The new Michael Myers slasher is another franchise reboot in a market awash with them. Yet it is an unprecedented hit. Why?

‘Biggest Halloween opening ever,” declared Jamie Lee Curtis. The original scream queen certainly had something to shout about: the latest in the film franchise for which she is most famous took $77.5m (£60m) at the US box office on its opening weekend, beating the previous 10 instalments by a considerable distance. So why has a sequel to a 1978 babysitter slasher movie, starring Curtis as the vengeful survivor Laurie Strode, connected so resoundingly with the crowd 40 years on?

The biggest change has been behind the scenes; the franchise has been acquired by Blumhouse, Jason Blum’s savvy, and highly successful, production company that was behind Get Out, and the Insidious, Paranormal Activity and Purge franchises. “They are smart and innovative,” says Screen Daily’s Tom Grater, “and clearly saw an opportunity with the Halloween franchise, which has languished for years with a bunch of fairly mediocre sequels.”

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With past films including underwhelming Rob Zombie gorefests and 1995’s Halloween 6, which gets 6% on the reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the sharp, contemporary flavour of the new Halloween does seem striking. There’s a focus on character and controlled suspense, plus shades of Get Out’s ironic humour. FrightFest director Alan Jones also flags Blumhouse’s financial nous: “Their canny business model of low budget and high talent meant it was always going to make money.” Budgeted at just $10m – a 10th of the cost of Venom – it proves that superhero numbers aren’t needed to turn a massive profit.

Then there’s the comfort blanket of a familiar property, albeit one you might most associate with being scared senseless. “Even non-horror people love Halloween,” says Jones. “It’s one they’ve grown up with.” Rather than simply exploiting that nostalgic pull, however, Blumhouse has lured back the original’s two best assets: star Curtis and creator John Carpenter, who serves as executive producer. The return of Curtis, says Grater, was “a masterstroke – she’s still very recognisable and her coming back 40 years after the original is a great marketing hook”.

Carpenter’s return, meanwhile, “adds a certain credibility”, as does the employment of David Gordon Green to direct. Having cut his teeth with indies such as George Washington and All the Real Girls, Green swerved into the stoner comedy genre with Pineapple Express – and there’s a surprise whiff of this in Halloween, which he co-wrote with Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride. In one scene, babysitter Vicky (Virginia Gardner) phones her friend and invites her over for some “alakazam”. Her young charge twigs immediately that she’s talking about weed; cue some witty, tender banter, which raises the emotional stakes once Michael Myers shows up. Yet, despite the danger, the sequence retains a comic edge: Vicky’s boyfriend arrives as if straight out of Dazed and Confused: comically high and unable to make any kind of sensible call in an emergency.

In that “boast post” on Twitter, Curtis also bragged about other records the new film had beaten: it’s the biggest horror movie opening with a female lead, and the biggest of any film with a female lead over 55. And, while the script takes its time (re)introducing them, Laurie, her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) emerge as the film’s heroes: complex, scared but smart, and emboldened by support from each other. Far from a helpless young victim, Curtis is a grey-haired grandmother with a grudge, a gun and a brain. It’s an invigorating shift from a genre that has often simply sexualised women – and while the #MeToo movement arrived after the film’s script, its influence can been seen in the final product.

By contrast, the male characters are generally ineffectual: along with the stoner squeeze Dave (Miles Robbins), there’s Karen’s cheerfully underperforming husband Ray (Toby Huss), to whom Laurie gives a small revolver because “it doesn’t jam”. Then there’s a blunt male journalist, Aaron (Jefferson Hall), whose female counterpart is far more intuitive, as well as Allyson’s disappointing boyfriend Cameron (Dylan Arnold) and his comedy sidekick friend Oscar (Drew Scheid), who’s all clumsily horny advances. The men in Halloween are slaves to their base appetites, whether they be alcohol, sex, drugs or murder. The central three women are tough survivors.

Another way the new Halloween courts modern audiences is through diversity. While it doesn’t tackle race head-on in the manner of Get Out, and all the central characters are white, the first faces we see in the film are black. The sheriff (Omar Dorsey) is African American, as is the kid the babysitter is looking after. When did you last see a white woman working for a black family in a mainstream American film? And indeed that kid, Julian (Jibrail Nantambu), seems to have especially resonated with audiences.

These modern touches are combined with others that pay tribute to the series’ history. Nods to past themes include a stolen blue jumpsuit, a nasty surprise under a “ghost” sheet, Myers stalking a victim in a public toilet and later pinning a victim to a wall with a knife. Blink and you will miss three trick-or-treating children who are wearing the masks from Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

Underlying all this is the factor any successful film needs: good timing. Traditionally, a slew of horror movies are released in the run-up to 31 October, but this year is low on competition. “There are not a lot of other good horrors out right now, so it’s been a clear run for Halloween,” says Grater. “The Nun was successful, but has been out for a while. The likes of Goosebumps 2 and Mandy aren’t providing much competition.”

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Handily, though, there have been a number of terrific horrors over the last year, helping boost the market for the genre. “Horror has been gathering accolades and audiences recently,” says Jones, citing A Quiet Place and It, both of which share Halloween’s retro stylings. “Horror is in vogue,” agrees Grater. Led by the record-breaking It, last year saw Split, Get Out, Annabelle: Creation, Happy Death Day and Jigsaw to take the worldwide total for the horror genre to nearly $2bn.

So far, Halloween isn’t faring quite as well in the UK as the US, taking £2.7m and languishing behind A Star Is Born in the box-office chart. But given that its corresponding festivities are yet to come, Halloween won’t be slipping out of sight just yet. And with temperatures set to drop, there’s every chance that British audiences will be flocking to the cinema next Wednesday. Whatever the weather, though, horror is hot box-office property in 2018. As Jones says: “The new golden wave of horror continues.”