Ahead of its release later this week, High Def Digest has published their in-depth review for Scream Factory’s The Halloween 4K Collection (1995-2002) set, featuring comparison images between various releases and an overview of the set’s contents.

I’ve included some highlights below, but please make sure to read the entire review for any questions you may have!

As one of the longest-running horror franchises in cinema history, the Halloween films have run the map of sequels, remakes, and reboots. Scream Factory brings together The Halloween 4K Collection – 1995-2002, combining Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, the relaunch Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later and its follow-up Halloween: Resurrection. Now in 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, each of the films have been given new 4K scans from the original camera negatives and Dolby Vision HDR (with varying results), the same solid audio tracks, and plenty of new and archival bonus features to slice through. Die Hard Myers fans will want to pick this set up, but for the casual franchise fan it may be a tough sell.

Scream Factory continues their work started a year ago with The Halloween Collection (1995-2002). This is an eight-disc set, with two 4K discs and two Blu-ray discs covering both cuts of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. All of the individual slipcases are held together with a thin paper-stock box.

As we approach yet another entry in the long-running franchise with Halloween Ends on October 15th, Scream Factory gives the sixth, seventh, and eighth films another run. This set is a bit of a mishmash of films, each with its stalwart fans and detractors. And unlike Scream Factory’s last run of franchise releases, the only way you can get these three films on 4K is in this set, and that may well be a sticking point come purchase time for many out there.

Each film in the set was given new 4K scans with Dolby Vision HDR for the 4K discs. Generally, the improvements are appreciable but the color timing changes for The Curse of Michael Myers will no doubt be a conversation piece within the fan and collector communities. I personally don’t mind it, but it takes a little getting used to. As for H20 and Resurrection, the color changes are far less dramatic working better to accent the films visuals. And since those films had such shoddy releases previously, it’s easier to see and appreciate the numerous improvements.

Bonus features junkies also pick up an excellent new audio commentary for the theatrical cut of The Curse of Michael Myers with Resurrection scoring several new very good and informative cast and crew interviews. Even with the improvements mentioned, this set isn’t really for the casual Halloween fans but instead for the die-hard junkies like myself. Ultimately this one is Recommended… at least until the next set for Rob Zombie’s remakes and/or a massive mega franchise set with all of the films together – even if that seems unlikely.

Following yesterday’s release of the final trailer, a brand new featurette for Halloween Ends has arrived this afternoon, teasing the Final Battle between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers.

“Fans are gonna lose their fucking minds,” Jamie Lee Curtis notes in the new featurette video. Halloween Ends is set four years after the events of Halloween Kills, and Curtis also teases the mindset of Laurie Strode going into this final battle with Michael.

“The 2018 movie and Kills were about a woman who was prepared for Michael. Every day of her life. This is a movie where she’s actually trying to move on. And then Michael comes back.”

“There is a battle,” she adds. “A final reckoning. It’s crazy intense.”

Universal Pictures has released a final trailer for Halloween Ends, which brings the franchise full circle for the alleged final battle between Michael Myers and Laurie Strode.

The new trailer harkens back to John Carpenter’s original Halloween with a handful of shots mirroring the slasher classic, while we also get more Jamie Lee Curtis, who is famously missing from most of Halloween Kills.

The new trilogy is jam-packed with irritating new mythology and this trailer injects a few more morsels, including Laurie’s realization that maybe Michael can’t die unless she does. She also warns that this incarnation of Michael Myers is the most dangerous yet!

This is Laurie Strode’s last stand.

After 45 years, the most acclaimed, revered horror franchise in film history reaches its epic, terrifying conclusion as Laurie Strode faces off for the last time against the embodiment of evil, Michael Myers, in a final confrontation unlike any captured on-screen before. Only one of them will survive.

Icon Jamie Lee Curtis returns for the last time as Laurie Strode, horror’s first “final girl” and the role that launched Curtis’ career. Curtis has portrayed Laurie for more than four decades now, one of the longest actor-character pairings in cinema history. When the franchise relaunched in 2018, Halloween shattered box office records, becoming the franchise’s highest-grossing chapter and set a new record for the biggest opening weekend for a horror film starring a woman.

Four years after the events of last year’s Halloween Kills, Laurie is living with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) and is finishing writing her memoir. Michael Myers hasn’t been seen since. Laurie, after allowing the specter of Michael to determine and drive her reality for decades, has decided to liberate herself from fear and rage and embrace life. But when a young man, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell; The Hardy Boys, Virgin River), is accused of killing a boy he was babysitting, it ignites a cascade of violence and terror that will force Laurie to finally confront the evil she can’t control, once and for all.

