When David GordonGreen presented The halloween night four years ago, it was inevitable to read his effort as arrogant. Establishing a fashion that they would later continue Scream Candyman either The Texas Chainsaw Massacrethe new installment of a time-honored horror saga recovered the title of the inaugural film, but the director had dared to do more: this Halloweenthe #11acted as a direct sequel to the classic directed by John Carpenter in 1978, erasing from continuity the multiple films that had come after (hence, for example, Laurie Strode and Michael Myers did not share a brotherly bond). Neither Rob Zombiedeveloping a remake atypical and an even more atypical second part, had gone so far in its irreverence.
However, according to Gordon Green, he convinced Blumhouse to develop a whole trilogy based on this reboot, his intentions turned out to be more complex. That everything proposed from Halloween II: Bloodthirsty! If he had been struck down, it did not mean that the director and his associates had overlooked him, or did not hold him in esteem.
That is how Halloween Killssuddenly, was erected as a revision of the sequel that he directed Rick Rosenthal in 1981, returning to Jamie Lee Curtis to the hospital while, mere minutes after the conclusion of the previous film, Haddonfield continued to suffer from Myers’s attack in an endless night. Now it’s the turn of Halloween: The End: in its own way, a detour as unexpected as it supposed Halloween III: The Day of the Witch.
Gordon Green planned it that way. Unlike the unclassifiable third installment (which has not ceased to be claimed since its premiere in 1982), Michael Myers is still present in the plot, but The end is just as riddled with puzzling decisions as this one. Starting with the title credits. “There’s a reason the credits for this movie are blue, not orange like usual”says the director.
“And this is that we wanted to honor Halloween III: The Day of the Witch. Since the previous two installments were set at The halloween night Y Halloween IIwe thought it would be great to go back to the Tommy Lee Wallace movie.” A statement of intent in itself.
a shadow of the past
Gordon Green shoots these days a reboot of The Exorcistso he could not attend the event Halloween: The End to which CINEMANIA was invited. Yes, Jamie Lee Curtis, who did not hesitate to call him on the phone in the middle of the round table to ask him about this decision. Curtis has also been a participant in the confusing development of the saga Halloween. She played Laurie Strode as final girl foundational in the first two deliveries, and was absent during the next four until, in the mid-90s, he realized something: “18 years after The halloween night I remember thinking ‘in no time we will have completed two decades’. I couldn’t think of a movie where 20 years later the same crew and cast had come together to make the sequel.”
“So I got together with John Carpenter and Debra Hill and pitched it to them. John wouldn’t direct or write, and Debra wouldn’t produce. But I stayed with the project, wanting to end it all”explains Curtis, who has been a recurring producer on the franchise. “Our approach was that Laurie had run away, gone into hiding and was now an alcoholic. But you can’t run from your fears. You have to face them in such a way that when you die, you die free.”.
Halloween: H20. Twenty years later premiered in 1998, and in it Laurie Strode had had a son: one who played Josh Hartnettand was in love with michelle williams. Striking factors, which even so have been overshadowed by the shocking outcome of the film directed by Steve Miner.
Twenty years later it concluded with Laurie beheading Michael Myers. With his triumph. “But then we found out that we couldn’t legally kill Michael Myers. So we had to do a sequel, where it turned out that Myers hadn’t died and Laurie had killed someone innocent. So Laurie would freak out, end up in a mental hospital, and visit her there. Michael and killed her”Curtis recalls.
Yes Halloween: Resurrection is the most hated film in the saga is due to this twist, which murdered Laurie in an anticlimactic way shortly after it began. It is not, in fact, a reference that Gordon Green has valued, and perhaps for this reason Halloween: The End he wants to focus on other matters beyond the never-ending confrontation between Laurie and her not-brother.
Curtis defends, in this sense, that the trilogy that integrates Halloween night, Halloween kills Y Halloween: The End he departs from the nostalgic fashion of our days, and is very much in agreement with his position. “I don’t like to remember the good old days because the good old days were racist and homophobic. Today we are better, but we are also still afraid. I don’t feel any nostalgia because no moment in history has been easy”.
Halloween Kills he already showed some interest in addressing sociopolitical issues outside of the Michael Myers massacres, and Halloween: The End continues along this path, taking us to a scene where the murderer has supposedly disappeared, but his malevolent memory continues to contaminate Haddonfield’s day-to-day life.
What Michael Myers hides
Without as much interest in conducting a psychoanalysis of the creature as Rob Zombie had in his two films, Curtis admits that “People who have been hurt usually hurt other people”. Without this implying that Michael, however tragic justification he may have, has not found a landscape especially susceptible to his evil. Or even expand it. The actress, who theoretically plays Laurie Strode for the last time, extrapolates what is lived in Haddonfield beyond the screen.
“I think that social networks have exploited the capacity of all of us to be monsters. They were invented to connect us, to give us access to ideas… but they have become a machine that devours us and takes us down very, very dangerous paths.”
What has Gordon Green done with this material? Well, according to Curtis, a trilogy that will be worth reviewing over time. “In twenty years we will return to this trilogy and discover a masterpiece of cinema, where society and politics collide to create authentic art”.
Curtis is not afraid of exaggerating, because historical events prove him right. “David Gordon Green understood the women’s movement and the metoo two years before we heard of him. He knew how to see the violence of the masses before the riots by George Floyd and the assault on the Capitol. And now he’s written a movie about how, deep inside, we’re all monsters full of hate and rage.”
The halloween night premiered in 2018, when the metoo It was already a reality in Hollywood. In the same way Halloween Kills came once the image of supporters of donald trump the January 6, 2021 It was implanted in our memory. But Curtis doesn’t lie: the scripts for both movies were written months before it all happened. Somehow, the director of super smoked he knew how to read what was in the environment. “David Gordon Green has been a prophet. He knew it, he predicted it. And one day we’ll go back to these movies and say ‘wow.’
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Jamie Lee Curtis: “The ‘Halloween’ trilogy has shown that David Gordon Green is a prophet”