Is a slasher movie resurgence on the horizon? We have a good feeling about this.
If all goes according to current plans, director David Gordon Green and co-writer Danny McBride’s new take on the Halloween franchise, described as more of a continuation of John Carpenter’s original vision than a full-on reboot of the series, will arrive in theaters on October 19th, 2018. At that point, it’ll be the first time Michael Myers has appeared on the big screen in just under 10 years, which needless to say makes it one of the most hotly-anticipated horror movies on the release schedule.
As exciting as the movie itself are the sub-genre’s future prospects.
We expect that Gordon Green’s Halloween, given the franchise’s proven track record (as well as Blumhouse’s ability to keep costs low and profits high) will do pretty well at the box office next Halloween season, and we can’t help but wonder just how influential the film’s box office success could be on the future of the horror genre as a whole. The new Halloween will be the first true slasher movie to arrive in theaters in many years, so it could indeed be the catalyst for a whole new wave of slasher flicks.
At the very least, it’ll test the current popularity of the sub-genre.
What’s interesting about this (hopeful) thought, of course, is that it wouldn’t be the first time Halloween has kick-started an American slasher movement. John Carpenter’s Halloween, an independent film released in 1978, may not have been the first slasher movie (the sub-genre’s origins date back much further, with Black Christmas notably influencing Carpenter to make Halloween), but it’s undoubtedly the one that opened the floodgates and allowed for subsequent franchises like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street to arrive on the scene.
And when the slasher remake craze took hold one decade ago, do you remember which of the aforementioned three preceded the others? Yup, that’d be Halloween, Rob Zombie’s remake of Carpenter’s classic. True, the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) came first, but the financially successful Halloween (2007) was directly followed by remakes of both Friday the 13th (2009) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) – as well as attempted revivals of other slasher franchises such as Prom Night and My Bloody Valentine. I suppose you could say that Michael Myers (indirectly) created Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger and also helped bring them back from the dead years later. And he could do the very same thing in the coming years.
Just how likely is a slasher movie revival? Well, if you look at recent horror series’ on the small screen, you could argue that we’ve been slowly heading towards that inevitable resurgence for many years now. Shows like “Bates Motel,” “Scream Queens” and especially “Scream” have proven that audiences still have an interest in the hack ‘n slash sub-genre, so it’s seemingly only a matter of time before masked killers start spilling blood on the big screen again. The sub-genre isn’t dead, as recent movies such as The Final Girls, Cub and this year’s Lake Bodom are evidence of, it just needs a kick in the pants on a grand scale. All it’s really going to take is one big box office hit to once again break open those floodgates. Enter Michael Myers.
If there’s one thing studios pay attention to its what makes money, and if Halloween makes a killing, I can’t imagine long-gestating reboots of Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street will be far behind. Keep in mind that the very reason Paramount recently pulled a new Friday the 13th film from their schedule was because another franchise horror film, this year’s Rings, didn’t perform as well as they hoped. It’s a bummer, but that (often incredibly flawed) way of thinking goes both ways. In other words, if Halloween dominates the box office in 2018, you better believe that whoever owns the Friday the 13th rights at that time will be itching to bring Jason back to life. And the same goes for Freddy.
After all, it happened in 2007.
