently wrote and performed the score for David Gordon Green’s remake of “Halloween.”
He’s also touring along with his band performing his own solo work and beefed up versions of his classic themes, concluding with a show in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Palladium.
According to Entertainment Weekly, subscribers to Shudder will first hear Carpenter’s theme when it debuts on Oct. 31 as part of a 24-hour marathon streaming marathon of the 1978 version of “Halloween,” which will stream for free via the service’s Shudder TV.
‘Halloween’ 40th Anniversary: John Carpenter Says Why One Scary Scene Made Jamie Lee Curtis Laugh
Rotten Tomatoes Apologizes After Mistakenly Killing Off the Very Much Alive John Carpenter
John Carpenter on Why He’d Rather Be a Rock Star: ‘Making Movies Is Horrifying’
Just about every horror movie is enhanced when it’s accompanied by one of John Carpenter’s tense, synth-driven theme songs. Carpenter’s latest jam will now be the intro music you hear before every horror movie you watch on the streaming service Shudder.
Carpenter composed the theme music, a two-minute long track and a five-second version, that will pre-roll before movies on Shudder, a streaming service that specializes in horror cinema. The moniker will accompany the site’s logo and intro animation in front of both movies and TV shows on the service.
Hear the eerie, pulsating theme music via Entertainment Weekly.
Also Read: 'Halloween' 40th Anniversary: John Carpenter Says Why One Scary Scene Made Jamie Lee Curtis Laugh
Carpenter is the director and composer for “Halloween,” “Escape From New York,” “The Thing” and many more, and recently wrote and performed the score for David Gordon Green’s remake of “Halloween.”
He’s also touring along with his band performing his own solo work and beefed up versions of his classic themes, concluding with a show in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Palladium.
According to Entertainment Weekly, subscribers to Shudder will first hear Carpenter’s theme when it debuts on Oct. 31 as part of a 24-hour marathon streaming marathon of the 1978 version of “Halloween,” which will stream for free via the service’s Shudder TV.
'Halloween' 40th Anniversary: John Carpenter Says Why One Scary Scene Made Jamie Lee Curtis Laugh
Rotten Tomatoes Apologizes After Mistakenly Killing Off the Very Much Alive John Carpenter
John Carpenter on Why He'd Rather Be a Rock Star: 'Making Movies Is Horrifying'
John Carpenter’s breakout horror film “Halloween” came out 40 years ago today, but the filmmaker told us he remembers making it as if it was yesterday.
One moment has stayed with him for years: the culminating scene when Michael Myers tries to get to Jamie Lee Curtis in the closet where she’s hiding. And his account of what really happened behind the scenes is probably not what diehard “Halloween” fans might expect.
“I remember directing Jamie Lee inside the closet, and I was sitting in there with the camera and she was in there, and I remember directing her,” Carpenter told TheWrap. “This was happening and this was happening and I said, ‘Pick up the knife and stab the son of a bitch!’ So we had to do the take again. She said, ‘Can you please not say that? I am going to laugh!’ I remember the look on her face — we had a great time.”
Also Read: From Blogger to ‘Halloween’ Producer: How Ryan Turek Got a Stab at This Year’s Biggest Horror Hit
In David Gordon Green’s new “Halloween,” Curtis steps into the role of Laurie Strode 40 years after she first took on the role of the 17-year-old babysitter who was viciously attacked by serial killer Michael Myers. Since the new film’s announcement, many wondered why the it bears the same title as the original, when it’s clearly a movie about Laurie seeking revenge on Michael — and vice versa.
“It’s odd,” Carpenter said. “I backed David’s decision to name it something different but the absolute geniuses at Universal decided to name it ‘Halloween.’ And I don’t know. I guess it’s OK. Everyone seems to be happy. That’s all that matters. There are powers above me that move in mysterious ways that I don’t understand.”
Carpenter just had one piece of advice for Green.
“It has to be simple — simple and relentless,” he said. “That’s it. That’s the secret to really getting to an audience.”
Also Read: ‘Halloween’ Producer Jason Blum Is Down for a Sequel: ‘We’re Dying to’ Make One
Forty years ago, that’s exactly what Carpenter did. “When I made the movie in 1978, I was just trying to make a low budget exploitation movie where I could show off my stuff and maybe get another job. It was always about getting another job. I threw in everything I wanted to see in a horror movie. I never ever expected it to be anything like this.”
Carpenter weighed in on the new sequel: “I really like the movie. I think it’s terrific. I think that the new ‘Halloween’ is a standalone fabulous slasher film, and I love that about it. I haven’t seen one like it. I was hungry for it and I didn’t even realize it.”
“Halloween” opened to $76 million last weekend, breaking multiple box office records. The film also stars Judy Greer, Anti Matichak, James Jude Courtney, Nick Castle and Will Patton.
Jamie Lee Curtis Embraces Fan Who Says Her ‘Halloween’ Character Saved His Life (Video)
Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode Is Ready to Take on Michael Myers in ‘Halloween’ Teasers (Video)
Jamie Lee Curtis Is Back as Laurie Strode in ‘Halloween’ First Look (Photo)
John Carpenter’s breakout horror film “Halloween” came out 40 years ago today, but the filmmaker told us he remembers making it as if it was yesterday.
One moment has stayed with him for years: the culminating scene when Michael Myers tries to get to Jamie Lee Curtis in the closet where she’s hiding. And his account of what really happened behind the scenes is probably not what diehard “Halloween” fans might expect.
“I remember directing Jamie Lee inside the closet, and I was sitting in there with the camera and she was in there, and I remember directing her,” Carpenter told TheWrap. “This was happening and this was happening and I said, ‘Pick up the knife and stab the son of a bitch!’ So we had to do the take again. She said, ‘Can you please not say that? I am going to laugh!’ I remember the look on her face — we had a great time.”
Also Read: From Blogger to 'Halloween' Producer: How Ryan Turek Got a Stab at This Year's Biggest Horror Hit
In David Gordon Green’s new “Halloween,” Curtis steps into the role of Laurie Strode 40 years after she first took on the role of the 17-year-old babysitter who was viciously attacked by serial killer Michael Myers. Since the new film’s announcement, many wondered why the it bears the same title as the original, when it’s clearly a movie about Laurie seeking revenge on Michael — and vice versa.
“It’s odd,” Carpenter said. “I backed David’s decision to name it something different but the absolute geniuses at Universal decided to name it ‘Halloween.’ And I don’t know. I guess it’s OK. Everyone seems to be happy. That’s all that matters. There are powers above me that move in mysterious ways that I don’t understand.”
Carpenter just had one piece of advice for Green.
“It has to be simple — simple and relentless,” he said. “That’s it. That’s the secret to really getting to an audience.”
Also Read: 'Halloween' Producer Jason Blum Is Down for a Sequel: 'We're Dying to' Make One
Forty years ago, that’s exactly what Carpenter did. “When I made the movie in 1978, I was just trying to make a low budget exploitation movie where I could show off my stuff and maybe get another job. It was always about getting another job. I threw in everything I wanted to see in a horror movie. I never ever expected it to be anything like this.”
Carpenter weighed in on the new sequel: “I really like the movie. I think it’s terrific. I think that the new ‘Halloween’ is a standalone fabulous slasher film, and I love that about it. I haven’t seen one like it. I was hungry for it and I didn’t even realize it.”
“Halloween” opened to $76 million last weekend, breaking multiple box office records. The film also stars Judy Greer, Anti Matichak, James Jude Courtney, Nick Castle and Will Patton.
Jamie Lee Curtis Embraces Fan Who Says Her 'Halloween' Character Saved His Life (Video)
Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode Is Ready to Take on Michael Myers in 'Halloween' Teasers (Video)
Jamie Lee Curtis Is Back as Laurie Strode in 'Halloween' First Look (Photo)
He burst on the scene as the hapless proprietor of a strip mall dojo in the low budget The Foot Fist Way, and Danny McBride just scored his biggest success as co-writer of the low budget sequel to the 40-year old John Carpenter film Halloween. Its $80 …
Years before he produced “Halloween,” this year’s biggest horror hit, Ryan Turek was nowhere close to developing films: He was commenting on horror blogs’ message boards.
Turek moved to Los Angeles in 1999 with dreams of becoming a screenwriter. He never imagined masterminding a “Halloween” film that has grossed $76 million its opening weekend, breaking records in the process.
It’s a story of the unconventional way Blumhouse does business — and harnessing the power and passion of fandom into box-office dominance. The company hired Turek based on his passion, obsession and expertise on the horror genre, and proved they’d rather listen to a true fan than an executive who might not know horror.
Also Read: ‘Halloween’ Director David Gordon Green on How He Pulled Off Michael Myers’ One-Shot Murder Scene
“I did not think I would ever get the job,” Turek told TheWrap. “I wasn’t thinking about the experience of being a journalist and meeting so many people made me valuable — but it did. I never saw myself as an executive and just didn’t think I had that experience. I was shaking, like, oh my god, this is finally the thing that I had been looking to do. It was a 14-year journey from the time I moved out here to where I am now.”
When he first moved to L.A. from New York City (where he went to film school after growing up in Connecticut), Turek started writing occasional spec scripts and got a transcription gig when he could. But he wanted people to see his writing faster.
The early 2000s were a boom time for online film journalism, and he started writing reviews on message boards on Creature-Corner.com. The site’s editor reached out to him to be a reporter for the site, and he quickly joined the world of film junkets, interviewing the legends he had looked up for so many years. Among them: Wes Craven and “Halloween” creator John Carpenter.
He began writing under the name Ryan Rotten. “It was easier for me to write reviews under that name after I snuck into test screenings,” he said with a giggle.
Soon, he was approached to cofound DreadCentral.com and later, ShockTillYouDrop.com, where he served as the managing editor for seven years. That’s when he met Jason Blum, who in 2000 founded Blumhouse, the production company that would eventually produce hits like “The Purge” films and “Get Out.”
Turek said he first met Blum to interview him for an article. But he soon put his tape recorder down, and found himself just talking movies with a fellow fan.
A couple years later, Universal asked Turek whether he would want to tour the country with Blum to promote “The Purge.”
Uh, he said. Yeah.
“I looked at Blumhouse with a little bit of jealousy because I really wanted to work there,” Turek added, laughing.
He said that by this time, he had “grown out” of wanting to write, and had instead decided he wanted to produce films.
Blum’s assistant at the time, Chelsea Peters, wanted to produce a little slasher film herself, and asked if he wanted to get involved. It never took off, but when a development executive position opened at the company, she contacted him. (Peters is now making her own films, including “All That We Destroy” for Blumhouse).
“What I recognized in him was just a love of horror over anything else, and just incredible knowledge about it and incredible reverence for it,” Blum told TheWrap. “I definitely believe that fantastic producing is driven by passion, not by money. His knowledge and his love of the genre was infectious and deep. The biggest reason I love horror is the horror community and the fans, and I was really attracted to the idea of finding someone who could connect us to the vein of the community — and that’s what Ryan did from the day he started.”
Turek’s producing credits include “Truth or Dare,” ‘Happy Death Day,” “Unfriended: Dark Web” and the upcoming “Happy Death Day 2U.” But he said “Halloween” is his passion project, and has been in the making for over four years.
“Halloween” didn’t hit the October opening weekend record set by “Venom” two weeks ago — Venom netted $80 million — but it did beat the Blumhouse opening weekend record of $52.5 million set by “Paranormal Activity 3” in 2011.
“Halloween” also had the second-best opening by any R-rated horror movie — last year’s “It” remake holds the record with $123 million — and is among the top 10 openings for all R-rated films. It also scored the biggest horror movie opening with a female lead, the biggest movie opening with a female lead over 55, and the biggest opening ever in the “Halloween” franchise.
