While promoting the horror movie Halloween Kills, director David Gordon Green has shared the challenges he faced while rebooting John Carpenter’s iconic slasher franchise. During the US premiere for Halloween Kills at Beyond Fest, via Comicbook.com, Green revealed that one of the most difficult things about making the upcoming Halloween movie was filming Michael Myers’ mask and figuring out the film’s lighting.
As many long time horror fans may know, the main killer in the Halloween Franchise is Michael Myers, who dons an eerie pale mask while going about on a murder spree. In John Carpenter’s original 1978 flick, the creepy mask was created by spray-painting and manipulating a mask based on Star Trek actor William Shatner. Michael’s rubber face has become iconic and undoubtedly adds to the scare factor, making it vital for any Halloween film to nail. However, Green shared that getting the mask to come across right on camera requires technical and emotional attention.
“In terms of the challenges, I feel like I’m usually very prepared for either the technical or the performance,” Green explained. “And there’s always a curveball in one of the other of them, on every scene.”
“The Michael Myers mask, it only works in certain angles and certain lighting environments,” the director continued. “So sometimes you’ll get so caught up in dialogue that you’ll think, ‘Oh wait. But then the mask is not getting the love it needs by the lighting department.’ And so it’s just kind of juggling all of those technical [challenges]. I mean, there’s no scene in this movie that’s just two people talking in a room. So, it gets very challenging trying to figure out where to prioritize. Is it in the atmosphere, is it in the technical, is it in the emotional?”
The mask used in Halloween Kills will be slightly different from the mask we saw in the first film of Green’s Halloween reboot back in 2018. Following the events of the last film, which ended with Michael in a flaming building, the new mask will be burned on one side. In the (now non-canon) 1988 sequel Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, we saw the killer wear a new mask after his was burned in Halloween 2 in 1981.
The Halloween 4 mask was notoriously silly-looking compared to the rest in the franchise, so needless to say, Green has some pressure not to repeat past mask mistakes as he adapts the original Shatner face. Halloween Kills will release on October 15 across UK and US cinemas. US viewers can also enjoy the slasher on the streaming service Peacock on the same day.
You can find the first five Halloween movies on Netflix as of now. For more thrills and chills, here is our list of the best horror movies on Netflix.