Warning! SPOILERS for Halloween Kills
David Gordon Green's Halloween Kills makes a return to Haddonfield, the fictional setting of the original 1978 Halloween movie, though the 2021 reboot sequel retcons the town in several surprising ways. Fictionally located in the real-life Livingston County of Illinois, Haddonfield is actually named after Haddonfield, New Jersey, the birthplace of the original Halloween's producer and screenwriter Debra Hill. However, 1978's Halloween primarily filmed in Southern California, whereas 2021's Halloween Kills was primarily shot in Wilmington, North Carolina, perhaps partly explaining why Halloween Kills' depiction of one of the more famous fictional towns of the slasher genre feels, in many ways, drastically different from the original film's depiction.
Picking up where 2018's Halloween left off, Halloween Kills opens with a teenager named Cameron Elam (Dylan Arnold) stumbling upon the severely injured body of Deputy Frank Hawkins (Will Patton), who gets promptly escorted to the Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, where he spends the majority of the Halloween Kills' story recovering in a hospital bed. Alongside him is Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who is also recovering from injuries related to Haddonfield's notorious serial killer Michael Myers (Nick Castle). While hospitalized together, Deputy Hawkins and Laurie discuss their feelings of survivor's guilt over and responsibility for Michael's ceaseless killing spree throughout the ostensibly quaint small-town of Haddonfield, Illinois.
Except that, as Deputy Hawkins' backstory reveals, Haddonfield isn't exactly as quaint nor small as one might imagine based on the original Halloween. Accompanied by various shots of modern-day Haddonfield and its surprisingly diverse populace, Hawkins' flashback-revealed backstory suggests that Haddonfield isn't exactly "Smalltown, USA" but rather a fairly sprawling Midwest city with complex moving parts, including many more characters directly affected by Michael Myers than previously imagined -- not least of all, Hawkins himself, as he's retconned into Halloween lore as the (almost) heroic cop who apprehended (or, rather, failed to apprehend) Michael in 1978.
Part of the charm and terror of the original Halloween was the idea of a hyperviolent serial killer preying upon an otherwise small, sweet town full of the proverbial "simple folk" of middle America. Much in the way that David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) and Twin Peaks (1990 - 1991) unearthed the dark underbelly of quote-unquote "Smalltown, USA," the original Halloween revealed the small, humble town of Haddonfield similarly capable of exceptional cruelty and violence. However, by expanding Haddonfield from a town to a much broader city, with a much more cosmopolitan cast of characters, Halloween Kills also broadens the town's capacity for cruelty and violence, which manifests most explicitly in the angry, uncontrollable mob that storms Haddonfield Memorial Hospital -- a fan-service setting shared with Halloween II (1981) -- in pursuit of who they wrongfully believe to be Michael Myers.
Granted, the increased population and new cosmopolitan sensibilities of modern-day Haddonfield don't exactly qualify as retcons, as this represents a natural evolution in most US cities -- small-town or otherwise. However, during Deputy Hawkins' flashback sequences to 1978, the Haddonfield of Halloween Kills does seem to differ from that of 1978's Halloween, namely in its size, as some of the wide, elevated angles on Haddonfield reveal it to be much bigger than audiences may have been previously led to believe. While this shift in size doesn't entirely alter the Halloween canon, it does somewhat detract from the aforementioned charm and terror of the originals. Even so, the expansion of Haddonfield in Halloween Kills seems intended to create a more complex network of citizens affected by Michael (for example, Deputy Hawkins), allowing the reboot horror movies' creators to further expand on Halloween lore beyond Michael Myers and Laurie Strode's ongoing cat-and-mouse rivalry.