Also Read: ‘Halloween’ Posts Biggest Opening Weekend for a Film With a 55+ Woman as Lead
“We knew we’d do well, but this well…,” Turek said. “It’s out of this world.”
“It exceeded all of my expectations,” said Blum.
Turek first saw a “Halloween” opportunity when Dimension Films lost the production rights to another “Halloween” film, and the rights reverted back to Bob and Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax.
“When I was growing up, ‘Halloween’ meant the world to me,” Turek said. “There was always that level of fandom for the ‘Halloween’ franchise… and I wanted to make a slasher movie that didn’t have that ‘wink, wink, come and seek’ nature that the ‘Scream’ franchise has.”
He checked with Miramax by email about whether a “Halloween” film was in progress. Flash forward a couple weeks: Blum asked Turek to join a meeting to discuss what would become the sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 “Halloween.”
“That was the most stressful meeting I’ve ever had in my life,” Turek recalled. “It’s really surreal, and I’m still kind of pinching myself because since I sent that email three years ago, it’s been part of my every waking thought, hoping that this movie got off the ground. Then it all worked out.”
“He was from the first minute a passionate believer,” Blum said. “He was the first person all in on this project and that was critical, and equally critical in the creative process because he kept us all in check. Ryan was a great person to say, ‘hey, you should think of the ramifications of this or the ramifications of that when you do this.’ He was vital in the process not only in the deciding but also in the producing.”
Blum said Turek also developed a great relationship with “Halloween” star Jamie Lee Curtis.
“He won her trust in a profound way, which is complicated when you’re producing a movie,” Blum said. “The actors and the production team aren’t always aligned, and he did a great job. He was on set every day, he got his hands dirty, he made the movie happen.”
‘Halloween’ Nears October Box Office Record With $77 Million Opening
Andi Matichak on ‘Halloween’ Co-Star Jamie Lee Curtis: ‘She Really Took Me Under Her Wing’ (Video)
Years before he produced “Halloween,” this year’s biggest horror hit, Ryan Turek was nowhere close to developing films: He was commenting on horror blogs’ message boards.
Turek moved to Los Angeles in 1999 with dreams of becoming a screenwriter. He never imagined masterminding a “Halloween” film that has grossed $76 million its opening weekend, breaking records in the process.
It’s a story of the unconventional way Blumhouse does business — and harnessing the power and passion of fandom into box-office dominance. The company hired Turek based on his passion, obsession and expertise on the horror genre, and proved they’d rather listen to a true fan than an executive who might not know horror.
Also Read: 'Halloween' Director David Gordon Green on How He Pulled Off Michael Myers' One-Shot Murder Scene
“I did not think I would ever get the job,” Turek told TheWrap. “I wasn’t thinking about the experience of being a journalist and meeting so many people made me valuable — but it did. I never saw myself as an executive and just didn’t think I had that experience. I was shaking, like, oh my god, this is finally the thing that I had been looking to do. It was a 14-year journey from the time I moved out here to where I am now.”
When he first moved to L.A. from New York City (where he went to film school after growing up in Connecticut), Turek started writing occasional spec scripts and got a transcription gig when he could. But he wanted people to see his writing faster.
The early 2000s were a boom time for online film journalism, and he started writing reviews on message boards on Creature-Corner.com. The site’s editor reached out to him to be a reporter for the site, and he quickly joined the world of film junkets, interviewing the legends he had looked up for so many years. Among them: Wes Craven and “Halloween” creator John Carpenter.
He began writing under the name Ryan Rotten. “It was easier for me to write reviews under that name after I snuck into test screenings,” he said with a giggle.
Soon, he was approached to cofound DreadCentral.com and later, ShockTillYouDrop.com, where he served as the managing editor for seven years. That’s when he met Jason Blum, who in 2000 founded Blumhouse, the production company that would eventually produce hits like “The Purge” films and “Get Out.”
Turek said he first met Blum to interview him for an article. But he soon put his tape recorder down, and found himself just talking movies with a fellow fan.
A couple years later, Universal asked Turek whether he would want to tour the country with Blum to promote “The Purge.”
Uh, he said. Yeah.
“I looked at Blumhouse with a little bit of jealousy because I really wanted to work there,” Turek added, laughing.
He said that by this time, he had “grown out” of wanting to write, and had instead decided he wanted to produce films.
Blum’s assistant at the time, Chelsea Peters, wanted to produce a little slasher film herself, and asked if he wanted to get involved. It never took off, but when a development executive position opened at the company, she contacted him. (Peters is now making her own films, including “All That We Destroy” for Blumhouse).
“What I recognized in him was just a love of horror over anything else, and just incredible knowledge about it and incredible reverence for it,” Blum told TheWrap. “I definitely believe that fantastic producing is driven by passion, not by money. His knowledge and his love of the genre was infectious and deep. The biggest reason I love horror is the horror community and the fans, and I was really attracted to the idea of finding someone who could connect us to the vein of the community — and that’s what Ryan did from the day he started.”
Turek’s producing credits include “Truth or Dare,” ‘Happy Death Day,” “Unfriended: Dark Web” and the upcoming “Happy Death Day 2U.” But he said “Halloween” is his passion project, and has been in the making for over four years.
“Halloween” didn’t hit the October opening weekend record set by “Venom” two weeks ago — Venom netted $80 million — but it did beat the Blumhouse opening weekend record of $52.5 million set by “Paranormal Activity 3” in 2011.
“Halloween” also had the second-best opening by any R-rated horror movie — last year’s “It” remake holds the record with $123 million — and is among the top 10 openings for all R-rated films. It also scored the biggest horror movie opening with a female lead, the biggest movie opening with a female lead over 55, and the biggest opening ever in the “Halloween” franchise.
Also Read: 'Halloween' Posts Biggest Opening Weekend for a Film With a 55+ Woman as Lead
“We knew we’d do well, but this well…,” Turek said. “It’s out of this world.”
“It exceeded all of my expectations,” said Blum.
Turek first saw a “Halloween” opportunity when Dimension Films lost the production rights to another “Halloween” film, and the rights reverted back to Bob and Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax.
“When I was growing up, ‘Halloween’ meant the world to me,” Turek said. “There was always that level of fandom for the ‘Halloween’ franchise… and I wanted to make a slasher movie that didn’t have that ‘wink, wink, come and seek’ nature that the ‘Scream’ franchise has.”
He checked with Miramax by email about whether a “Halloween” film was in progress. Flash forward a couple weeks: Blum asked Turek to join a meeting to discuss what would become the sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 “Halloween.”
“That was the most stressful meeting I’ve ever had in my life,” Turek recalled. “It’s really surreal, and I’m still kind of pinching myself because since I sent that email three years ago, it’s been part of my every waking thought, hoping that this movie got off the ground. Then it all worked out.”
“He was from the first minute a passionate believer,” Blum said. “He was the first person all in on this project and that was critical, and equally critical in the creative process because he kept us all in check. Ryan was a great person to say, ‘hey, you should think of the ramifications of this or the ramifications of that when you do this.’ He was vital in the process not only in the deciding but also in the producing.”
Blum said Turek also developed a great relationship with “Halloween” star Jamie Lee Curtis.
“He won her trust in a profound way, which is complicated when you’re producing a movie,” Blum said. “The actors and the production team aren’t always aligned, and he did a great job. He was on set every day, he got his hands dirty, he made the movie happen.”
'Halloween' Nears October Box Office Record With $77 Million Opening
Andi Matichak on 'Halloween' Co-Star Jamie Lee Curtis: 'She Really Took Me Under Her Wing' (Video)
Note: This article contains minor plot revelations for the new Suspiria and Halloween.Read more…
Like “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which successfully combined fresh new material with a plethora of nostalgic nods to the past, Universal’s “Halloween” reboot manages to pick up where John Carpenter’s 1978 classic left off while paying sly homage to…
(Spoiler alert: Do not read on if you haven’t seen the new “Halloween” movie yet.)
Michael Myers is back to wreak havoc in “Halloween,” and perhaps one of the scariest scenes is when Michael goes from house to house on trick-or-treat night leaving a trail of dead bodies in various houses along a suburban street — all in one long horrifying shot.
“We were prepared to fail,” director David Gordon Green told TheWrap about the scene (that yes, is shown in the trailer too). “We had all these exit strategies: He could exit here, we could seam two shots here, or put a clever wipe there.”
The logistical challenge was so great that the crew spent extra time to prepare. “We spent half a day with camera operators talking through it,” Green said. “When we got to the day and all the background is running around, I didn’t want to be scientifically concerned with the precision of matching and getting a clever wipe behind a tree or things like that — that can be useful in these types of ambitions.”
See Video: Andi Matichak on ‘Halloween’ Co-Star Jamie Lee Curtis: ‘She Really Took Me Under Her Wing’
In the end, and after multiple tries, it all came together. “We did 11 takes, and it worked,” he said. “We used the 11th take, all one shot.”
But on the previous takes, he said, “there was always something that went wrong. In one version, the woman in the kitchen was thrown, and we thought, ‘We are running out of time.’”
But necessity really can be the mother of invention. “We’re trying to do this scene in four hours and we’ve got one more take and we’re like, well, ‘Let’s just put her at a table and squirt some blood on it,’ and then in the last minute we added a baby crib and the sound of a baby crying,” he said. “It was originally a husband sleeping on a couch but then we thought, ‘Why wouldn’t Michael just stab him on the way out?’
“We were scrambling and every take was a little different, and the last one worked,” he said. “That’s the crazy part about making a horror movie… success is when something horrible happens in a realistic way so your brain is altered to think it’s a positive thing.”
Also Read: ‘Halloween’ Slashes to $7.7 Million at Thursday Box Office
Adding to the horror factor is the fact that we don’t see Michael’s real face with his mask off at any point in the movie. And Green said that was intentional so the audience doesn’t feel empathy for the psychopathic killer.
“In Carpenter’s film, you see his face briefly when his mask is removed — you see the wound on his eye,” he said. “If we were going to go there, you start to humanize him in a way. … Even if they aren’t relatable or identifiable, something connects you when you make eye contact with a character, so I was really suspicious of that.”
Green added, “At the same time, I was afraid it would be a gimmick to avoid it too much.”
The director admitted he was unsettled when the cameras stopped rolling: “It was also weird to see the actor take his mask off and eating a celery stick on set.” (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle are both credited with playing the role.)
Also Read: ‘Halloween:’ Is There a Post-Credits Scene?
The new “Halloween” picks up 40 years after Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Michael Myers faced off on Halloween night when she was just 17 years old.
Green, who co-wrote the script with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, said he jumped at the chance to revisit the characters who had so affected him as a young movie fan. “It was a great opportunity to get in the ring with iconic characters that meant a lot to me as a kid,” he said.
“How often do you have that opportunity to cast people you’ve already admired and work in the genre?” said Green, who previously shot last year’s Boston Marathon bombing victim story “Stronger” with Jake Gyllenhaal.
Also Read: Here Are 12 of TV’s Best Halloween-Themed Episodes (Photos)
“A lot of [‘Stronger’] dealt with randomness of violence, and in a way, that was a horror film, so it wasn’t such a huge narrative leap,” he said. “In some ways, that project informed our approach to Michael’s narrative drive. What’s scary in the real world is what you don’t know, and random acts of violence get under my skin rather than something that is motivated or supernatural.”
“Halloween” also stars Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Nick Castle, James Jude Courtney and Haluk Bilginer. It hit theaters on Friday.
