New images from Halloween Kills tease the moment Michael Myers escapes the fate laid out for him in his last movie. 2018’s relaunch of the franchise ended with Laurie Strode thinking she’d finally beaten her tormentor, by locking him in the basement of her burning down house. But, as any fan knows, The Shape is impossible to kill.

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The first look trailer, released last summer, for the upcoming sequel teased that firefighters would inadvertently rescue the killer from the inferno. And now, these new stills depict Michael emerging from the flames.

Empire, who shared the pics, also spoke with director David Gordon Green and touched on the surprising ways in which Kills will end up being a much more timely film than anticipated, thanks to its exploration of communal panic and mob rule. In the movie, the townsfolk of Haddonfield will lose sight of rationality when they discover a murderer is on the loose.

“This film is about community fear, paranoia, misinformation and crowd panic,” Green revealed. “This movie is a great popcorn genre movie and not really any kind of statement, but it’s strange how things line up. It couldn’t be a more interesting time to release a movie like this.”

With Haddonfield as a whole having a much bigger presence this time around, Kills will bring back a bunch of familiar faces from the franchise’s past. Nancy Stephens, Kyle Richards and Charles Cyphers are all reprising their roles as Nurse Marion Chambers, Lindsey Wallace and Sheriff Leigh Brackett from the 1978 original, respectively, and Anthony Michael Hall is stepping into the shoes of Brian Andrews and Paul Rudd as Tommy Doyle.

With such an enlarged cast, Jamie Lee Curtis is expected to take a back seat in this one, with Judy Greer and Andi Matichak getting more screen time as the other Strode women – daughter Karen and granddaughter Allyson. Curtis will return to the center of the story again, however, for Halloween Ends, which will wrap up the Laurie/Michael saga for good.

Halloween Kills is finally due to release in theaters this October 15th.