Editorials
Everything We Know About David Gordon Green’s ‘Halloween’
“It’s not a reboot. It’s not gonna be a rehash. It’s a continuation of Michael Myers.” – Danny McBride
Let’s attempt to paint a clear picture of what we should expect next year, shall we?
On May 23, 2016, the bombshell announcement dropped that Blumhouse, Miramax and Trancas International Films were partnering to bring the Halloween franchise back from the dead in the wake of Dimension losing the rights, with John Carpenter on board as executive producer, creative consultant and potential composer.
“38 years after the original Halloween. I’m going to help to try to make the 10th sequel the scariest of them all,” Carpenter said at the time. “Halloween needs to return to its traditions. I feel like the movies have gotten away from that. Michael is not just a human being; he’s a force of nature, like the wind. That’s what makes him so scary.”
Cut to February 9, 2017, when it was announced that a writing/directing duo had been brought onto the project. On that date, we learned that David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express) would be directing the new Halloween film, with Gordon Green and Danny McBride (Alien: Covenant) together writing the Carpenter-approved script.
It was also announced on the same day that the movie would be arriving October 19, 2018, which remains the film’s release date.
“So you say you want a revolution? You want to shake things up and bring back Halloween and make it rock again? Well so do I,” Carpenter said in a Facebook statement back in February. “David and Danny both came to my office recently with Jason Blum and shared their vision for the new movie and… WOW. They get it. I think you’re gonna dig it. They blew me away.”
McBride even chimed in about the project for the first time on that very same date, assuring that the film would be a huge departure from his comedic roots.
“David and I are thrilled to step outside of our comedic collaborations and dive into a dark and vicious horror,” said McBride. “Nobody will be laughing.”
Early sales art for ‘Halloween’ 2018
Naturally, the horror community was abuzz that whole week, as we all began speculating on the concept that made Carpenter so excited about the Halloween franchise for the first time in so many years. Many assumed Gordon Green was intending on remaking the original classic… but those rumors were quickly shot down.
“You know, it’s not a remake. It’s actually, it’s gonna continue the story of Michael Myers in a really grounded way,” McBride told CinemaBlend back in February. “And for our mythology, we’re focusing mainly in the first two movies and what that sets up and then where the story can go from there.”
In the same interview, McBride echoed Carpenter’s comments that the new film would get back to the “simplicity and efficiency” that made the original so effective. And during a chat with Empire Film Podcast around the same time, McBride strongly suggested that Michael Myers will not be a supernatural being in he and Gordon Green’s vision.
“I think we’re just trying to strip it down and just take it back to what was so good about the original. It was just very simple and just achieved that level of horror that wasn’t corny and it wasn’t turning Michael Myers into some supernatural being that couldn’t be killed,” he noted. “I think it’s much more horrifying to be scared by someone standing in the shadows while you’re taking the trash out as opposed to someone who can’t be killed pursuing you.”
Additionally, McBride seemed to even suggest earlier this year that making Michael scary again may mean erasing his familial connection to Laurie Strode.
“The moment that they made Laurie and Michael Myers siblings – it also makes it not quite as scary,” he said on the Jim Norton & Sam Roberts Show. “So all that kind of stuff to us… those are the things that took an amazing idea and took it somewhere it wasn’t quite as effective.”
Alas, even when we learned all this exciting new information about the project, it was still unclear exactly what McBride was saying in regards to the plot. The assumption was that the new film would be picking up sometime after the events of Halloween 2 (1981), essentially proceeding as if the original franchise never continued past that point.
Of course, we were hit with another massive bombshell just last week, which seems to have confirmed that Halloween 4 through Halloween Resurrection never happened in this particular version of the timeline. Jamie Lee Curtis will be reprising the role of Laurie Strode in the new film, revealed to simply be titled Halloween.
“Same porch. Same clothes. Same issues. 40 years later. Headed back to Haddonfield one last time for Halloween,” Jamie Lee Curtis tweeted this past Friday.
A press release sent out over the weekend also gave us our first plot details, along with a first-look photo at Curtis back in the outfit she wore in 1978…
Jamie Lee Curtis returns to her iconic role as Laurie Strode, who comes to her final confrontation with Michael Myers, the masked figure who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped his killing spree on Halloween night four decades ago.
Even more interesting was this tidbit in the aforementioned press release…
“Inspired by Carpenter’s classic, filmmakers David Gordon Green and Danny McBride crafted a story that carves a new path from the events in the landmark 1978 film.”
So then, what do we make of all this? Well, it seems clear that the main goal from everyone involved is to evoke the spirit of Halloween 1978 with the 40-years-later Halloween 2018, which aims to be simple, terrifying and free of the silliness that tanked the franchise as it grew longer in the tooth. Oh and there’s still a good chance John Carpenter is scoring the film, though nothing has been confirmed yet.
As for the story, Halloween ’18 will seemingly be set in Haddonfield on Halloween in the present day, centered on the final clash between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers.
And if the new movie is indeed “carving a new path from the events of the 1978 film,” it seems safe to assume that only the original Halloween happened in this alternate timeline. This would explain how Laurie Strode is still alive (she died in Resurrection, after all), and it also lines up with McBride’s previous suggestion that he and Gordon Green have erased Halloween 2‘s reveal that Michael and Laurie are siblings.
My best guess, based on everything we know? It would seem that they’re continuing the story 40 years after the original movie… and disregarding everything that came after.
What has Laurie been up to since 1978? We’ll find out on October 19, 2018.
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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