‘Halloween’ Billboard Sabotaged to Show Maxine Waters as Michael Myers
‘Halloween’ Slashes to $7.7 Million at Thursday Box Office
‘Halloween’ Star Andi Matichak StudioWrap Portraits (Exclusive Photos)
(Spoiler alert: Do not read on if you haven’t seen the new “Halloween” movie yet.)
Michael Myers is back to wreak havoc in “Halloween,” and perhaps one of the scariest scenes is when Michael goes from house to house on trick-or-treat night leaving a trail of dead bodies in various houses along a suburban street — all in one long horrifying shot.
“We were prepared to fail,” director David Gordon Green told TheWrap about the scene (that yes, is shown in the trailer too). “We had all these exit strategies: He could exit here, we could seam two shots here, or put a clever wipe there.”
The logistical challenge was so great that the crew spent extra time to prepare. “We spent half a day with camera operators talking through it,” Green said. “When we got to the day and all the background is running around, I didn’t want to be scientifically concerned with the precision of matching and getting a clever wipe behind a tree or things like that — that can be useful in these types of ambitions.”
See Video: Andi Matichak on 'Halloween' Co-Star Jamie Lee Curtis: 'She Really Took Me Under Her Wing'
In the end, and after multiple tries, it all came together. “We did 11 takes, and it worked,” he said. “We used the 11th take, all one shot.”
But on the previous takes, he said, “there was always something that went wrong. In one version, the woman in the kitchen was thrown, and we thought, ‘We are running out of time.'”
But necessity really can be the mother of invention. “We’re trying to do this scene in four hours and we’ve got one more take and we’re like, well, ‘Let’s just put her at a table and squirt some blood on it,’ and then in the last minute we added a baby crib and the sound of a baby crying,” he said. “It was originally a husband sleeping on a couch but then we thought, ‘Why wouldn’t Michael just stab him on the way out?’
“We were scrambling and every take was a little different, and the last one worked,” he said. “That’s the crazy part about making a horror movie… success is when something horrible happens in a realistic way so your brain is altered to think it’s a positive thing.”
Also Read: 'Halloween' Slashes to $7.7 Million at Thursday Box Office
Adding to the horror factor is the fact that we don’t see Michael’s real face with his mask off at any point in the movie. And Green said that was intentional so the audience doesn’t feel empathy for the psychopathic killer.
“In Carpenter’s film, you see his face briefly when his mask is removed — you see the wound on his eye,” he said. “If we were going to go there, you start to humanize him in a way. … Even if they aren’t relatable or identifiable, something connects you when you make eye contact with a character, so I was really suspicious of that.”
Green added, “At the same time, I was afraid it would be a gimmick to avoid it too much.”
The director admitted he was unsettled when the cameras stopped rolling: “It was also weird to see the actor take his mask off and eating a celery stick on set.” (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle are both credited with playing the role.)
Also Read: 'Halloween:' Is There a Post-Credits Scene?
The new “Halloween” picks up 40 years after Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Michael Myers faced off on Halloween night when she was just 17 years old.
Green, who co-wrote the script with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, said he jumped at the chance to revisit the characters who had so affected him as a young movie fan. “It was a great opportunity to get in the ring with iconic characters that meant a lot to me as a kid,” he said.
“How often do you have that opportunity to cast people you’ve already admired and work in the genre?” said Green, who previously shot last year’s Boston Marathon bombing victim story “Stronger” with Jake Gyllenhaal.
Also Read: Here Are 12 of TV's Best Halloween-Themed Episodes (Photos)
“A lot of [‘Stronger’] dealt with randomness of violence, and in a way, that was a horror film, so it wasn’t such a huge narrative leap,” he said. “In some ways, that project informed our approach to Michael’s narrative drive. What’s scary in the real world is what you don’t know, and random acts of violence get under my skin rather than something that is motivated or supernatural.”
“Halloween” also stars Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Nick Castle, James Jude Courtney and Haluk Bilginer. It hit theaters on Friday.
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'Halloween' Star Andi Matichak StudioWrap Portraits (Exclusive Photos)
From Rob Zombie’s reboot to John Carpenter’s classic to David Gordon Green’s 2018 take, here’s our official ranking of all 11 films in the “Halloween” franchise.
It just wouldn’t be Halloween without Michael Myers. Ever since John Carpenter’s silent killer stalked Laurie Strode and her friends in 1978’s “Halloween,” the indestructible boogeyman has resurrected for 10 of the franchise’s 11 films, slashing his way through Haddonfield, Illinois decade after decade. Carpenter’s pulsing synthesizer and ominous piano notes are instantly recognizable, a soundtrack for the holiday and a warning for anyone who hears it — Beware of the Boogeyman.
Not every “Halloween” film is great, but the franchise continued to expand and grow over the years, as audiences demanded the iconic killer to come back from impossible odds. To be sure, there was always a touch of the supernatural to Carpenter’s original film; Michael was never really quite human. But as the mythos of Michael Myers expanded, it pulled in new family members, strange psychic links, and even ancient Druid curses.
A new “Halloween” sequel, directed by David Gordon Green and once again starring Jamie Lee Curtis, is headed for theaters on October 19, and while this fresh take will erase all the previous sequels, we’ve decided to look back at the entire franchise, and rank all 11 feature films from worst to best.
Jamie Lee Curtis and Brad Loree in “Halloween – Resurrection”
Miramax/Dimension Films/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
Jamie Lee Curtis deserved better than “Halloween: Resurrection.” Laurie Strode deserved better than “Halloween: Resurrection.” The audience deserved better than “Halloween: Resurrection.” The film effectively erases Laurie’s triumph in “Halloween H20: 20 Years Later,” showing that she did not in fact kill Michael, it was a paramedic he swapped costumes with. Laurie has killed an innocent man, while her killer brother roams free once more, and now she’s confined to a mental institution.
Once more the siblings face off, and this time, Michael kills Laurie. It’s a bold choice to be sure, and likely, considering Curtis’ involvement, a way to exorcise herself from the role that has come to define her career in some ways. Even so, it’s a disappointing moment, one that sets a brutal tone for the film to follow, where Michael stalks and murders his way through his derelict childhood home, now being used for a live internet show. The return of Michael in “Resurrection” was meant to pave the way for even more sequels, but poor reviews kept it on hold until Rob Zombie’s 2007 reboot gave the franchise a much needed jolt of fresh blood.
Although the events of “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers” had paved the way for Michael’s niece, Jamie, to follow in her uncle’s footsteps and become a killer, “Halloween 5” instead chose to place the young girl in a children’s hospital, where she suffers from seizures and nightmares from the trauma that happened the year prior. Jamie is now mute, Michael is still alive (naturally), and he’s come back to Haddonfield to kill her. Jamie still has a psychic link to Michael, which helps tip off Dr. Loomis that his favorite patient is still alive.
And so the cycle continues; lots of murders in Haddonfield, everyone thinking Loomis is crazy, Michael shaking off any attempts to subdue him. The most interesting thing about “Halloween 5,” apart from the brief moment where Michael removes his mask for Jamie, is how it sets up the events for “Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.” As Michael sits locked away in the police station, a mysterious man in black arrives, killing the officers, setting Michael free, and giving audiences a glimpse at one of the franchise’s most interesting elements — the Curse of Thorn.
“Halloween 4 – The Return Of Michael Myers”
Mayfair/Trancas/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
When audiences were disappointed with “Halloween III: The Season of the Witch” because it didn’t feature Carpenter’s iconic killer, it proved the franchise was forever linked with Michael Myers. So, plans for a horror anthology series built around Halloween were scrapped, and Michael was back, having survived the fire at the end of “Halloween II,” eventually waking up from a coma when he overhears that Laurie has died in a car accident, but has a niece, Jamie, living in Haddonfield. And so, Michael comes home once more.
There are plenty of improbable things in “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers,” including the sudden existence of Michael and Laurie’s niece, Jamie, but the film establishes an interesting psychic link between the young girl and her deranged uncle. Yes, Michael and Laurie are brother and sister. Even in establishing the familial link between Michael and Laurie, the “Halloween” franchise has never truly explained what drives Michael to go after his own family. Perhaps unfinished business? But seeing the young Jamie struggle with what is in her own bloodline, fearing that she might also be a monster is compelling. The film’s final scene, with Jamie clad in a clown mask, holding a pair of bloody scissors, with Dr. Loomis raising his gun to shoot her, is still a chilling one.
Read More: ‘Halloween’: Jake Gyllenhaal Helped Convince Jamie Lee Curtis to Bring Laurie Strode Back
Josh Hartnett and Jamie Lee Curtis in “Halloween H20”
Nicola Goode/Dimension/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
The upcoming “Halloween” sequel isn’t the only film to effectively erase all of the previous films. “Halloween H20: 20 Years Later” glosses over the fourth, fifth, and sixths films, and reintroduces Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode, who faked her death after the events of “Halloween II,” and is now the headmistress of a boarding school in California. But Laurie can’t escape the shadow of Michael for long, he eventually comes calling, something Laurie has spent her life in fear of, except now she has a son and students to protect.
It’s hard not to love a “Halloween” film that stars Curtis, as well as Josh Hartnett and Michelle Williams, but to make things even better, Curtis’ mother, the legendary Janet Leigh also makes an appearance and her character is cheekily named Norma, a nod to her iconic turn in “Psycho.” “H20” also marks the first time the franchise gave the power back to Laurie, recognizing her importance as a Final Girl and giving her a triumphant moment, where she kills Michael once and for all, vanquishing her demons and finally earning her freedom. With the exception of the new “Halloween” film, Laurie has never been as badass and bold, which makes the retconning in “Halloween: Resurrection” even more frustrating.
Tyler Mane in “Halloween II”
Dimension Films/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
Taking a page from “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers,” which coincidentally also stars Danielle Harris, Rob Zombie’s follow-up to his 2007 re-imagining of “Halloween” focuses on the connection between Michael Myers and his younger sister, Laurie. Two years after the events on Halloween night, Laurie is struggling to cope with the trauma of what happened, as well as with nightmares that have plagued her ever since Michael’s escape. When Michael returns to Haddonfield (because of course he returns), Laurie begins have hallucinations that include her acting out Michael’s murders, suggesting the psychic link between them runs deep, and might one day turn her into the monster she fears the most.
“Halloween II” was met with mostly negative reviews from critics, but it deserves a second look because of how much insight it gives into victimhood. Laurie struggles with PTSD after the attacks on her friends, something horror movies often tend to gloss over. Being a badass, blood-soaked Final Girl comes at an emotional cost. Laurie also struggles with the realization that Michael is her brother, and what this says about her, eventually positing that Laurie would take up Michael’s mantle. Much like the latest “Halloween” film, Zombie’s “Halloween II” suggests that sometimes fighting monsters can turn us into one as well.
The Curse of Thorn. The return of Tommy Doyle. Even more members of the Strode family. A final goodbye to the unforgettable Donald Pleasance and his irascible Dr. Loomis. “Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers” really does have it all, and it’s one of the most underrated sequels in the franchise. Michael has killed his niece Jamie, who has given birth to a baby, the mysterious Man in Black, who appeared at the end of “Halloween 5” to spring Michael loose, wants for his own schemes. Back in Haddonfield, Tommy Doyle, the boy Laurie was babysitting in the first film, has grown up to into Paul Rudd, and he finds Jamie’s baby and cares for it.
Tommy figures out that Michael has been afflicted by an ancient Druid curse, Thorn, which finally gives the answer that “Halloween” fans have long wondered. Why did Michael kill his sister, and why does he continue to hunt down his family members? Thorn was a curse born by one child in each tribe long ago, and these children had to sacrifice their next of kin on the night of Samhain (or Halloween). And that’s how Michael keeps returning, and that’s why he rampages his way through Halloween night. “Halloween 6” successfully expands and deepens the “Halloween” mythos, giving a dark sacrificial element to Michael’s past murders. If you’re going to explain the boogeyman, better to keep him as evil and inhumane as possible.
