With the release of Halloween Ends only a month away, Universal has cranked up their promotion. Today, a new TV spot has dropped alongside three exclusive new photos and a brief article from Total Film Magazine.

This year, Halloween Ends. The final installment in the rebooted Halloween trilogy sees the mythical Michael Myers go toe-to-toe with Laurie Strode, and it’s set to be as climactic as you can possibly imagine.

Where the first two films in director David Gordon Green’s series took place, for the most part, over a single day and very long night, with Halloween Kills picking up minutes after Halloween 2018’s fiery finale, trilogy capper Halloween Ends is breaking series convention with a four-year time jump that will bring the action up to the present day, and find the once battle-hardened, emotionally guarded Laurie in a very different place following the death of her daughter at Michael’s hands.

“By the time you meet Laurie Strode, she has gotten help,” Jamie Lee Curtis tells Total Film in the new issue of the magazine, headlined by Halloween Ends (opens in new tab). “Help to process the level of violence that has been perpetrated against her and her family. She’s done the work. And there’s a moment at the beginning of the movie where you actually meet Laurie – I’m not going to say she’s as innocent as she was back when she was a 17-year-old girl – but she has a layer of hope about her. That’s a beautiful place to start a really tragic, incredibly violent ending.”

Laurie and Allyson are living together when we’re reacquainted with the surviving Strodes, and “have a good relationship” according to Matichak, having dealt with their “shared trauma and loss together”, though Allyson hasn’t committed to the work quite as wholeheartedly as Laurie. For Green, the opportunity to evolve and even reinvent well-established characters was a key reason to move the story forward in such drastic fashion. But there’s a big question the time jump inevitably raises: where has Michael been for the last four years?

Green bluntly acknowledges, “We don’t really explain that,” arguing, as with all things Myers, that the mystery is better left intact. “It’s like: I don’t want to see where Jaws goes to sleep at night when I’m watching a shark movie,” the director says. “I want to see him when he pops up, and he’s got an appetite!”

That’s just a taster of the Halloween feature in the new issue of Total Film, which is on newsstands this Thursday – while subscribers have their copies now! Order your copy of Total Film here (opens in new tab) or subscribe to Total Film here (opens in new tab) and never miss another issue. You can currently grab three issues for just £3!