Like virtually every other big-name horror franchise that has ever existed, Halloween is no stranger to the law of diminishing returns. The series may span eleven entries dating back to John Carpenter’s classic 1978 original, but nobody managed to recapture the terrifying magic of Michael Myers until the unlikely duo of David Gordon Green and Danny McBride brought one of cinema’s most famous serial killers roaring back to life with their 2018 effort, which retconned all of the other sequels and reboots to act as a spiritual successor to the first installment.
It was the franchise’s best-reviewed movie in 40 years and also went on to make over $255 million at the global box office, which is over three times more than the previous highest-grossing Halloween movie could manage. Naturally, when a horror film turns into a commercial success, sequels are announced, and sure enough it was revealed that Gordon Green and McBride would bring their trilogy to a close with Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, which are set for release in October of this year and next.
The two sequels were originally set to be shot back-to-back before it was decided that they be filmed separately, which has led many to speculate that Kills and Ends are set to tell a single story over the course of two movies. That’s a tactic that’s been adopted by many big-name franchises in recent years, and one that leads to plenty of criticisms about the first installment only telling half a story before ending on a cliffhanger.
However, in a recent interview, producer Jason Blum admitted that it was an issue they were keenly aware of, but the Blumhouse head honcho is adamant that Halloween Kills will stand on its own merit as a satisfying follow-up to the previous movie.
“I worried about it until I saw it. And David worried about it. That would feel like, remember Lord of the Rings? Like, you weren’t getting the full story? It doesn’t feel like that. It feels like a complete movie. There’s a first, second, and third act. It has a big end. You still know from the end of the second movie where the third movie is going, but the second movie ends in a totally satisfying way. So it doesn’t feel like, you know, that Lord of the Rings issue that they had.”
Blum has already said that Halloween Kills is a big movie with a large canvas, so it stands to reason that Halloween Ends is going to be even bigger. Plenty of two-parters have been hampered in the past by narrative stalling and a sense that some of the major story beats and reveals are being saved for the big finale, so hopefully the creative team manage to avoid these pitfalls and deliver a sequel that can live up to the high expectations of horror fans.