Tyler Mane in “Halloween”
Dimension/Spectacle/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
Rob Zombie has always worn his cinematic horror influences on his sleeve, particularly with his first two films, “House of 1000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects,” so it wasn’t surprising when he decided to put his own twisted spin on John Carpenter’s franchise. Zombie’s “Halloween” reimagines Michael Myers as a bullied young boy, already displaying psychotic tendencies serial killers, before he lashes out on Halloween night and kills his older sister, her boyfriend, a school bully, and his mother’s boyfriend. As an adult, Michael murders his way through Haddonfield on a quest to be reunited with his younger sister, Angel, now renamed Laurie Strode.
Zombie’s “Halloween” remains one of the highest grossing entries in the entire franchise, and is infused with the director’s trademark dark aesthetic. It’s divided horror fans, some of whom feel that it departs too much from the original series. Perhaps the biggest problem with Zombie’s “Halloween” is the reimagining of Michael as a bullied and troubled young boy. Filling in Michael’s background only serves to humanize him, and that misses the point of Michael Myers. He isn’t human, he’s pure evil, he’s the boogeyman, and we shouldn’t feel sorry for him, we should only fear him.
Jamie Lee Curtis in “Halloween II”
Universal/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
After the smash success of “Halloween” in 1978, Jamie Lee Curtis became horror’s go-to Scream Queen, following up her big screen debut with lead roles in Carpenter’s “The Fog,” as well as “Prom Night” and “Terror Train.” But the pull to reunite with Michael Myers proved to be too good to pass up. With a screenplay co-written by Carpenter and Debra Hill, “Halloween II” picks up exactly where “Halloween” left off — on the night of Michael Myers’ babysitter murders in 1978 — and explores the fallout after Myers eludes Dr. Loomis and the police once more.
“Halloween II” is chock-full of some brutal and memorable murders (especially the hot tub scene), but it’s best known for it’s franchise-altering twist, the jaw-dropping revelation that Laurie Strode is in fact Michael Myers’ younger sister. It’s a twist that still divides fans to this day, and one that took some of the punch out of Michael’s fevered pursuit of Laurie. Now he wasn’t just a maniac chasing after a young woman for no reason, but a crazed brother trying to murder one more sister. Forever linked with the boogeyman in the ghoulish mask, Laurie seemingly is able to break free at the end, when Michael goes up in flames at the hospital and dies. But as later sequels would prove, you can’t keep the boogeyman down for long.
“Halloween III: The Season of the Witch”
Universal/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
When “Halloween III: The Season of the Witch” hit theaters in 1982, fans were taken by surprise by the new offering in the iconic franchise. Where were Michael Myers and Laurie Strode? Instead, the film moved the action to Santa Mira, California, home to the Silver Shamrock Novelties, whose owner wants to harness the mystic powers of rocks from Stonehenge to bring back an ancient age of witchcraft. To do so, he would make a mass sacrifice, achieved through the company’s Halloween masks, which are implemented with a microchip that will detonate and kill all the children wearing them on Halloween night.
With “Halloween III,” producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill saw the franchise’s potential for something more. Instead of rehashing sequel after improbable sequel, “Halloween” would become a horror anthology series centered around Halloween night, not unlike “American Horror Story” or “V/H/S.” The truth is, it was a genius idea, but it was too far ahead of its time. As the franchise would soon prove, audiences didn’t really care about logic (after all Michael Myers had already proved to be superhuman before), they just wanted to see Michael come back and kill. In time, “Halloween II” found its audience and has become a cult classic, and it’s tantalizing to think of where Carpenter could have gone next with the franchise in this vein.
“Halloween”
Universal
After 40 years, Michael Myers is back once again. For the horror icons big return, Blumhouse Productions wrangled some big talent, with “Stronger” director David Gordon Green stepping behind the camera, as well as the return of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode. But to help set apart this new “Halloween” from the many other sequels, Green and co-writer Danny McBride decided on a big gamble — only the original 1978 film would remain canon and not anything else, not even “Halloween II,” which infamously introduced Strode as Michael’s sister.
The gamble pays off in spades, as Gordon’s take on “Halloween” is infused with a lot of fun callbacks to the original film that will keep fans smiling, but ultimately centers on a showdown between Laurie and Michael. This is Laurie’s big moment, the one she has been waiting and preparing for for many years, pushing aside her PTSD from that fateful Halloween night and training herself to become a ruthless killer. “Halloween” isn’t a perfect horror movie, but by exploring generational trauma, it elevates itself above the rest, giving Laurie Strode (and Jamie Lee Curtis) the sequel she’s always deserved.
P.J. Soles in “Halloween”
Falcon International Productions
John Carpenter’s “Halloween” remains one of the most iconic horror movies ever made, is easily the best film in the entire franchise. “Halloween” wasn’t the first slasher, Michael Myers wasn’t the first on-screen boogeyman, and Laurie Strode wasn’t horror’s first Final Girl. And yet, none of this really matters because “Halloween” was able to take these old formulas and reinvent them into something extraordinary. So extraordinary, in fact, that “Halloween” singled out by the Library of Congress as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected for preservation by the National Film Registry.
“Halloween” is still packed with scares even 40 years later. Michael’s relentless pursuit of the teenagers of Haddonfield, his proclivity to posing their dead bodies is pretty chilling, but it is his origin story that remains the film’s biggest scare. As the audience watches from his perspective, a masked Michael creeps upstairs and attacks his older sister, stabbing her to death. It’s a harrowing on its own, but when the camera pulls back and Michael’s father rips off his Halloween mask, it is clear that Michael is just a child, staring blankly, unfazed at what has occurred. Why did this six-year-old stab his sister to death? Carpenter isn’t interested in the answer, because as Dr. Loomis succinctly surmises, Michael is pure evil. And there’s nothing scarier than that.
In many respects, Michael’s ability to seemingly rise from the dead time and time again, not only in countless sequels but also from back-breaking falls, blows, and bullets, has turned him into horror’s own Superman. No matter where the horror genre has strayed over the years, it always comes back to Michael Myers. He is an unstoppable icon, The Shape waiting on the other side of the hedge, watching us walk away in broad daylight, naively thinking we are safe. Much like Laurie, we’ll always feel a pull to Michael, and horror will never truly be able to escape his silent shadow.
Universal and Blumhouse’s “Halloween” scared up a whopping $7.7 million at the Thursday box office, on its way to a $60 million opening weekend.
To compare, New Line Cinema’s “The Nun” earned $5.4 million in previews before it grossed $53.8 million its opening weekend. Paramount’s “A Quiet Place” took in $4.3 million at the Thursday box office before it rounded out the weekend with a $50 million opening. New Line’s “It,” which broke several records in the process, grossed $13.5 million in previews before opening to $123 million. Universal is predicting $50 million for “Halloween,” while independent trackers are projecting as high as $63 million.
Taking place 40 years after the original, “Halloween” shows Michael Myers as he escapes from the mental institution he has been locked up in for decades. He returns to Haddonfield, Illinois to find the one who got away. That one, of course, is Laurie, now an estranged grandmother who is still traumatized by that infamous Halloween night, and has prepared for the opportunity to finish Michael off for good.
See Video: Andi Matichak on ‘Halloween’ Co-Star Jamie Lee Curtis: ‘She Really Took Me Under Her Wing
John Carpenter returns as executive producer and composer for the new film. David Gordon Green directed and co-wrote with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley. Jamie Lee Curtis stars with Nick Castle, who is reprising his role as Michael Myers. Judy Greer, Andi Matichak and Will Patton also star.
“Halloween” has received stellar reviews — on Rotten Tomatoes, the slasher movie has received a “fresh” score of 81 percent.
Also Read: ‘Halloween:’ Is There a Post-Credits Scene?
Also expanding wide this weekend is Fox’s “The Hate U Give,” which has been in limited release for the past two weekends with a total of $2.4 million grossed. Trackers are projecting a $7-9 million wide opening for the social justice film, which stars Amandla Stenberg as a black student at a predominantly white prep school who is inspired to become an activist after one of her friends is killed by a white police officer.
“The Hate U Give” is also rated “fresh” with 96 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Robert Redford’s “The Old Man & The Gun,” as well as Melissa McCarthy’s “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” Jonah Hill’s “Mid90s” and Hilary Swank’s “What They Had” are opening this weekend in limited release.
James Corden Combines ‘Making a Murderer’ and ‘Halloween’ So You Don’t Have to Choose Today (Video)
‘Halloween’ Star Andi Matichak StudioWrap Portraits (Exclusive Photos)
‘Halloween’ Film Review: Jamie Lee Curtis Confronts Michael Myers in Stylish Sequel
Universal and Blumhouse’s “Halloween” scared up a whopping $7.7 million at the Thursday box office, on its way to a $60 million opening weekend.
To compare, New Line Cinema’s “The Nun” earned $5.4 million in previews before it grossed $53.8 million its opening weekend. Paramount’s “A Quiet Place” took in $4.3 million at the Thursday box office before it rounded out the weekend with a $50 million opening. New Line’s “It,” which broke several records in the process, grossed $13.5 million in previews before opening to $123 million. Universal is predicting $50 million for “Halloween,” while independent trackers are projecting as high as $63 million.
Taking place 40 years after the original, “Halloween” shows Michael Myers as he escapes from the mental institution he has been locked up in for decades. He returns to Haddonfield, Illinois to find the one who got away. That one, of course, is Laurie, now an estranged grandmother who is still traumatized by that infamous Halloween night, and has prepared for the opportunity to finish Michael off for good.
See Video: Andi Matichak on 'Halloween' Co-Star Jamie Lee Curtis: 'She Really Took Me Under Her Wing
John Carpenter returns as executive producer and composer for the new film. David Gordon Green directed and co-wrote with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley. Jamie Lee Curtis stars with Nick Castle, who is reprising his role as Michael Myers. Judy Greer, Andi Matichak and Will Patton also star.
“Halloween” has received stellar reviews — on Rotten Tomatoes, the slasher movie has received a “fresh” score of 81 percent.
Also Read: 'Halloween:' Is There a Post-Credits Scene?
Also expanding wide this weekend is Fox’s “The Hate U Give,” which has been in limited release for the past two weekends with a total of $2.4 million grossed. Trackers are projecting a $7-9 million wide opening for the social justice film, which stars Amandla Stenberg as a black student at a predominantly white prep school who is inspired to become an activist after one of her friends is killed by a white police officer.
“The Hate U Give” is also rated “fresh” with 96 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Robert Redford’s “The Old Man & The Gun,” as well as Melissa McCarthy’s “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” Jonah Hill’s “Mid90s” and Hilary Swank’s “What They Had” are opening this weekend in limited release.
James Corden Combines 'Making a Murderer' and 'Halloween' So You Don't Have to Choose Today (Video)
'Halloween' Star Andi Matichak StudioWrap Portraits (Exclusive Photos)
'Halloween' Film Review: Jamie Lee Curtis Confronts Michael Myers in Stylish Sequel
It’s been 40 years, several awful sequels, multiple reboots, a non sequitur spinoff and countless imitations since John Carpenter’s “Halloween” first stabbed the screen in 1978. To say that the brand has been diluted a little bit would be an exercise in understatement. Everyone knows serial killer Michael Myers, but everyone also knows he just hasn’t been himself in a while.
So it makes sense, in this nostalgia-driven era, to go back to the basics. Blumhouse has taken over the “Halloween” franchise, and they’ve enlisted celebrated director David Gordon Green (“Stronger”) to return Myers to his former glory. The new “Halloween,” which is confusingly and frustratingly titled just “Halloween,” ignores all of the failed follow-ups to the original slasher classic.
