When Blumhouse first acquired the rights to John Carpenter’s iconic Halloween franchise in the late 2010s, there was a veritable gold rush of creatives who all pushed for the chance to take the reins of the then-long dormant franchise. After all, the previous installments had been Rob Zombie’s remake films in the late ‘00s, which were extremely divisive amongst fans and critics alike.
Thus, the franchise was ripe for a proper reintroduction to audiences, and it seems as if horror filmmakers were well aware of this. Everyone from Mike Flanagan to Adam Wingard has confirmed in the years since that they pitched their takes on the franchise to Blumhouse, but who ultimately won out was the unexpected duo of David Gordon Green and Danny McBride.
In the aftermath of making the deal, Green and McBride ultimately made a trilogy of Halloween films, including 2018’s Halloween, 2021’s Halloween Kills, and 2022’s Halloween Ends. While the films all proved to be financially successful, the latter two parts of the trilogy wound up being far more divisive amongst fans and critics than that initial reboot. And now, McBride is revealing that he knew heading in that those final two films were likely to upset the status quo.
Though Green and McBride’s names were more synonymous with raunchy comedies at the time they were hired than they were with horror films to movie audiences, TV audiences were actually privy to a more fitting context for the creative team. Beyond their work in theatrical projects like Pineapple Express, Green and McBride had actually become frequent collaborators and co-writers on some of the most acclaimed seasons of television of the past several decades, including Eastbound and Down, Vice Principals, and The Righteous Gemstones.
While still comedies, these shows had demonstrated their ability to channel other genre fare in pretty stunning ways. This gave many fans hope that they would prove the right fit for the series, and this ultimately proved to be the case, as 2018’s Halloween was both the highest-grossing and best-reviewed film in the series’ long-running history since the original.
However, after some COVID-related delays, when their follow-up, Halloween Kills, finally hit theaters, it was not to unanimous acclaim but rather general confusion. The film was a bigger, nastier, more gruesome installment that had more in common with the latter-day sequels of the original series than it did with Green and McBride’s previous film. This was surprising and unpleasant to some, but it set a precedent.
So then, when Halloween Ends was released the very next year and was yet another massive tonal shift, instead focusing on the more thematic and metatextual elements of the series, it further ruffled feathers. But as McBride recently revealed on the Happy Sad Confused Podcast, he had a feeling that the reaction would be divisive.
“We didn’t know it was going to be a trilogy, we were just hoping the first one worked. And then, I think, Green is such an interesting filmmaker, like, he got into the mindset with it of like, ‘I’m going to make these next ones what I want them to be. If I’m going to dedicate this much of my time to making this, I’m only going to get one shot to do this, then I’m going to service my creative wants for what this franchise is,’ and really put his stamp on it… I know some of those things are divisive, but I look at it and I’m like, it’s what Green wanted to do.”
He goes on to elaborate that even in the planning stages of fleshing out what the final two installments of the trilogy would be, “Green led the charge; I knew some of those ideas would probably be divisive, but I liked that he was doing what he wanted to do.”
Both Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends have their own vocal fans and detractors, but it’s safe to say that Green and McBride brought fresh blood to the nearly fifty-year-old franchise, no matter how you look at it. After the success of 2018’s reboot, they could have easily just copy-and-pasted that formula for two more installments and made some easy money. Instead, they took a far more ambitious, long-term approach that put the final two films in direct conversation with the larger legacy of the series in ways that may have proved divisive but are also enormously fascinating.
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