8 Reasons Why Halloween Just Blew Up At The Box Office

In cutting ties with the franchise's complicated and convoluted history, this new film was able to advertise itself as a direct sequel to the original film and that made all the difference.

First off, this and the act of simply titling it 'Halloween' made it abundantly clear that new audiences didn't need to be afraid of feeling lost. The film is self-contained and entirely understandable even if the viewer has never seen a Halloween movie before, even the original one. But more importantly, it immediately alleviated the workload on general audiences.

Crafting a sequel that still kept the previous sequels canonized to some degree would mean plopping a ten-film-deep homework assignment into the laps of general audiences, stifling their excitement before they ever had the chance to get invested in the new film's actual contents. Making it a standalone sequel not only makes things easier on the audience, but it also makes it feel more like a must-see event. Instead of being the eleventh Halloween film, this film was advertised as the second Halloween film, as if audiences had been patiently waiting for a follow-up to Carpenter's classic for forty years.

And that paid off in spades.