After weeks of not-so-patient waiting from fans, the first trailer for Blumhouse and Universal's highly anticipated new Halloween sequel has arrived. It's been over a month since Halloween (2018)'s trailer was revealed at CinemaCon, and received a hugely positive response from those who attended the event. This naturally made fans assume that the trailer would make its way online soon, and the more time that has elapsed without that happening, the more many Halloween devotees have grown annoyed. After all, the film hits theaters in less than five months, so why isn't there any kind of footage from it available yet to whet appetites for more Michael Myers carnage?

Thankfully, Blumhouse boss Jason Blum took to Twitter in late May to try and calm down the rabid Halloween crowd by assuring them that early June would be a "happy time." There was obviously only one thing he could be referring to: the trailer was on its way soon. Sure enough, it's now here, offering Halloween fans old and new the opportunity to get their first look at this latest incarnation of the franchise.

The trailer can be seen above, and it's not hard to see why those at CinemaCon were impressed. As famous a franchise as it is, Halloween doesn't exactly have a spotless track record when it comes to quality. A side effect of their being so many entries is that the law of diminishing returns often kicks in, leading to widely disliked sequels like 1989's Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, and 1995's Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, which sadly served as Dr. Loomis' (as played by Donald Pleasance) cinematic swan song. By contrast, this new Halloween - directed by David Gordon Green, and written by Green and Danny McBride - looks to be going back to its roots, and trying to craft a film that's more akin to John Carpenter's classic original.


As most are no doubt aware of by now, Carpenter himself returned to the Halloween franchise in order to accomplish the goal of resurrecting it properly. He hasn't been involved directly in any of the installments since 1982's failed attempt at diverting from the Myers storyline, Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Carpenter is both producing Halloween (2018) and composing the score, and with him on-board, it's not too surprising that all the prior sequels are being ignored in favor of making a direct follow-up to the original. Even though Carpenter wrote Halloween II (1981), he's always been vocal about never really caring for it that much.

One of the more interesting side effects of this kinda, sorta reboot approach is that the franchise's signature story twist of Michael Myers and his frequent target Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) being brother and sister is now gone. It remains to be seen what - if anything - explains why Michael chooses to come after Laurie again 40 years after his original return to Haddonfield - in a timeline where they've only ever had one encounter and Laurie isn't his sister - but considering Carpenter's original idea for Myers painted him as evil incarnate, does he really need a reason?