The Shape is back, and so is his arch-nemesis. The new trailer for David Gordon Green’s simply titled Halloween sequel has just hit the web, and it’s packed with confrontations and showdowns between Michael Myers and Jamie Lee Curtis’ iconic final girl, Laurie Strode. It’s safe to say that our hype-o-meter for Halloween just went off the charts as a result.
The trailer contains some of the same shots we saw in the first released trailer for the film, but distinguishes itself with long, continuous tracking shots of Michael as he does the kind of voyeuristic stalking he’s known for, silently gliding around and taking full advantage of the Halloween night setting to remain inconspicuous. The bits with Michael peering into windows can’t help but remind one of the POV shots in director John Carpenter’s classic 1978 original—as does the classic Halloween piano theme, which is prominent here.
This trailer also dives deep into the coming showdown between Myers and Laurie Strode, who has been biding her time, preparing and waiting for more than four decades for the opportunity to finally kill Myers once and for all. As she tells her daughter, as portrayed by Judy Greer: “Evil is real.” She also promises a finale to the confrontation: “He is a killer, but he will be killed tonight.”
Just how seriously should we take that kind of proclamation? The same thing was promised (and delivered) in installments such as Halloween: H20, which killed Myers and then immediately retconned that ending a few years later. If this new Halloween is a box office smash (which is starting to look like a possibility), does that guarantee yet another Halloween to come? The law of studio moneymaking seems to suggest that the answer is yes, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Halloween hits American theaters on Oct. 19, 2018. Gather up your courage, and watch the trailer below.