It also ignores all the good ones, because the bathwater was so apparently bad they decided to toss the baby out too. Green’s “Halloween” is a direct follow-up to Carpenter’s original, and tells the story of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who survived the original massacre and spent decades in a state of post-traumatic stress, mentally preparing herself for the return of Michael Myers and becoming increasingly estranged from her only child, who rejects her paranoia and refuses to live in fear.
Watch Video: Michael Myers Is Back to Kill in New ‘Halloween’ Trailer
It’s a storyline that the new “Halloween” can only get away with by completely ignoring the fact that it’s been told before, and very well, in “Halloween H20.” Then again, slasher franchises are built on familiarity, if not outright repetition. Green’s sequel adopts the eerie cinematic style of John Carpenter’s original “Halloween” while evoking what is, perhaps, the only truly great “Halloween” sequel that came before it. And although it falls into several pitfalls of the genre, it’s still an effective chiller.
“Halloween” (2018) kicks off at Smith’s Grove, the mental institution where Myers has been institutionalized for four decades, after the unthinkable horrors of his killing spree in 1978. It is here that two podcasters arrive to give endless exposition, clearly state the movie’s themes, and poke the hornet’s nest. They brandish Michael’s original mask like it’s some kind of religious idol and yell “You feel it, don’t you Michael?! YOU FEEL THE MASK!” as if that’s somehow, in any universe, a good idea.
Also Read: ‘Halloween’ to Pour Gasoline on an Already Exploding October Box Office
Meanwhile, Laurie Strode lives in an elaborate doomsday compound on the outskirts of Haddonfield. She spends her time cleaning her arsenal of guns and taking potshots at her impressive collection of mannequins, which are all white, emotionless statues like Michael Myers. Laurie’s daughter, Karen (Judy Greer), doesn’t talk to her. Karen spent her childhood preparing to kill Michael Myers, much in the same way John Connor spent his childhood preparing for the robot apocalypse in the “Terminator” movie universe.
Now, Karen has completely rejected her mother’s warnings, and has raised her own daughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), with the philosophy that there’s actually some hope for the future, beyond an inevitable confrontation with a knife-wielding maniac. The film’s most genuine, tragic moment comes when all three generations of the Strodes are having dinner together, with Laurie in the midst of a debilitating panic attack. To Karen, it’s just another in a lifetime of avoidable anxieties, the cause of all her own pain. To Allyson, it’s a heartbreaking moment of fragility that brings her closer to her grandmother.
But “Halloween” can’t just be a sensitive drama about the ripple effects of tragedy. At some point, Michael Myers has to escape and go on another epic killing spree. He’s apparently been working out this whole time, because he beats the living hell out of several healthy young victims with his bare hands. He also stabs, impales and gets weirdly fixated on teeth for some reason. This version of Michael missed out on 40 years of murder spree sequels, and he has a lot of catching up to do.
Also Read: Jamie Lee Curtis Fires Back at Fox News After Accusation of Being Hypocritical on Gun Control
Director of photography Michael Simmonds (“Nerve”) has a glorious time recreating the gliding, ghostly camerawork of the original “Halloween,” while giving the film a sharp, inky contrast that makes Myers look creepier than ever before. The script provides multiple opportunities for visually dynamic scare sequences, including a clever gag with a motion detector light, but the centerpiece is an early slashing bonanza of which Carpenter (credited here as executive producer) would no doubt be proud.
Myers practically floats through the busy streets of Haddonfield, completely hidden in plain sight, taking out his murderous aggressions on unsuspecting house-dwellers while the costumed children are none the wiser outside. It’s simple in its conception, complex in its execution, and terrifyingly believable. For a moment, Green’s “Halloween” is arguably scarier than the original.
But despite the glorious style and the disturbing kills, the new “Halloween” is still a slasher sequel, and it falls prey to all the same old slasher sequel problems. The plot is hopelessly contrived and bends over backwards until its back breaks, just to justify its coincidences. The disposability of the teenaged supporting cast is only thinly disguised by off-putting, meaningless details. (One of the teens wears a lot of chapstick. That’s it. That’s the only thing that makes him stand out as a character.)
Watch Video: Jamie Lee Curtis Embraces Fan Who Says Her ‘Halloween’ Character Saved His Life
And of course, no slasher movie would be complete without a moment in which the young hero’s cell phone is neutralized. In this case it’s dropped in what looks like a bowl of cheese. Rather than pick it up and take it with her — if only to retrieve the SIM card — Allyson just leaves it there, because apparently phones grow on trees and she doesn’t care if anybody finds it and steals her identity. You know, like a person would.
A forgettable supporting cast and a handful of forced plot points do not ruin a horror sequel. Forget the promise of Blumhouse taking over the franchise and giving it to a respectable director like David Gordon Green: This isn’t a glorious rebirth, it’s a functional facsimile, and it’s a wholly satisfying piece of slasher entertainment regardless. Green’s film takes the material seriously, for the most part, but he’s still trapped in a world of coincidence and foregone conclusions. Myers must escape and Laurie must face him, and the universe will stop at nothing to make that happen, even if the explanation for their dramatic reunion is hilariously laughable and ultimately unnecessary.
The most frustrating element of Green’s “Halloween” is that despite its wry dialogue and celebration of Laurie Strode, it’s a deeply cynical motion picture. Laurie is a Cassandra figure, who has been warning Haddonfield of Myers’ return for so long that nobody believes her. Laurie’s daughter, Karen, has been prepared to defend herself physically from Myers, but to her way of thinking, even more damage has been done by Laurie. Karen had to reject Laurie’s worldview in order to build up her own positive outlook and live a life worth living. She’s so eager to overcome her anxieties about Halloween that, on October 31, she’s already wearing her Christmas sweater.
It’s wrong to deny Laurie Strode her right to have defense mechanisms, but it’s disturbing to build an entire narrative around justifying her emotional child abuse. Laurie spent a lifetime telling her daughter to live in a state of constant terror, and the movie essentially argues that she was right to do so, because Laurie was right about Myers’ return. It’s painful to watch a traumatized child yell at her mother to please, please acknowledge that there is love and goodness in the world, and it’s enormously off-putting that the movie she’s in takes the opposing side, arguing that optimism is little more than dangerous naïveté, and that only Laurie’s doomsaying could save any lives.
There are monsters in the world. Look at the news; there are boogeymen. But if the boogeymen matter above all things, what’s the point? Michael Myers is no longer an aberration, an injection of terror into another otherwise functioning world. He’s a gross inevitability, something we have to simply accept as part of our lives. We can fight him. We can defeat him. But we can never hope to escape him. By the end of Carpenter’s “Halloween” that possibility was horrifying. By the end of Green’s, the certainty is depressing.
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It’s been 40 years, several awful sequels, multiple reboots, a non sequitur spinoff and countless imitations since John Carpenter’s “Halloween” first stabbed the screen in 1978. To say that the brand has been diluted a little bit would be an exercise in understatement. Everyone knows serial killer Michael Myers, but everyone also knows he just hasn’t been himself in a while.
So it makes sense, in this nostalgia-driven era, to go back to the basics. Blumhouse has taken over the “Halloween” franchise, and they’ve enlisted celebrated director David Gordon Green (“Stronger”) to return Myers to his former glory. The new “Halloween,” which is confusingly and frustratingly titled just “Halloween,” ignores all of the failed follow-ups to the original slasher classic.
It also ignores all the good ones, because the bathwater was so apparently bad they decided to toss the baby out too. Green’s “Halloween” is a direct follow-up to Carpenter’s original, and tells the story of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who survived the original massacre and spent decades in a state of post-traumatic stress, mentally preparing herself for the return of Michael Myers and becoming increasingly estranged from her only child, who rejects her paranoia and refuses to live in fear.
Watch Video: Michael Myers Is Back to Kill in New 'Halloween' Trailer
It’s a storyline that the new “Halloween” can only get away with by completely ignoring the fact that it’s been told before, and very well, in “Halloween H20.” Then again, slasher franchises are built on familiarity, if not outright repetition. Green’s sequel adopts the eerie cinematic style of John Carpenter’s original “Halloween” while evoking what is, perhaps, the only truly great “Halloween” sequel that came before it. And although it falls into several pitfalls of the genre, it’s still an effective chiller.
“Halloween” (2018) kicks off at Smith’s Grove, the mental institution where Myers has been institutionalized for four decades, after the unthinkable horrors of his killing spree in 1978. It is here that two podcasters arrive to give endless exposition, clearly state the movie’s themes, and poke the hornet’s nest. They brandish Michael’s original mask like it’s some kind of religious idol and yell “You feel it, don’t you Michael?! YOU FEEL THE MASK!” as if that’s somehow, in any universe, a good idea.
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Meanwhile, Laurie Strode lives in an elaborate doomsday compound on the outskirts of Haddonfield. She spends her time cleaning her arsenal of guns and taking potshots at her impressive collection of mannequins, which are all white, emotionless statues like Michael Myers. Laurie’s daughter, Karen (Judy Greer), doesn’t talk to her. Karen spent her childhood preparing to kill Michael Myers, much in the same way John Connor spent his childhood preparing for the robot apocalypse in the “Terminator” movie universe.
Now, Karen has completely rejected her mother’s warnings, and has raised her own daughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), with the philosophy that there’s actually some hope for the future, beyond an inevitable confrontation with a knife-wielding maniac. The film’s most genuine, tragic moment comes when all three generations of the Strodes are having dinner together, with Laurie in the midst of a debilitating panic attack. To Karen, it’s just another in a lifetime of avoidable anxieties, the cause of all her own pain. To Allyson, it’s a heartbreaking moment of fragility that brings her closer to her grandmother.
But “Halloween” can’t just be a sensitive drama about the ripple effects of tragedy. At some point, Michael Myers has to escape and go on another epic killing spree. He’s apparently been working out this whole time, because he beats the living hell out of several healthy young victims with his bare hands. He also stabs, impales and gets weirdly fixated on teeth for some reason. This version of Michael missed out on 40 years of murder spree sequels, and he has a lot of catching up to do.
Also Read: Jamie Lee Curtis Fires Back at Fox News After Accusation of Being Hypocritical on Gun Control
Director of photography Michael Simmonds (“Nerve”) has a glorious time recreating the gliding, ghostly camerawork of the original “Halloween,” while giving the film a sharp, inky contrast that makes Myers look creepier than ever before. The script provides multiple opportunities for visually dynamic scare sequences, including a clever gag with a motion detector light, but the centerpiece is an early slashing bonanza of which Carpenter (credited here as executive producer) would no doubt be proud.
Myers practically floats through the busy streets of Haddonfield, completely hidden in plain sight, taking out his murderous aggressions on unsuspecting house-dwellers while the costumed children are none the wiser outside. It’s simple in its conception, complex in its execution, and terrifyingly believable. For a moment, Green’s “Halloween” is arguably scarier than the original.
But despite the glorious style and the disturbing kills, the new “Halloween” is still a slasher sequel, and it falls prey to all the same old slasher sequel problems. The plot is hopelessly contrived and bends over backwards until its back breaks, just to justify its coincidences. The disposability of the teenaged supporting cast is only thinly disguised by off-putting, meaningless details. (One of the teens wears a lot of chapstick. That’s it. That’s the only thing that makes him stand out as a character.)
Watch Video: Jamie Lee Curtis Embraces Fan Who Says Her 'Halloween' Character Saved His Life
And of course, no slasher movie would be complete without a moment in which the young hero’s cell phone is neutralized. In this case it’s dropped in what looks like a bowl of cheese. Rather than pick it up and take it with her — if only to retrieve the SIM card — Allyson just leaves it there, because apparently phones grow on trees and she doesn’t care if anybody finds it and steals her identity. You know, like a person would.
