The boogeyman lives again.

The newest Halloween movie, set to hit theaters in October, is technically the 11th movie to belong to the 40-year-old horror franchise, which spawned Michael Myers and popularized slasher escapades. But the ever-ballooning folklore surrounding Haddonfield, Illinois, and its infamous masked murderer are irrelevant this time around. David Gordon Green, who directed the film based on a script he wrote with longtime pals Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, stripped away the sequels intervening mythology, rendering his Halloween a direct companion to John Carpenters 1978 classic.

That means, according to Greens rendition, Michael never chased Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) down hospital halls, nor did he kill her on the roof of the mental asylum where she awaited his return. If you hadnt already, you can officially dismiss the demented Dickensian gore-fest that Rob Zombie unleashed in his tedious 2007 remake and its hyper-violent 2009 sequel.

Instead, this is the story of Laurie a role Curtis agreed to reprise because Jake Gyllenhaal, of all people, convinced her to do so reclaiming a life of victimhood. I think Ive quietly made a very feminist horror movie, Green told me.

For Green, who has a visceral connection to the original Halloween, arriving at this moment was serendipitous. After a failed attempt to revamp the Italian horror fantasia Suspiria, which his friend Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name) went on to do instead, Green had been longing to get his hands on a crowd-pleasing thriller. And then, with one simple email from superstar producer Jason Blum, Halloween entered his life.

About a month before the movies Sept. 8 midnight premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, the 43-year-old director stopped by HuffPosts offices to chat about all things Halloween. Green has made soft indies (All the Real Girls, Snow Angels), stylistic actor vehicles (Joe, Stronger) and rowdy studio comedies (Pineapple Express, Your Highness) alike, so at this point almost anything he does constitutes something of a departure. Im hard-pressed to think of a living director whose career has pivoted this significantly precisely the upgrade Michael Myers needed.