10 Movies That Tried To Exploit Nostalgia (And Won)

4. Halloween

Last year's sequel to the original 1978 Halloween took advantage of a very specific type of fan nostalgia, for a time when the slasher film franchise wasn't completely terrible.

Until the release of last year's sequel, which erased every other post-1978 movie from the active continuity, Halloween fans had long resigned themselves to the series stewing in mediocrity (at best) forever more.

But by clearing the table of all the tawdry sequels and the Rob Zombie reboots, and duly resurrecting protagonist Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in the process, Halloween 2018 totally revingorated the franchise.

A middle-aged Laurie was reinvented as a Sarah Connor-like survivalist, while the film did a fantastic job of working visual and aural references to the '78 film into a timely commentary about the psychological scars which come with surviving massive trauma.

Quite ingeniously, the new movie walked a fine line of reminding long-suffering Halloween fans why they loved the series in the first place, while still functioning perfectly well as a standalone film for younger viewers.

It's far from a perfect movie, but it strikes an excellent balance of fan service and fresh ideas, and went on to gross a mind-boggling $255.5 million against a $10 million budget.