A forgettable supporting cast and a handful of forced plot points do not ruin a horror sequel. Forget the promise of Blumhouse taking over the franchise and giving it to a respectable director like David Gordon Green: This isn’t a glorious rebirth, it’s a functional facsimile, and it’s a wholly satisfying piece of slasher entertainment regardless. Green’s film takes the material seriously, for the most part, but he’s still trapped in a world of coincidence and foregone conclusions. Myers must escape and Laurie must face him, and the universe will stop at nothing to make that happen, even if the explanation for their dramatic reunion is hilariously laughable and ultimately unnecessary.
The most frustrating element of Green’s “Halloween” is that despite its wry dialogue and celebration of Laurie Strode, it’s a deeply cynical motion picture. Laurie is a Cassandra figure, who has been warning Haddonfield of Myers’ return for so long that nobody believes her. Laurie’s daughter, Karen, has been prepared to defend herself physically from Myers, but to her way of thinking, even more damage has been done by Laurie. Karen had to reject Laurie’s worldview in order to build up her own positive outlook and live a life worth living. She’s so eager to overcome her anxieties about Halloween that, on October 31, she’s already wearing her Christmas sweater.
It’s wrong to deny Laurie Strode her right to have defense mechanisms, but it’s disturbing to build an entire narrative around justifying her emotional child abuse. Laurie spent a lifetime telling her daughter to live in a state of constant terror, and the movie essentially argues that she was right to do so, because Laurie was right about Myers’ return. It’s painful to watch a traumatized child yell at her mother to please, please acknowledge that there is love and goodness in the world, and it’s enormously off-putting that the movie she’s in takes the opposing side, arguing that optimism is little more than dangerous naïveté, and that only Laurie’s doomsaying could save any lives.
There are monsters in the world. Look at the news; there are boogeymen. But if the boogeymen matter above all things, what’s the point? Michael Myers is no longer an aberration, an injection of terror into another otherwise functioning world. He’s a gross inevitability, something we have to simply accept as part of our lives. We can fight him. We can defeat him. But we can never hope to escape him. By the end of Carpenter’s “Halloween” that possibility was horrifying. By the end of Green’s, the certainty is depressing.
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What has already been an unprecedented October at the box office is about to get yet another jolt with Universal/Blumhouse’s “Halloween,” the direct sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic that could join “Venom” as one of October’s top two highest-grossing movie weekends in history.
“We’re well into the fall season, but this October feels more like a July,” said comScore’s Paul Dergarabedian. “We’re 50 percent ahead of last October and six percent ahead of the best October ever, and now here comes ‘Halloween’ to push us even further above that pace.”
Also Read: Jamie Lee Curtis Fires Back at Fox News After Accusation of Being Hypocritical on Gun Control
Independent trackers are projecting an opening for the film of $60-63 million, with Universal predicting a start in the $50 million range. Hitting tracker marks will give the film the second-best-ever October launch, sitting between this year’s “Venom” ($80 million) and 2013’s “Gravity” ($55.7 million).
However, box office analysts tell TheWrap that “Halloween” might get closer to “Venom”‘s mark than trackers are predicting, saying a $70 million opening is within reach.
While other slasher franchises, like “Friday the 13th,” solely market their iconic killer, “Halloween” has been sold as a deadly reunion between the infamous Michael Myers and the famed protagonist Laurie Strode, who will be played for the fifth time by Jamie Lee Curtis. It’s the latest in a series of films that have brought back actors to play classic roles from decades past, including the new “Star Wars” trilogy and “Blade Runner 2049.”
Also Read: Why ‘First Man’ Didn’t Launch Into the Box Office Stratosphere
“‘Halloween’ is coming out at absolutely the right time,” said Dergarabedian. “At a time when horror is more popular than moviegoers than its been in decades and there’s a demand to see women in lead roles, it is definitely going to be the film to watch not just this weekend, but all the way up to Halloween night.”
Taking place 40 years after the original, “Halloween” shows Michael Myers as he escapes from the mental institution he has been locked up in for decades. He returns to Haddonfield, Illinois to find the one who got away. That one, of course, is Laurie, now an estranged grandmother who is still traumatized by that infamous Halloween night, and has prepared for the opportunity to finish Michael off for good.
John Carpenter returns as executive producer and composer for the new film. David Gordon Green directed and co-wrote with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley. Curtis stars with Nick Castle, who is reprising his role as Michael Myers. Judy Greer, Andi Matichak and Will Patton also star.
Also expanding wide this weekend is Fox’s “The Hate U Give,” which has been in limited release for the past two weekends with a total of $2.4 million grossed. Trackers are projecting a $7-9 million wide opening for the social justice film, which stars Amandla Stenberg as a black student at a predominantly white prep school who is inspired to become an activist after one of her friends is killed by a white police officer.
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Michael Myers Is Back to Kill in New ‘Halloween’ Trailer (Video)
Jamie Lee Curtis Embraces Fan Who Says Her ‘Halloween’ Character Saved His Life (Video)
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What has already been an unprecedented October at the box office is about to get yet another jolt with Universal/Blumhouse’s “Halloween,” the direct sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic that could join “Venom” as one of October’s top two highest-grossing movie weekends in history.
“We’re well into the fall season, but this October feels more like a July,” said comScore’s Paul Dergarabedian. “We’re 50 percent ahead of last October and six percent ahead of the best October ever, and now here comes ‘Halloween’ to push us even further above that pace.”
Also Read: Jamie Lee Curtis Fires Back at Fox News After Accusation of Being Hypocritical on Gun Control
Independent trackers are projecting an opening for the film of $60-63 million, with Universal predicting a start in the $50 million range. Hitting tracker marks will give the film the second-best-ever October launch, sitting between this year’s “Venom” ($80 million) and 2013’s “Gravity” ($55.7 million).
However, box office analysts tell TheWrap that “Halloween” might get closer to “Venom”‘s mark than trackers are predicting, saying a $70 million opening is within reach.
While other slasher franchises, like “Friday the 13th,” solely market their iconic killer, “Halloween” has been sold as a deadly reunion between the infamous Michael Myers and the famed protagonist Laurie Strode, who will be played for the fifth time by Jamie Lee Curtis. It’s the latest in a series of films that have brought back actors to play classic roles from decades past, including the new “Star Wars” trilogy and “Blade Runner 2049.”
Also Read: Why 'First Man' Didn't Launch Into the Box Office Stratosphere
“‘Halloween’ is coming out at absolutely the right time,” said Dergarabedian. “At a time when horror is more popular than moviegoers than its been in decades and there’s a demand to see women in lead roles, it is definitely going to be the film to watch not just this weekend, but all the way up to Halloween night.”
Taking place 40 years after the original, “Halloween” shows Michael Myers as he escapes from the mental institution he has been locked up in for decades. He returns to Haddonfield, Illinois to find the one who got away. That one, of course, is Laurie, now an estranged grandmother who is still traumatized by that infamous Halloween night, and has prepared for the opportunity to finish Michael off for good.
John Carpenter returns as executive producer and composer for the new film. David Gordon Green directed and co-wrote with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley. Curtis stars with Nick Castle, who is reprising his role as Michael Myers. Judy Greer, Andi Matichak and Will Patton also star.
Also expanding wide this weekend is Fox’s “The Hate U Give,” which has been in limited release for the past two weekends with a total of $2.4 million grossed. Trackers are projecting a $7-9 million wide opening for the social justice film, which stars Amandla Stenberg as a black student at a predominantly white prep school who is inspired to become an activist after one of her friends is killed by a white police officer.
'The Purge': 'Halloween' Easter Egg Teases What's Up With the Masked Man
Michael Myers Is Back to Kill in New 'Halloween' Trailer (Video)
Jamie Lee Curtis Embraces Fan Who Says Her 'Halloween' Character Saved His Life (Video)
Why 'First Man' Didn't Launch Into the Box Office Stratosphere
When John Carpenter made the original “Halloween” in 1978, it was just another horror movie in a long line of horror movies. But the blockbuster success of this low-budget movie, about a masked killer murdering babysitters, made “Hall…
When John Carpenter made the original “Halloween” in 1978, it was just another horror movie in a long line of horror movies. But the blockbuster success of this low-budget movie, about a masked killer murdering babysitters, made “Halloween” a cultural institution. The film spawned legions of imitators and codified the slasher genre as we still know it. And yet the official “Halloween” franchise has often struggled to meet the standard of the movie that inspired the craze.
Let’s look back at all of these classic (and not so classic) horror movies, and see how they stack up:
12. “Halloween: Resurrection” (2002)
The worst “Halloween” movie commits two cardinal sins. First, it nullifies the intense and satisfying finale of “Halloween H20” by striking Laurie Strode’s personal victory from the record; now, not only did she kill an innocent man instead of Michael Myers, but Myers destroys her instead. Second, and perhaps more laughably, the eighth film in the series desperately tries to be “hip” and “now” by building a limp narrative around an online reality TV series set in Myers’ actual house. “Resurrection” isn’t smart enough to be meta, nor is it scary enough to be engaging. (But it does have Busta Rhymes roundhouse kicking Michael Myers in the face, so it’s not a total waste.)
11. “Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers” (1995)
The sixth “Halloween” film is where the franchise completely flew off the rails by introducing the Cult of Thorne, a supernatural organization that needs Michael Myers to kill every member of his family in order to stave off the apocalypse. Paul Rudd stars as Tommy Doyle, the little boy who survived Myers’ attacks in the original “Halloween,” and Donald Pleasance returns for one last film as Dr. Loomis — only to be killed confusingly off-camera during the closing credits. “The Curse of Michael Myers” is confusing, choppy, and utterly absurd.
10. “Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers” (Producer’s Cut)
The original, substantially different “Producer’s Cut” of “The Curse of Michael Myers” was a bootleg cult commodity for many years, and it was finally officially released on home video in 2014. It’s still a fundamentally strange motion picture, but at least this version makes more sense, revealing more disturbing truths about the Cult of Thorne and giving Dr. Loomis an interesting cliffhanger to go out on, as opposed to the frustrating anti-death of the theatrical release. The “Producer’s Cut” still isn’t good, per se, but it’s a lot more effective and entertaining.
9. “Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers” (1989)
Michael Myers returns to finish the job he started in “Halloween 4,” by killing his niece, Jamie, once again played by Danielle Harris. This time, Jamie is trapped in a mental hospital, and she’s got psychic powers, which don’t always help her friends survive Myers’ latest murder spree. The scene with young Jamie trapped in a laundry chute is genuinely terrifying, and Pleasance adds some real emotion to his climactic confrontation with Myers. It’s an eccentric, somewhat enjoyable slasher sequel, but the goofiness ultimately bogs it down.
8. “Halloween” (2007)
Rob Zombie rebooted the whole “Halloween” franchise with a remake that tried, for better or worse, to finally get inside Michael Myers’ head. The remake shows Myers growing up in an abusive household, showing early warning signs of becoming a serial killer, and then relegates the majority of John Carpenter’s original film to a third-act murder spree. It can be argued that Zombie completely missed the point by trying to explain the unexplained, thus making Myers just another serial killer. But perhaps, by not repeating what had been produced before, he was actually preserving the original film’s integrity. Taken on its own, Zombie’s “Halloween” is a satisfying, albeit cynical and depressing horror movie. But for fans of the originals, it’s hard to accept, let alone appreciate.
