DIAL M FOR MURDER

The man behind the mayhem of Halloween Kills – no, not Michael Myers – sits down with SFX to talk sequels, stars and screams to come

- DARREN SCOTT

THAT’S WEIRD. I’VE NEVER been asked that before,” David Gordon Green laughs. “That seems like the first question I’d be asked.” Well, it’s only fair to ask the writer/director of the much-anticipated Halloween Kills, a direct follow-up to the franchise reboot of 2018, what his favourite Halloween sequel is.

“I really like two, three and four, like a lot. Those are the ones I’ve seen the most,” he says with no hesitation.

“I like watching the choices that filmmakers have made,” he says of the original timeline sequels. “It was really interesting in Halloween Kills working with [returning original cast member] Nancy Stephens, who’s married to Rick Rosenthal, who directed two of them [Halloween II and Halloween: Resurrection] that I’m not recognising – so when I met her, I was like, ‘I hope he doesn’t hate me’,” he laughs.

“But to be able to talk to her about his creative choices that he made on his chapters of the franchise, I think it’s just really fascinating. And talking to John Carpenter about the approach to Halloween II and when they were writing that, some of the obstacles that they were up against, that we found ourselves up against as well. He would just kind of chuckle and laugh and say, ‘Good luck’,” he laughs again.

HISTORY REPEATING

Make no mistake, Green is a fan. “If you talk to my film school buddies that know how obsessive I was about it in the late ’90s, they think it’s crazy I get to realise those dreams.”