Trick or treat, Universal has just released the first teaser trailer for 2021’s Halloween Kills! The film, due out October 15th, is the follow-up to David Gordon Green’s 2018 reboot of Halloween and the second in a new trilogy where the last 40 years of sequels have been dissolved to create a new timeline for main character Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). The 2018 film is considered a blockbuster, raking in $159.9 million domestically, $255.5 million worldwide, on a budget of $10 million, and maintains a certified fresh score of 79% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Originally slated for a 2020 release, back on July 8th the world got the news that Halloween Kills would be pushed back a year due to coronavirus. This allowed Nia DaCosta’s Candyman film a tentative October date before it was decided in September to push that film into 2021 as well. Jamie Lee Curtis weighed in on the Halloween Kills delay back in July by saying “I am as disappointed as you are,” following it up by calling Halloween Kills a “masterpiece” and promising, “it will be worth the wait.” Curtis reiterated those words earlier today on Twitter by sharing our first glimpse into the next entry of the franchise.
Now, I’m usually a reticent skeptic when it comes to building excitement for a film, but I’ve watched this teaser about 50 times now and can consider myself a ready conductor of the hype train. From images of Michael Myers slashing someone’s throat triggering the clip montage to seeing a shaved-headed Anthony Michael Hall brandishing a baseball bat, I was immediately on board! Hall will be playing the role of the 1978 Halloween‘s Tommy Doyle, the little boy Laurie is babysitting in the original film and a far reach from 1995’s Paul Rudd version in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. Tommy and Laurie are likely to seek a reunion in the new movie with fellow original Halloween character Lindsay Wallace (Kyle Richards, reprising her role) as terror returns to Haddonfield.
In other images, we’re shown what seems like the whole town about to throw down against their local boogeyman, and I’m excited to know what kind of story writers Danny McBride and Scott Teems will be throwing at us. Keep an eye out for a what appears to be a bullet piercing a car window behind the face of a returning Nancy Stephens, who played Dr. Loomis’ (Donald Pleasence) right-hand nurse, Marion Chambers, in John Carpenter’s 1978 film and was last seen in the franchise at the opening of Halloween H20. Of course, I have to keep telling myself “This is only a teaser,” but I’m very excited to see what events are going to play out given these images.