The first trailer for Halloween Kills gives the audience a taste of what to expect in this new story, along with how Michael Myers will escape, and among all those hints are many references to the previous Halloween movies that are not canon now. However, some of these are too similar to the other movies, giving a feeling of a soft adaptation. The horror genre has a lot to thank John Carpenter for, as his 1978 movie Halloween helped develop and popularize the slasher genre in the 1980s, and even though it wasn’t well-received when it was released, it’s now regarded as one of the best horror movies ever made. Halloween made way for a franchise with 13 movies, including two remakes and a reboot trilogy.
Halloween tells the story of Michael Myers, who was sent to Smith Grove’s sanitarium after killing his sister on Halloween night in 1963 when he was six years old. Fifteen years later, on October 30, 1978, Michael escaped and returned to his hometown Haddonfield, Illinois, where he stalked Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her friends on Halloween night. Laurie was the only survivor of his killing spree, and she continued to be his target in some of the sequels, but as the Halloween franchise went through a couple of retcons, his main targets also changed. The franchise is currently going through a reboot, with the new trilogy serving as direct sequels to the original movie and ignoring all those that came after.
However, the new Halloween movies have included some references to those now non-canon movies, and the trailer for Halloween Kills featured some more, but it also hinted at this new story taking elements from the previous movies and adapting them to this new era. The most notable addition is the Silver Shamrock masks from Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the only movie in the franchise that isn’t part of the Michael Myers storyline, but there are others from some of the least notable movies from the bunch. First is Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, which saw the title slasher go after Laurie’s daughter, Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), after Laurie’s death, and in which after the people of Haddonfield learned Michael was back, they formed a lynch mob.
In the Halloween Kills trailer, it can be seen that the townspeople are doing the same now that Michael returned after all these years. Joining the lynch mob will be Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) and Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), the kids Laurie was looking after on that terrible Halloween night in 1978. Tommy joining the hunt for Michael Myers is reminiscent of his role in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, only this time he won’t be moved by obsession but by justice, as he also came very close to being killed in 1978, but Michael Myers apparently doesn’t kill children. Another element from Halloween 6 is the concept of Michael Myers being pure evil, which in that movie was all about the Cult of Thorn, but hopefully, the remaining movies in the reboot trilogy will stay away from that mythical side.
Although Halloween Kills won’t literally adapt previous Halloween movies, it seems that it took some specific elements from them to add them to the story, though it’s important to remember that trailers can be misleading sometimes. On the other hand, there will surely be more references to past Halloween movies in Halloween Kills, but it remains to be seen if any of them will be proper parts of the story, as are the lynch mob, Tommy Doyle, and the concept of “evil” living in Michael Myers.