7. “Halloween II” (1981)
The first “Halloween” sequel picks right up where the original left off, with Michael Myers skulking into the shadows and resuming his murder spree. It’s a lean, mean slasher, but it’s also where the franchise’s problems started to develop. The revelation that Laurie Strode was Michael’s sister had the same impact as Zombie’s “Halloween,” revealing too much about the killer’s motives and telling the audience that they’re basically safe unless they’re either related to the killer or standing near someone who is. Throw in some frustrating pacing issues, and you’ve got a sporadically satisfying but flawed follow-up.
6. “Halloween III: Season of the Witch” (1982)
John Carpenter envisioned “Halloween” as a series of unrelated horror movies set on or around October 31, and if they’d released “Season of the Witch” instead of “Halloween II,” he might have gotten away with it. But after two Myers movies, fans balked at Tommy Lee Wallace’s unusual flick, about evil Halloween masks designed to murder people in a mass pagan sacrifice. And yet time has been relatively kind to “Season of the Witch,” a highly entertaining and spectacularly weird motion picture with a killer ending, oddball performances and memorable murders. It’s nowhere near as well crafted as the original “Halloween,” and it’s exceptionally hard to take seriously, but it’s nevertheless a hoot.
5. “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers” (1988)
Michael Myers returns after taking a season (of the witch) off in “Halloween 4,” an impressively scary, rock-solid slasher. Myers is back to kill the rest of his family, specifically Jamie, the daughter of Laurie Strode (who died between films), and it’s up to her babysitter to save her. Creepy cinematography and suspenseful set pieces help bolster a film that builds to a terrifying finale… which “Halloween 5” almost completely ignored. But taken on its own, “Halloween 4” is one of the best and scariest films in the series. It sticks to the fundamentals of the franchise and reaps all the rewards.
4. “Halloween II” (2009)
Rob Zombie played with fire by remaking John Carpenter’s “Halloween,” one of the most celebrated horror movies ever made. But the “Halloween” sequels were always a hodgepodge of disjointed ideas, and his Zombie’s to condense all those weird elements into one single film is actually a major improvement. “Halloween II” shoves the hospital attacks, psychic connections, scary evolutions of innocent characters, and Dr. Loomis’s strange post-Myers adventures together and creates a hypnotic, trippy, disturbing motion picture that could have sent the whole rebooted franchise into a fascinating new direction. (Even though it didn’t.)
3. “Halloween” (2018)
2. “Halloween: H20” (1998)
The first “Halloween” film to completely reset the franchise continuity (and to depict Laurie Strode as a traumatized woman living in fear of Michael’s return) is a slick and emotionally satisfying finale to the franchise — even though it turned out not to be the finale. Myers finally tracks down Laurie, living under a new name and working at a private school, where her son (Josh Harnett) and his girlfriend (Michelle Williams) are hiding out for Halloween when they should be on a field trip. Myers attacks and gets a few bloody kills in before Laurie rescues the kids and walks right back inside, with the sinister “Halloween” orchestral theme now playing as her empowering ballad. The slasher elements are above average, but it’s Curtis who brings “H20” to life by delivering one of the finest performances of her career.
1. “Halloween” (1978)
Turn off the background noise of the sequels, reboots and retcons, and just watch John Carpenter’s “Halloween” for what it always was: a terrifying urban legend come to life. Carpenter films the hell out of “Halloween,” with eerie Panaglide shots from Myers’ point of view, giving him a wraithlike quality, and masterful editing that builds and builds and builds the suspense until Myers’ wrath finally, brutally breaks the tension. It’s a smart, earnest, believable horror movie, the sort of tale that could easily happen anywhere. “Halloween” has always been terrifying. It probably always will.
It should come as no surprise that Michael Myers goes back to Haddonfield in the new Halloween movie. When the escaped lunatic can, he always makes it home for the holiday. He’s a creature of habit, and so, too, is the apparently immortal Halloween ser…
It should come as no surprise that Michael Myers goes back to Haddonfield in the new Halloween movie. When the escaped lunatic can, he always makes it home for the holiday. He’s a creature of habit, and so, too, is the apparently immortal Halloween series, which returns repeatedly—like a mindless, unstoppable force of…
Proving that you can’t kill pure evil, Michael Myers returns once again to pierce fresh victims with an assortment of cutlery in Universal’s “Halloween” reboot. Though this latest entry in the franchise ignores the events of the last nine films, enough…
Anne Thompson worked as a press agent on the original “Halloween.” Forty years later, she reunites with Carpenter and Curtis to assess a resilient franchise.
True confession #1: I’m going to dress up as Laurie Strode on “Halloween.” Let’s just say Jamie Lee Curtis and I are of an age. Grey hair? Check. Glasses? Check. Jeans, boots and jacket? No problem. And I’ve got a good-size kitchen cleaver, if not a rack of semi-automatics. That’s Strode’s new weapons arsenal, stacked and ready to wreak revenge on Michael Myers after he escapes from a mental hospital after 40 years.
Curtis, the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, first made her name with John Carpenter’s “Halloween” in 1978, when she was 19, followed by Rick Rosenthal’s “Halloween 2,” also written and produced by Carpenter and his producing partner Debra Hill. True confession #2: I worked on that film as a young press agent at Maslansky/Koenigsberg, followed by Carpenter’s “The Fog” and “Escape from New York” (also co-written by Hill).
I booked rounds of interviews, listening to Kentuckian Carpenter talk about SteadiCam moves and the influence of Howard Hawks on “Assault on Precinct 13.” I vividly recall photographers shooting Kurt Russell as Snake Plisskin posing under the Statue of Liberty. My last go-round with Carpenter and Hill was as the unit publicist on Carpenter crony Tommy Lee Wallace’s “Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.”
True Confession #3: That was the first time I realized how much hard work can go into a terrible movie.
Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken in John Carpenter’s “Escape from New York”
Richard Drew/AP/REX/Shutterstock
So when I showed up on the Universal back lot’s Wisteria Lane for the “Halloween” junket, I hadn’t seen Curtis and Carpenter in decades. “I remember you,” said Carpenter, smiling. “I follow you on Twitter.” As for all those awful “Halloween” sequels, he said: “I want to apologize now for those movies.”
Many people forget that Carpenter wrote the “Halloween” script with the late producer Debra Hill, who supplied the first draft. “She brought a lot of her own high-school experiences to it,” Carpenter said. “I took her draft, rewrote and polished it. That was our shooting draft. She did great things: she came up with the sheet over Bob, one of the funniest things I ever read, so unique.”
“Hill didn’t get enough credit for ‘Halloween,'” said Curtis, who credits her with creating the character of Laurie Strode — and for making her career. “She wrote that character. John Carpenter is a talented man, but he couldn’t write three 17-year-old girls as effectively as Debra did. Without John and ‘Halloween’ and Laurie Strode, I have no career: absolutely true. As a young actress, I wasn’t that pretty. I wasn’t known for my looks. The movie gave me definition at a time when I was undefined. Being the daughter [of “Psycho” star Janet Leigh] is useless. It did not get me any work. By giving me this job, John was recognizing my gift of vulnerability. He was recognizing something I didn’t understand. I was 19. He said, ‘I want you to be so vulnerable people want to take care of you.'”
When Curtis saw “Halloween” at a crowded late-night screening on Hollywood Boulevard, she remembers that when Strode leaves the house with the kid asleep and walks slowly across the street, “halfway across the street, as Laurie is looking at the house, an African-American woman stood up and screamed, ‘Do not go in there!’ I understood at that moment what he was going for: we established this sweet girl who was everybody’s daughter and friend, a braniac, a repressed dreamer, that girl who was introduced into this horrific world made you want to protect her.”
“Halloween” (1978)
Carpenter remembers planning that killer point-of-view opening tracking shot around and through the house and upstairs. “I hadn’t seen that in movies, certainly not low-budget horror,” he said. “And Panavision wide-screen wasn’t used for low-budget horror. It was usually too expensive.”
The movie was structured around making the audience anxious about what was lurking out of the frame. It was usually The Shape (Nick Castle). “We didn’t know where he was,” said Carpenter. “He could be anywhere, in the shadows outside or inside, or he might be right next to you and you don’t know it.”
While the $325,000 indie release was a sleeper hit (topping out at $183 million domestic, adjusted), critics were all over the place. Tom Allen in The Village Voice compared Carpenter’s shock techniques to Hitchcock and George Romero, while Roger Ebert raved: “If you don’t want to have a really terrifying experience, don’t see ‘Halloween.'” However, The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael argued that “Carpenter doesn’t seem to have had any life outside the movies: one can trace almost every idea on the screen to directors such as Hitchcock and Brian De Palma and to the Val Lewton productions.”
Jonathan Rosenbaum and Robin Wood suggested that the killer only goes after sexually promiscuous victims, while the virgin survives: thus, “the monster becomes, in the tradition of all those beach party-monster movies of the late ’50s and early ’60s, simply the instrument of puritan vengeance and repression, rather than the embodiment of what puritanism repressed,” wrote Wood. “I thought the opposite,” Carpenter said.
David Gordon Green, Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Jason Blum, Danny McBride, and Malek Akkad
Eric Charbonneau/REX/Shutterstock
Horror producer Jason Blum picked up the “Halloween” rights when they reverted to Miramax, and lured Carpenter back into the fold as composer and executive producer. “Jason Blum is a master salesman,” said Carpenter, who’s now going on a European tour with his band. “He came over and sat in my office. ‘They’re going to make it whether we do it or not. Why don’t we get together?’ He wanted to shepherd it through, make it as good as it could be, make it better. ‘Why not? Nothing wrong with that, plus I get paid. I’ll do it.’ And he beat the bushes to find a great director, David Gordon Green, who is not a horror director. That’s what I love about him. It worked out.”
Green (“Super Bad”) was another film nerd who grew up in the South: “Halloween?” Blum emailed. Green instantly responded: “I’m in!” He wrote a script with frequent collaborator Danny McBride. It shares DNA with the original and is set 40 years later, when The Shape is on the loose again. But this time, the senior Strode has prepared obsessively for his return and is ready to blast him to smithereens — along with her well-trained daughter and granddaughter.
“That is Jason Blum’s gift,” said Curtis. “The Blum company methodology is to allow filmmakers to make movies on small budgets so the outlay is not exorbitant. At the Blumhouse offices, the only lobby pictures are of directors, as well as a mirror with a frame around it that says:’ ‘Imagine yourself here.’ That’s the idea. It’s David’s movie, 100 percent.”
While Carpenter liked an early “Halloween” draft, he counseled Green to forget about literally taking up where the other left off. “Just start now,” he told him. And they did, letting the media fill the audience in on the back story of a horrific serial killer imprisoned in a psychiatric institution for 40 years. (And skipping all those forgettable sequels.) “They were the Greek chorus,” said Curtis. “They told the history we didn’t have to tell, you got all that out of the way. I thought it was inventive and clever.”
The other thing Blum and Green convinced Carpenter to do was compose the score. “I had a blast doing it,” said Carpenter. “David was great, I did a spotting session with him, he was very specific about where he wanted music — ‘The main theme goes here, the sting is here.’ He had a grasp of what he wanted, so I let him direct me and he did. It was a combination of the old themes in places and brand-new music. He knew when not to use music and use silence.”
When Curtis started to read the script, she was struck by a scene when Strode’s granddaughter arrives home from a run and walks into her sliding louvered closet. “She pulled a bare bulb,” she said. “Right away, I understood what the writers and David had done, jumping 40 years to this girl in Haddonfield. It was a perfect homage to the first movie, but a whole new story, a beautiful reference.”
It all came flooding back to Curtis as she took on Strode again, who is a “strong fighter,” she said. “But she’s a wounded warrior.” Curtis leaned into her own lonely isolation away from her Los Angeles family, driving long distances alone to sets on location in Charleston, S.C., “where I didn’t know where the fuck I was,” she said.
