'FIELD OF SCREAMS'

Michael Myers is back for blood in Halloween Kills, but this time Haddonfield is taking the fight to The Shape. Ahead of the savage middle chapter in the new fright night trilogy, Total Film speaks to the film’s director David Gordon Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis about tapping into real-life fears and sticking the knife in the big screen’s ultimate boogeyman.

- JORDAN FARLEY

Call a film Halloween Kills and you’d better deliver. Over 43 years, four separate timelines and 10 blood-soaked rampages, masked maniac Michael Myers has slaughtered over 120 unsuspecting residents of Haddonfield, Illinois on the spookiest night of the year, utilising everything from a trusty chef’s knife to an especially pointy tripod in his single-minded pursuit of Laurie Strode. Myers, then, is no slouch when it comes to butchering the innocent, but his body count is set to skyrocket when Kills hits screens later this year.

“It’s intense and brutal. Just brutal,” says Jamie Lee Curtis of the follow-up to Halloween (2018), itself a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s original, trailblazing slasher. “There’s an incredible amount of killing in this movie,” adds Danny McBride, the film’s co-writer. “It’s so bloody. It’s wild. David [Gordon Green] just went for it. This is such a vicious sequel. It’s relentless.”

MICHAEL’S 10 MOST HAUNTING KILLS...

DEATH BECOMES HIM

10 OSCAR HALLOWEEN, 2018

Oscar walks Allyson home to ensure her safety. But what about his? Michael plunges his trusty knife before impaling his prey’s head on a spiky gate.

9 JOHN STRODE HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS, 1995

Laura’s abusive uncle is stabbed by Michael, and then has his head thrust into a fuse box for good measure. Electrifying.

8 LAURIE STRODE HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION, 2002

Terrible film, good death, as Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is stabbed repeatedly and hung from a rooftop. Curtis would resurrect Laurie in Halloween (2018).