While we wait for Halloween Ends to complete the new trilogy, we’ve learned today that CineLife Entertainment®, a division of Spotlight Cinema Networks, will re-release the original Halloween and two of its sequels, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) for the second year in a row.

The legendary series will be back in theaters beginning September 2022.

John Carpenter’s Seminal 1978 Classic Returns Along with Halloween 4 and Halloween 5
CineLife Entertainment® has partnered with Compass International Pictures and Trancas International Films to bring Halloween, Halloween 4, and Halloween 5 back to theatres and drive-ins worldwide.

In the original film (Halloween), the villain, Michael Myers, has spent the last 15 years locked away inside a sanitarium under the care of child psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis after brutally killing his sister, Judith. On the night of October 30, 1978, Myers escapes and makes his way back to Haddonfield – the night HE came home – turning a night of tricks and treats into something much more sinister for three young women, including Laurie Strode, the star-making role for Jamie Lee Curtis. The story of this classic, immortal film, will be continued this fall in the highly-anticipated Halloween Ends (also starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Produced by Trancas International Films).

In 1988, Producer Moustapha Akkad breathed new life into the franchise with Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (which is often ranked as one of the top films in the series), followed by Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, both of which feature fan-favorite, Danielle Harris.

Halloween premiered in cinemas and on drive-in screens on October 25, 1978, changing the landscape of horror cinema. It stunned audiences worldwide and has since inspired countless films in the genre. In 2006, it was selected by the Library of Congress to be preserved in the U.S. National Film Registry for its cultural significance.

The version of Halloween being exhibited is a restored and remastered digital print, created under the supervision of the world-renowned cinematographer, Dean Cundey.

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!

Trick or Treat Studios has announced their release of the officially licensed Halloween Ends mask, which will compliment their masks for both Halloween (2018) and Halloween Kills!

Trick or Treat Studios is proud to present the Officially Licensed Halloween Ends Michael Myers Mask from the 2022 film Halloween Ends.

This mask comes directly from the movie master of the mask worn by Michael Myers in Halloween Ends! The mask features extreme weathering details including a mold effect.

Mask measures approximately 26″ around at the brow. 

In an article sharing exclusive images from the fall’s most-anticipated releases, USA Today has dropped a brand new Halloween Ends photo!

Empire Magazine has an exclusive first look at the upcoming Halloween Ends, sharing the photo of an attack alongside a short article about the film.

For years now, we’ve known that David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy would close with an entry titled, appropriately enough, Halloween Ends. Fresh from revitalising the slasher saga with 2018’s confusingly-titled Halloween – a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 original that ignores the rest of the films in the series – the filmmaker most recently sent Michael Myers on another murderous Haddonfield rampage in last year’s Halloween Kills, setting up a concluding chapter of Laurie Strode’s story for the upcoming threequel. But even though we know that Halloween Ends will bring some kind of ending, quite how that plays out is still in flux.

Speaking to Empire in the Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery issue, Green claimed that he’s still tinkering with Halloween Ends’ ending. “It changes every day,” he says. “In theory, the picture is locked, but this morning I called the editor and said, ‘What if we do this one thing…’” There is, after all, pressure to get it right – Ends not only marking the end of this Halloween continuity, but the end (again) for Jamie Lee Curtis’ iconic scream queen Laurie. “I speak wth John [Carpenter] and Jamie Lee Curtis regularly about it,” says Green, who promises big things for his final slice of Halloween. “It’s exciting, uncertain, satisfying and sad. I’ve enjoyed the ride but it’s probably time to get off. I think we’re gonna go out with a bang.”

Still, after the ultra-gory murder-fest of Halloween Kills, the director claims he’s reining himself in a little more this time. “If our second film was free-for-all, violent chaos, this is a more intimate, atmospheric conclusion,” he says. With the ending just around the corner, here’s hoping Green gives it a real good stab.

Read Empire’s full Halloween Ends story in the October 2022 issue, on sale Thursday 1 August and available to order online here. Halloween Ends hits UK cinemas from 14 October.

Following its official announcement earlier this month, Scream Factory has released the long-awaited specs for their upcoming release of The Curse of Michael Myers, Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later and Halloween: Resurrection.