‘Halloween Kills’ Raises the Murderous Stakes in First Trailer

The latest installment of the Halloween horror franchise, Halloween Kills, dropped its first full trailer on Thursday night, and it looks like a fire-fueled nightmare. Although 2018’s Halloween ended with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) teaming up with her daughter (Judy Greer) and granddaughter (Andi Matichak) to kill Michael Myers seemingly for good, Halloween Kills shows viewers right off the bat that the serial killer managed to escape the house fire and he’s out for revenge.

In the hair-raising first trailer for Halloween Kills, Laurie is seen recovering from her wounds after her last fight with Michael. However, once she hears that her tormentor is still alive, she isn’t going to let him terrorize her or her family anymore, solemnly declaring that “evil dies tonight.” That being said, a sequel film titled Halloween Ends is set to hit theaters next year (both films were pushed back a year due to the coronavirus pandemic), so this likely won’t be their final face-off.

Director David Gordon Green, who has helmed the entire revival trilogy, told Polygon in 2018 that he always intended for his Halloween ending to be open-ended and conclusive at the same time. “When you see the original film, you hear him breathing and you know that [Michael] lives on,” the writer-director explained. “Here, when we see the burning house, we actually hear Allyson breathing from the truck where she’s flagged off of a truck driver and she’s breathing heavily, turns, and then we go into the answer to that house and it’s burning, but we’re hearing her breath over it, which depending on what theater you hear it, it’s super subtle.”

Curtis was asked about Halloween Kills in 2020 during a SiriusXM interview, and she was clearly thrilled with her continued work as Laurie. “The power, of the rage of voices, big groups of people coming together enraged at the set of circumstances, [is] what the movie is [about],” she explained, saying that it was “about a mob” and examines how trauma and tragedy “infects an entire community.” She continued, saying that Halloween Kills focused on “a seething group of people moving through the story as a big angry group. It’s really, really, really intense. It’s a masterpiece.” Halloween Kills hits theaters on Oct. 15, 2021.