Halloween Kills presents its final blood-soaked trailer

Serial killer Michael Myers is on the rampage again in the final, gleefully gory trailer for Halloween Kills. Having been sealed in the basement of a burning house at the end of 2018's Halloween, Michael has escaped – and he's seemingly more than a little miffed. The indestructible Shape (his moniker from the original 1978 Halloween) now fuelled by rage? That's a genuinely terrifying prospect. And the trailer's beefed-up take on the original Halloween theme keys us into this grisly continuation of the mythology.

The returning duo of David Gordon Green (director) and Danny McBride (co-writer) aims to capitalise on the surprise success of the 2018 Halloween reboot. The movie was acclaimed for wiping the slate clean, removing decades of unnecessary sequels and establishing direct continuity with John Carpenter's original horror masterpiece. Key to its impact was the presence of Jamie Lee Curtis, forthright and forceful as embittered survivor Laurie Strode, who was there during Michael's initial massacre back in 1978.

Curtis returns as Laurie in Halloween Kills, although given she sustained injuries at the end of the previous film, she's now holed up in hospital. When Michael rears his head again, it falls to Laurie's daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allison (Andi Matichak) to take up her mantle, all the while as a mob bays for Michael's blood. Said crowd is led by the now-adult Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) who has dined out on his stories of surviving Michael's original rampage.

Carpenter has promised an exponentially high body count (the trailer makes that abundantly clear), and we can't wait to see how the notions of ancestral trauma and terror continue to resonate down through the generations of Laurie's family. This was a particularly intriguing development in the 2018 film, grounding the gore in something emotionally tangible. The chance to see Curtis back in her signature role as the tenacious Laurie is also not to be missed.

Will Laurie and her allies succeed in removing Michael's mask and exposing his true face? We'll find out when Halloween Kills arrives on 15th October.