IN THE CUT

David Gordon Green on resurrecting Michael Myers

IF YOU HAD to guess the identity of the director tasked with resurrecting the Halloween franchise, chances are you’d work through most of Hollywood before alighting on David Gordon Green. He’s the indie wunderkind who these days oscillates between daft comedies and impactful dramas. Horror has been conspicuous by its absence. But that’s without reckoning on the number Michael Myers did on Green as a teenager. “I was a very sensitive kid, and it got under my skin,” he admits of John Carpenter’s Halloween. “The relentlessness of it horrified me.”

So, when Blumhouse and Carpenter invited pitches for a new instalment, Green and his long-time collaborator Danny Mcbride leapt to the head of the queue with a take that would wipe out all previous sequels and re-establish Myers as the daddy of movie slashers. “There’s no Freddy Krueger fun,” adds Green. “It’s literally a face that gives you nothing, that says nothing, that comes from nowhere. It’s a dude with a knife in your house. That’s really scary.”

All that remained, then, was to come up with a name for the movie. Sadly, David Gordon Green’s John Carpenter’s Halloween wasn’t considered. “That would be really good,” he laughs. “Halloween II: The Third was another one we suggested. In the end, out of simplicity, we said, ‘Let’s just call it Halloween.’” Simple. To the point. Michael Myers would approve.