Source: Halloween Movie via Facebook
It is hard to think of many reboots in the horror genre which have been commercially and critically successful, but David Gordon Green’s Halloween has certainly bucked that trend. The modern reboot of the classic John Carpenter slasher has been a great success, and could lead to other filmmakers bringing back popular titles in the genre for modern-day audiences.
The original Carpenter Halloween from 1978 is regarded as one of the most important horror films in history, as it sparked a brand new subgenre known as the slasher movie. Despite the cult success of the seminal Michael Myers tale and the fact that many of the movies it inspired were hits, the numerous sequels to Carpenter’s original have failed to live up to the picture that started it all.
For this reason, Green and his co-writing team of Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride decided to make a modern-day sequel to the first film in the franchise. Their vision completely ignored the nine movies which were released in the last thirty years. This turned out to be a masterstroke, as the writers were able to come up with a logical story pitting original character Laurie Strode against her knife-wielding nemesis. The picture was lauded for the way it did this, and also for reusing a lot of the themes from the first movie which made it so effective. Halloween also did exceptionally well at the box office, and with over $183 million grossed worldwide is the highest grossing slasher film of all time in adjusted dollars. This made it by far the most successful offering in the franchise.
Because of the impressive commercial and critical response for Halloween, the door could now be open for a number of other remakes and reboots of iconic slasher films. There will be a readymade audience for this thanks to Halloween, and also due to the fact that other well-known characters and themes are still prevalent in popular culture. For instance, there is the A Nightmare on Elm Street slot game at 888casino, where players can also take advantage of other offers such as a casino bonus. For console players, Dead by Daylight features a number of classic serial killers from slashers of old, including Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street have both had reboots in the recent past, and were released in 2009 and 2010 respectively. However, both films received terrible reviews and failed to live up to the source material upon which they were based. These films and others like Scream do have the potential to have successful reboots, but the writing teams need to take into account what worked so well for Halloween.
Halloween was somewhat a surprise success given the fact that the other sequels to Carpenter’s original were so weak. It could easily open the door for a long line of other slasher reboots, just as the first film paved the way for their originals starting back in the early 1980s.
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