Anticipation is building for Halloween Kills, the first of two sequels to David Gordon Green’s 2018 version of Halloween. Some behind-the-scenes footage arrived last week that, while brief, showed Michael Myers surviving the end of the previous film, as well as glimpses of other characters. Not only that, but the recent teaser also featured an Easter egg referencing the original Halloween II. Specifically, we’re talking about Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode being wheeled to a hospital.
Although it’s no longer considered canon, with the 2018 Halloween the de facto sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 original, Halloween II still has a lot of fans. The film is gorier and inventive in different ways than Carpenter’s work, focusing most of its runtime on an injured Curtis fighting Myers in Haddonfield Memorial Hospital almost directly after the events of the first movie. The shot in the aforementioned trailer of Curtis’ older Laurie Strode tied to a gurney with injuries from her confrontation with Myers references this setting and ties into what we already know about Halloween Kills.
Based on the large amount of behind-the-scenes shots and casting news we’ve had, we know that at least some of the film will be set in Haddonfield Memorial Hospital. Indeed, there’ll apparently be flashback scenes to the events of the night Michael Myers came home in the 1970s, although these will presumably not feature a de-aged Curtis or recreations of events from Halloween II. However, the return of characters like Nurse Marion suggests that we could be getting a better look inside the hospital, or possibly Smith Grove’s Sanitarium.
At the very least, the Easter egg in the Halloween Kills teaser shows that David Gordon Green and Danny McBride are keen to pay homage to Halloween II, even if their films are disregarding the canon that the original sequels created. Plus, the reveal today of new behind-the-scenes photos of returning characters and another shot of Haddonfield Memorial Hospital certainly implies that we’ll be seeing a lot more of Halloween Kills between now and its release on October 16th, 2020.