Michael Myers slash­es his way through the Hal­loween Kills trailer

Hol­low-eyed homi­ci­dal psy­chopath Michael Myers has the tenac­i­ty of a cock­roach, refus­ing to die no mat­ter how many times he’s seem­ing­ly van­quished. The last install­ment of the long-run­ning Hal­loween fran­chise saw the vil­lain trapped in the base­ment of a burn­ing build­ing to be turned to ash once and for all, only for a post-cred­its scene to sug­gest that he some­how made it, a hint con­firmed in the first look at the upcom­ing sequel.

The trail­er for Hal­loween Kills appeared online late last night, open­ing with an only-mild­ly-scathed Michael emerg­ing from the infer­no to mas­sacre a hand­ful of fire­fight­ers and rean­nounce him­self as a men­ace on the loose yet again. This time, how­ev­er, the equal­ly hard-to-kill Lau­rie Strode (Jamie Lee Cur­tis, repris­ing her career’s sig­na­ture role) isn’t just going to sur­vive — she’s going to fight back.

In the new film, the sec­ond from series stew­ard David Gor­don Green, Lau­rie gath­ers a cit­i­zen task­force to bring the pain to Michael Myers as he con­tin­ues pick­ing off towns­peo­ple. She the­o­rizes that he gains in pow­er with each life he takes, which could be a can­ny in-uni­verse way of explain­ing why the char­ac­ter has seemed to grow immor­tal and unstop­pable as the films have rolled on.

Those well-schooled in the mythos of Hal­loween will be pleased to find that con­ti­nu­ity plays a greater role here, with such famil­iar faces as Tom­my Doyle (Antho­ny Michael Hall), Lind­sey Wal­lace (Kyle Richards), Mar­i­on Cham­bers (Nan­cy Stephens) and Leigh Brack­ett (Charles Cyphers) reap­pear­ing for the first time since ear­li­er install­ments. To Michael, they’re all just lambs await­ing slaughter.

Though known pri­mar­i­ly for his work in come­dies (as in Pineap­ple Express) and the art­house (as in George Wash­ing­ton and Joe), Gor­don will ulti­mate­ly direct a tril­o­gy of films for this fran­chise, to con­clude in Octo­ber 2022 with Hal­loween Ends. That title cer­tain­ly sounds final, but if we learned any­thing from H20, it’s that there’s no res­o­lu­tion Michael Myers’ cre­ators aren’t will­ing to undo for the sake of continuation.

Hal­loween Kills comes to cin­e­mas in the UK and US on 15 October.