“From the moment I walked onto the first set until I flew home a month later with a cracked rib, I was beaten up physically and emotionally,” she said. “I couldn’t stop crying from all the trauma Laurie stored up for when he’d come back after all those years. It all came out in the movie, without her being weak.”
No way. Strode has become an obsessively protective mother and grandmother. “She is flawed as a mother from all that original trauma,” said Curtis. “It’s about generational trauma and its effects.” The movie is contemporary, with a similar DNA to the original, opening this time on the mental asylum housing Myers. “Things are more exaggerated,” said Curtis, “because we live in a more exaggerated world in 2018 than 1978, the violence is more graphic. David was wildly inventive and fun and different. This is not just standard filmmaking. He’s an artist.”
Jamie Lee Curtis, Danny McBride, and David Gordon Green
Eric Charbonneau/REX/Shutterstock
The experience was “gratifying” for Curtis, who feels resonance with the #MeToo movement today. “The whole idea of our evolution as women is that we’re all in this together,” she said. “It’s generational: You see these women linking up in the last shot, three women on the truck with the knife.”
The actress always asks crew members to wear name tags for the first few days so she can learn their names. For the last shot of the movie, Strode sits in a truck watching Myers leave “as 40 years of trauma come crashing down,” Curtis said. When she arrived on the set, the entire crew stood in silence wearing name tags reading, “We are Laurie Strode.”
“She’s a force of nature, Jamie Lee Curtis,” said Carpenter. “I’m so proud of her. She’s fabulous. It is elemental. You know what happens to actresses when they hit 30. You don’t have a young ingenue playing this role, you have an older actress kicking ass on the screen and playing the hell out of this role. It’s totally unusual. I understand the ‘Terminator’ sequel will star Linda Hamilton; she’s going to be able to kick ass. So maybe it’s a trend. It’s about time.”
John Carpenter
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True confession #4: Some years back, I had a memorable interview with Carpenter in which he said working for the studios meant bending over to get fucked in the ass. “I may have been in a cranky, distrustful mood back in those days,” he said.
He went through some rough times after “The Thing” did not perform for Universal. “I had final cut,” he said. “It had the ending you see, but we don’t know which one of our two characters is The Thing. It’s ambiguous, which audiences hate. And it was a down ending; it marked the end of mankind, essentially. We had previews, and the 19-year-olds were not happy about that. Universal asked me to try a new ending where you believe Kurt Russell blew up The Thing.”
Carpenter tried it: In testing, it didn’t make a difference. So the film went out with his ending. “I found out I was Sheinberged. [Universal chief] Sid Sheinberg’s wife hated the movie and she said to him, ‘This movie will destroy you.'”
While Carpenter earned accolades for “Halloween,” and loved “The Thing,” “it got buried,” he said. “I crawled away with my tail between my legs and hid. I was kicked out of Universal, tossed out on my ass. I got no ‘Firestarter,’ because ‘The Thing’ was so hated by reviewers and didn’t make enough money at the box office. It was not ‘E.T.'”
Stephen King’s “Christine” and Jeff Bridges vehicle “Starman” saved Carpenter’s studio cred, but finally many of Carpenter’s best films were made independently. “I was not able to smoothly and constantly maintain my final cut position in movies,” he said. “And that was what I valued the most, from the very beginning, to just have control over making my movie as opposed to somebody else. I had to fight. I got tired of fighting. The business just wears you down. I had to stop: ‘I can’t do this anymore, too much stress, too much fighting.’ Everybody is nice and happy when you start a project, but it just always ends up that way. People want you to change this and that. It bugged me then. I’m better now.”
Would he want to go back and re-edit his movies into the versions he wished them to be? “I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “No, I don’t want to change anything now. It’s all finished, and I’m happy it was finished at the time. No, I don’t want to revisit anything. I’ve mellowed out over the years. All is well, although I had a pretty serious illness a few years ago that nobody knew about. I’m just happy to be here. I’m good.” He caught himself. “Maybe not psychologically,” he said. “There’s always a problem there.”
Carpenter scored the long-awaited showdown between Laurie and Michael Myers, which included some very strange sound samples.
Horror producing maven Jason Blum made it clear to John Carpenter that they would make a “Halloween” sequel with or without his participation, so the wily filmmaker decided to insinuate his influence as composer. “He told me to stop complaining from the sidelines and try to make this movie good, and that’s what we did,” said Carpenter, who also scored his original horror classic.
In David Gordon Green’s highly praised “Halloween” sequel, Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie has become a tough survivalist who’s spent decades preparing for a final confrontation with slasher Michael Myers (Nick Castle and Jude Courtney). Carpenter liked that it was a primal story that ultimately reversed their predator and prey roles. He advised Green “to make it simple and relentless,” and that’s how he scored it, working with the director to spot the cues.
“The score was done in 1978 on old tube synthesizers,” said Carpenter. “It was very crude. Well, today, the technology has just advanced, amazingly. And the sounds have become very sophisticated and deep. We adapted the old themes and refurbished them so they sound better. But then we sprinkled the new stuff.”
“Halloween”
1996-98 AccuSoft Inc., All right
Carpenter applied a series of ascending and descending synths, sampled piano, drum hits, and powerful thumps. Plus, there’s the addition of electric guitar supplied by his godson Daniel Davies. Son Cody played keyboards. Carpenter was particularly proud of the strange percussive and rhythmic sounds during a slasher scene in a house. “We rubbed our pants and then distorted it and you’re also hearing the drum machine orchestral hits,” he said.
The standout piece, though, is “The Shape Returns,” which accompanies Myers donning his iconic mask again for his latest Halloween killing spree. On the soundtrack, it has its own three-part structure: It begins with creepy strings and then brings in the main theme filtered through piano, follow by a new synth progression and disturbing tapping. Lower-register synths take over with more tapping before an ominous conclusion of dread.
John Carpenter
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But it was always important to keep Laurie and Myers musically separate. “They’re never going to merge as characters,” Carpenter said. “They’re in conflict, so there are always different approaches to the music. He’s just aggression, he’s evil on the hoof.”
For the suspenseful finale, Carpenter “pulled out the kitchen sink and made it dark.” However, when director Green toyed with reshooting the original “Halloween” ending, Carpenter immediately advised against it. “I didn’t think the fans would like it,” he said. “Think about the audience. They’re going to go crazy if you make it simple and direct and just ruthless.”
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The horror legend couldn’t stop reacting to the Kavanaugh hearing during a recent interview with Revolver magazine.
John Carpenter spent September 27 like most Americans: Watching Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and university professor Christine Blasey Ford testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. As the horror director was watching Kavanaugh under oath, he also happened to be speaking to film critic Tim Grierson for an interview with Revolver magazine. The interview was published October 4 and includes Carpenter’s amazing real-time reactions to Kavanaugh’s testimony.
When first asked about Ford’s testimony, Carpenter praised the professor, saying, “It’s just really credible. She’s an amazing witness. I’m riveted by the image of Kavanaugh on my TV screen.”
Grierson noted the trauma Ford has been living with since allegedly being assaulted by Kavanaugh ties in to David Gordon Green’s upcoming “Halloween,” in which Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode is living with PTSD years after her experiences with Michael Myers in Carpenter’s 1978 original. Carpenter agreed, saying, “Oh sure, big time.” Later in the conversation, Carpenter stopped answering a question about his career because he couldn’t believe the sight of Kavanaugh losing his temper under oath. “Kavanaugh is angry,” he said. “It’s unbelievable.”
“Man, I am just listening to [Kavanaugh]. He is just raving,” Carpenter noted minutes later. “‘This is a character assassination.’ What a whiner.”
Grierson asked Carpenter about the hearing towards the end of their discussion, to which Carpenter responded, “Well, he’s angry, and then he’s calmed down just a bit now, but he’s really pissed off at people who call him names. He’s flailing away here: ‘I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone,’ that’s what he says.”
Carpenter serves as composer, executive producer, and creative consultant on Green’s “Halloween,” which opens nationwide October 19. Head over to Revolver to read his interview.
Michael Myers is back, and he’s got a reworked jam to prove it.
When original “Halloween” director offered remake director David Gordon Green some advice for his new spin on the classic horror film, he encouraged just one thing: for Green to “keep it simple.” A similar ethos is echoed in Carpenter’s own score for the film, which he crafted alongside his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies. It’s Carpenter’s first venture into the movie music world since 2001, and it adds a distinct edge to the Jamie Lee Curtis-starring sequel, and now fans can get an early listen at it.
The first track from the new soundtrack, titled “The Shape Returns,” is now available in its entirety. Like Carpenter’s own advice, it’s relatively simple, though it harkens back to the original “Halloween” theme, gussied up with some scary piano and terrifying synth (no, really).
After this year’s TIFF Midnight Madness world premiere of the film, Green was asked if Carpenter was heavily involved with the shaping of the film’s sound design, and he said, “He had a lot of ideas of when to begin music [in the film], and sometimes we would audition a piece of music, and he’d be like, ‘You know what? Let’s scrap it and play nothing.’ He has a lot of theories about when to cue music, not to anticipate too much, but to be there to deliver on the nose.”
He added, “We would do Skype sessions every week, and he’d be watching a scene, I’d be looking at the back of his head as he’d be commentating and conducting. It was a really trippy, amazing experience to be able to collaborate with one of my idols growing up [on[ a lot of ideas from the script stage through the sound design.”
Universal Pictures will release “Halloween” on October 19, the same day the soundtrack hits stores. Listen to the first track below.
Green had an ambitious and expensive plan to re-film Carpenter’s original ending to bring viewers back up to speed with the franchise.
David Gordon Green had an idea for his upcoming “Halloween” sequel to feature the original ending of John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic, but it was one part of Green’s movie Carpenter himself knew wasn’t a good idea. As Green shared with Bloody Disgusting, his original plan heading into production on the sequel was to film Carpenter’s “Halloween” ending from a different perspective.
“[We] assumed everybody was going to need a little bit to get back up to speed with where we are,” Green said about the idea, “and we haven’t seen the movie in a long time or we’ve never seen the movie, had to invite everyone to the party and that kind of thing. We kept pushing it off.”
In order to film the original “Halloween” ending from a different perspective, one Green said would have been an overhead shot of the events, the director planned to use body doubles and CGI to recreate the younger versions of the characters played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence. The director convinced one of the sequel’s art directors to stand in for Pleasence’s Dr. Loomis, who shoots Michael Myers at the end of Carpenter’s film, only for the serial killer to mysteriously vanish.
“There was conversation of utilizing footage from the original film and digitally altering it so we got some other interesting elements,” Green said. “All this stuff starts to cost money and when you look at what we’re trying to do, do you need the gimmick? Do you need the exposition? Do you need the setup?”
“Jamie would’ve recreated, with a blend of Jamie and a body double similar to 19-year-old Jamie,” Green added, confirming the plan got as far as getting Curtis to help out. “We had all these ideas.”
Fortunately, Carpenter stepped in to tell Green that re-showing the events of the first film just wan’t needed, either for longtime fans of the franchise or new viewers.
“This was Carpenter actually calming me down on set,” Green said. “I’m like, ‘Nobody’s going to know what’s happening and where we’re coming from.’ He’s like, ‘Just trust ‘em and leave ‘em alone and let ‘em figure it out.’”
“Halloween” opens in theaters nationwide October 19 via Universal Pictures.
John Carpenter’s original “Halloween” is returning to theaters beginning on Sept. 27 on more than 1,000 screens — three weeks before the reboot arrives. The announcement was made Wednesday by CineLife Entertainment, the event ci…
