Michael’s on the Warpath in the Blood-Soaked First Trailer for Halloween Kills

Brace yourself for the shock of a lifetime: Turns out that the basement fire at the end of 2018’s Halloween actually wasn’t enough to permanently kill Michael Myers. I know, right? Who would have expected the slasher icon to pull through, just because there had been not one but two more sequels already announced?

The latest in these we’re-still-not-going-to-kill-Michael-Myers installments is the upcoming, oft-delayed Halloween Kills, which released its first trailer today. The footage below is a real charnel house, seeming to promise a body count of grandiose proportions—by our count, Michael kills at least 10 people in the trailer alone. It’s a bit spoiler laden, essentially depicting Michael’s entire escape as he carves his way through a team of firefighters, but once again, it’s not as if his survival is a surprise here. Nor is the insistence of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, still frantic) that “evil dies tonight.”

Of course, given that there’s still one more sequel coming, Halloween Ends in October of 2022, we can say with 100% certainty that Michael won’t really be dying this time around either, unless the writers have something particularly kooky in mind. Still, Curtis’ promise that “evil dies tonight” could technically still be true, especially if Halloween Ends ultimately takes place on the same night as the events of Halloween Kills … which may be taking place on the same night as 2018’s Halloween, come to think of it. The plot, meanwhile, seems to involve our heroines putting together a citizen lynch mob to fight Michael, something that was previously attempted with poor results in 1988’s Halloween 4. Also returning is the character of Tommy Doyle, the young boy that Laurie was babysitting in the 1978 original, here played by Anthony Michael Hall, who looks hungry for vengeance.

Regardless, the series is clearly abandoning any attempt at subtlety at this point, in favor of pure brutality. The scene with the firemen in this trailer in particular is unlike anything we’ve seen in a Halloween entry before, with Michael choosing to walk straight up to a group of people in order to tear them apart. It’s more like something you’d expect Jason Voorhees to do, rather than Michael Myers, who is better known for hiding in the shadows and silently dispatching people one by one.

Halloween Kills finally arrives on Oct. 15, 2021. Check out the bloody trailer below.