It’s that time of year again: Halloween. The time of jack-o-lanterns, spooky costumes, trick-or-treating, and, of course, scary movies. We all know the classics like Saw, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nightmare on Elm Street, Hocus Pocus, and the ever-famous Halloween. Many of these have had remakes or sequels done, but, on October 19, the Halloween franchise is getting a new addition and I, like many horror movie lovers, am extremely excited about it.
The original Halloween is a classic and has even spurred a ton of sequels, remakes, and everything else under the sun, but this new remake is bound to be a great one. The plot of the aforementioned original Halloween is a great one: Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a teenage girl that gets a babysitting job on Halloween night. After multiple people are reported to have been slain by masked maniac Michael Myers, she realizes that she’s also being targeted by the escaped mental patient. After a night of terrifying close-calls, she luckily escapes, unlike many of her peers, but Michael does not stop there. Eventually, his old doctor comes to rescue Laurie when he realizes what’s going on, and shoots Michael in the chest six times, leaving him dead on the grass. After the excitement dies down, however, the camera pans to where Michael is lying on the grass, only to reveal a Michael-shaped silhouette, meaning the deadly killer is still at large, ending the movie on a cliffhanger and leaving the audience begging for more.
Picture via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_(2018_film)
This beloved and blood-chilling film has sparked a ton of sequels and remakes, a whopping ten in total when including the original, as well as two remakes by Rob Zombie, a man whose name and love for gore make him a Halloween character himself. Though all of these movies have resulted in immense popularity through the ages, the original still resonates. The new remake that takes on the same title as the original makes number eleven for the franchise and has made all avid Halloween lovers more excited than ever. This movie eliminates all sequels and remakes and picks up from only what occurred in the original movie that started it all. It revisits Laurie Strode, still played by Jamie Lee Curtis, in a much later time in her life and gives her a revenge-filled hunger that only killing Michael Myers can satisfy. Once again, Michael escapes from a mental institution and is out to kill Laurie and her family. There seem to be many references to the original movie in the short trailer, which is incredibly intense and really turns up the terror, making the anticipation for this movie out of this world. There is a link to the official trailer at the end of this article, so you can see for yourself.
So, what is so exciting about this? Well, not only are there a ton references to the original movie throughout the trailer, but simply the idea of Michael Myers coming back to haunt Laurie’s life (as well as our own) is enthralling in its own way. Not only do we get to experience the terror that accompanies everything Halloween, but we get to experience a new generation of horror and it looks like it’s going to deliver. I highly recommend going and seeing this movie if you’ve seen the original or any other classic horror movie and loved it. If you haven’t seen any of the Halloween movies prior to this and still want to see the new one, don’t worry, all it takes to understand it is one watch of the original movie and you’re set to be spooked by this one! So, on October 19, instead of offering to babysit, go and watch this movie…if you dare!
Link to Halloween trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMCLVSlk1Tk