This year's Halloween movie is officially certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. John Carpenter and Debra Hill's original 1978 movie, famously starring Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode and Nick Castle as Michael Myers, spawned one of the most iconic and longest-running horror franchise in the filmmaking industry. Since the first movie hit theaters, a whopping nine additional installments have been made (some of which have been reboots but others as sequels), with the tenth finally releasing this week.

Instead of continuing the story that left off with Rob Zombie's Halloween 2, which released in 2009, Blumhouse Productions is working with director David Gordon Green (and Danny McBride, who co-wrote the 2018 movie's script with Green) to clean the slate of every other Halloween movie and release a sequel to the original film. It's an ambitious project, one that brings back Curtis and Castle into the fold after all these years. And judging by Halloween's first reviews and reactions that have come out (including Screen Rant's own Halloween review), it seems the gamble paid off.

Related: How Much Did Halloween 2018 Cost To Make?

Now that several reviews for Halloween 2018 have popped up online, Rotten Tomatoes has officially given the film a certified fresh rating based on an aggregated score of 86%. This marks the first time since Carpenter's 1978 original movie (93%) that a Halloween installment has been certified fresh. While the vast majority of the movies have attained scores in the 10s and 20s (with one going as low as just 6%), the closest one to reach the coveted fresh threshold was Halloween H20, which received 52%.

Judy Greer and Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween 2018

This news is great for Halloween fans as well as the cast and crew behind the new sequel. It's been ages since an installment this high-profile and beloved has released in theaters, and it's even more important that it continues the story from the original film and potentially sets up a sequel, which is reportedly already in development and could even hit theaters in 2019. Furthermore, having been so well-reviewed by critics, it appears that Carpenter's comments about the 2018 sequel being the best movie in the franchise since the original film shouldn't be taken lightly. Plus, it appears that Hollywood's trend of putting out critically-acclaimed horror movies (e.g. Hereditary, A Quiet Place) isn't stopping anytime soon.

Since the reviews are out now and the movie is on the verge of releasing worldwide, the filmmakers, as well as the studio, behind the sequel will now be turning their attention towards the box office. Even though Halloween is the biggest movie debuting this weekend, there are still plenty of other top-tier films in theaters, so it remains to be seen how well it will actually perform, but the string of positive reviews should surely help.

More: Halloween Review: And That's Why Jamie Lee Curtis is a Horror Icon

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

Key Release Dates