The forthcoming Halloween reboot that’s also a direct sequel to the 1978 original has a new clip, and it’s not some random scene meant only to tease. Like the clip released earlier this month, it genuinely delivers the horror goods. Running only a minute, it seems to be one of the movie’s stand-out sequences — an intense kill starring the actor who learned his trade from an actual killer.
The scene finds the newly-escaped Michael Myers, now 40 years older than he was in the John Carpenter original, skulking about the New England town on Halloween night, blending in with the trick-or-treaters despite being way older than the legal cut-off in some places, which is 12.
Myers quickly makes a beeline for one house in particular. He wanders into the open garage, grabs a hammer and enters the home, where he finds an older woman in the kitchen. The camera hangs back as he enters the kitchen and clobbers her, all off-screen, her death a mere series of unnerving thuds that will surely go unnoticed by the neighbors.
The latest Halloween, which arrives in theaters October 19, wasn’t directed by some horror rando. It’s the latest from David Gordon Green, the unpredictable auteur who went from indies like George Washington and All the Real Girls to big-time comedies like Pineapple Express and Your Highness.
In this clip, Green really shows his stuff. It’s done in two long takes, which know when to get close to Myers and when to hang back and let our imaginations (and the precise sound design) do the work for him. It’s a spiritual throwback to the original (with some help from Carpenter’s own classic theme music). In that film, Carpenter held back on the kills for almost an hour; most of the time his camera is playing voyeur, observing people who will eventually get gutted. This clip assures us we’re once again in capable hands.
