Filmmaker David Gordon Green recently sat down with Total Film (via Games Radar) to discuss “Halloween Kills,” the upcoming sequel to 2018’s semi-reboot/sequel to the franchise’s first film that scored good reviews and box-office.
Haddonfield Memorial Hospital will be returning to the new canon with Anthony Michael Hall set to play an adult Tommy Doyle, the kid from the original “Halloween” movie whom Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie was babysitting and whom Paul Rudd previously played a version of in the now disregarded sixth film of the original franchise.
Both Nancy Stephens and Kyle Richards will reprise their roles of Nurse Marion and Lindsey Wallace from the original, while Robert Longstreet takes over the role of bully Lonnie Elam. In short, the new film will deal heavily with the town of Haddonfield itself and the impact of Myers’ return:
“If the first film was somewhat retelling the origin of Myers and getting us up to speed with where Laurie had been all those years, then part two is about the outrage of Haddonfield. Mob Rules was our working title for the film. It’s about a community that is united by outrage and divided in how to deal with evil.”
While Curtis’ Laurie Strode was the main character of the first film, she’s not that in ‘Kills’ as she takes on more of an ‘advisor’ role, Green saying she’s “a voice of both insight and reason that is trying to give a volatile community some sense of purpose in this film”. Laurie remains the emotional core of the film even as her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) takes more center stage as “Haddonfield’s pitchfork-wielding ringleader” following the first film’s events:
“When we met [Allyson], she was a very relatable, lovely girl-next-door type of character. Allyson here, just hours later… she is, in some ways leading the charge, and is one of the more bloodthirsty of the group. Whereas Karen (Judy Greer), who has dealt psychologically with her mother more intimately, is trying to resist the temptations… Events in the film bring together a lot of characters who were in the 1978 film who we didn’t see last time. They gather to try, once and for all, to take down Michael, to stop this madman.”
In many ways this marks a change for the franchise which, like many other horror films, deals with often oblivious town members whose cluelessness about a serial killer on the loose sees them quickly becoming victims.
Green, Danny McBride, Paul Brad Logan and Chris Bernier penned the new film which opens October 15th next year.
