Halloween Kills Co-Stars Talk About the Mystery of Michael Myers

David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills arrives this Friday, and two of its most essential characters have a few huge issues in frequent: they’ve each spent most of their lives haunted by Michael Myers, and so they’ve each had nearly sufficient of it. But the similarities largely finish there for Karen (Judy Greer), the daughter of authentic Halloween heroine Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), and Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), who was one of many youngsters Laurie was babysitting that fateful Halloween evening again in 1978. io9 spoke to Halloween Kills’ Greer and Hall to search out out extra.

Though we haven’t seen Tommy since 1978—on this continuity, anyway, however we’ll get to that in a bit—Hall (whose credit embody Nineteen Eighties classics like The Breakfast Club and Weird Science, in addition to the Dead Zone TV collection and The Dark Knight) advised us over video chat he didn’t spend an excessive amount of time eager about what the character has been as much as over the previous 40 years. Instead, he credit “a really great script [where] that was really all kind of embedded and woven into the fabric of the story. That’s really kudos to David and [Green’s co-writers] Danny [McBride] and Scott Teems, because they were able to thread all the characters from the original film through 21018, and the whole universe kind of opens up more. That’s no small feat, and they do it very effortlessly.”

Though Hall wasn’t a part of John Carpenter’s authentic Halloween solid or within the 2018 collection reboot, he felt comfy coming into the function, partly as a result of the movie was nearly shot in sequence originally of manufacturing. “About a week into the movie we shot the scene at the bar, and I think there’s a very powerful turn worth noting—everybody goes from commiserating about being sort of victims and survivors to making a turn and kind of summoning something else within them all, which is this idea of unifying and combating this evil—we’re not victims anymore. Let’s fight, you know?,” he mentioned. “It was very cool to do that early in the film and to get to know Nancy [Stephens] and Kyle [Richards] and some of the actors that were there from the beginning. And I had a great time working with others that were new to it like myself, like Robert Longstreet and others. You’re not always afforded that luxury of kind of shooting in sequence and getting your bearings, and with this, we were able to, which was fun.”

Greer’s character, however, performed a giant function within the earlier Halloween movie. When we first met Karen, she was estranged from Laurie; she positively didn’t perceive or sympathize together with her mom’s obsession with Michael Myers. That’s modified, clearly, after what she went via within the 2018 film, and the Karen we see in Halloween Kills—nonetheless reeling from the vicious nightmare she’s simply endured, together with the dying of her husband—could be very completely different. Greer advised us over the telephone, “I feel like she immediately is on her mom’s side. I mean, that starts toward the end of Halloween, but she really picks up where her mom left off. She believes her mom [now] and she’s ready to fight.”

Seemingly all of Haddonfield is able to combat in Halloween Kills, because it seems, with Tommy main the cost. The movie’s rising pressure explodes in a hospital scene by which a bunch of townspeople—furiously fearful {that a} killing machine has returned to menace their streets as soon as once more—believes they’ve noticed Michael Myers roaming the hallway. Though the movie was shot in late 2019, the riot and the temper it conveys each really feel oddly well timed.

“All of those things kind of unfurl what’s happened in our society and across the world with the pandemic and just the sort of divisiveness, a lot of the stuff that we’ve seen as human beings,” Hall mentioned. “It was a strange occurrence how that kind of mirrored the film, because as I know Jamie and David have spoken to, we could not have anticipated that the world got even crazier and kind of reflected and mirrored some of those themes in the film. It was really a very poignant and shocking surprise for all of us. I think it gives even more relevancy to the film in an interesting way. [The choice to resort to violence is] kind of the central conflict, I feel, of the first act—because as you know, there’s that big misdirect where we follow that and it leads us down a dark path, unfortunately, in pursuit of Myers.”

While Tommy jumps into the fray with out hesitation, and though she’s simply as traumatized and offended as he’s, Karen doesn’t take part. Instead, she tries to calm individuals down. “She’s a trained psychologist—her background is in therapy and working with people who have issues, helping kids. I think they cut that scene out of the first movie, [but she’s able to] see through the emotion and understands, maybe clinically, about mob mentality. But I think she is just a very measured, careful human being,” Greer mentioned. She additionally famous that she hopes individuals do make connections between the film and present occasions, particularly concerning that scene. “It’s always great when you’re making a genre film and it becomes sort of grounded in reality—when you keep people really human and you keep situations like that, [which] could actually happen, at the forefront of a story.”

Both Tommy and Karen have shut ties to Michael Myers, an enigmatic character whose lore has modified all through the Halloween collection however stays pretty stripped-down in Green’s movies. “One of the things that I heard David talk about, which was really interesting to me, was that there’s actually a very limited mythology about Myers. We don’t really know what makes him tick,” Hall mentioned. “Just his presence, I think, inspires a lot and people love to see him terrorize. That’s something fascinating, that [horror movie audiences] all have that desire to be scared or to be shocked. Maybe it’s some sort of unconscious way of dealing with death through the darkness or whatever. But that is fascinating to me: unlike other sort of dark characters, there’s a lot that’s not explained about Myers.”

Halloween Kills takes place fully in Haddonfield and emphasizes repeatedly that one among Michael’s driving forces is his need to return to his childhood dwelling. “I found myself weirdly sympathizing a little with Michael Myers when I watched this movie and I didn’t like that I felt that way. But there was something more human about him,” Greer mentioned. “And it’s like, what is it that turns a child into a monster? And is that in you already, or do you become that? I don’t know. I think the symbolism of going home is interesting, but I don’t have a major point of view, I guess, about why Michael does [what he does] because I’m still so curious about him.” And not realizing, she mentioned, makes the film much more horrifying. “I think that nothing is scarier [than not knowing]. Everything is scarier. You don’t know what [he’s] hiding. I mean, how can you fight with an unseen enemy or even defend yourself?”

We couldn’t let our chat with Hall finish with out asking if he’s seen the earlier portrayal of Tommy Doyle as an grownup—by Paul Rudd in 1995’s Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, the sixth movie within the franchise. While the film wasn’t all that well-received when it was launched, it’s since turn out to be one thing of a cult favourite amongst horror followers. “I did see it recently—I was glad I waited till after I was done because it was a very interesting take,” Hall mentioned. “I liked that version, too. You know, [Tommy’s] very kind of professorial in it in a way, very interesting—a different take than I had. I was more of a bare-knuckle approach, I guess.”

Halloween Kills opens in theaters and streams on Peacock beginning October 15.

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