John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) is a landmark film that falls squarely in my parents’ generation. Whether my folks realize it or not, Carpenter’s influence seeped into our film collections ever since—as a family, we often sat around and enjoyed the atmospheric, haunting tales of The Fog (1980) and Christine (1983). I always eyeballed the VHS cover for Halloween but never really had an interest in it. Slashers became a dime-a-dozen in the 80s—they all looked the same to my young eyes.
Once I finally watched Halloween for the first time, I was rather underwhelmed. To this day, I’m still not that enthused by the film’s bland cinematography and paper-thin characters. I was also not that impressed by the iconic villain, Michael Myers. I saw him as nothing more than a knife-wielding dude in a mask—even though the film asserts he’s a “boogeyman,” all I saw was a bland and silent blank slate that lacked depth. Maybe for that reason, I beheld Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake with a little more appreciation—there, Michael is given a backstory that substantiates his transformation into a killer. I thought it was compelling, even if it’s rooted in trashy, exploitative details (something that paints all of Rob Zombie’s work).
Now, on the original film’s 40th anniversary (and in the wake of yet another reboot, which I’ll catch up on when it hits home video), my opinion on Halloween’s villain has changed. I’ve heard it stated many times before that Michael works because he is a boogeyman, not a mortal man with an abused childhood. I can finally see that now, not because of these facts alone, but because of the ideas behind them. My newfound connection with Michael stems not from fearing him as a man, boogeyman, or anything else. It’s from realizing that he’s the embodiment of the unknown.
Unknowable
My newfound fascination with all things unknowable cropped up after watching Alex Garland’s latest film, Annihilation. Many folks have their opinions and views about what it means, but it was clear to me from the start that it touches upon some common ideas behind cosmic horror. This is a brand of terror originally penned by H.P. Lovecraft—the fear of monsters and forces so far above humanity that they can’t be understood. In a universe where such horrors exist, mankind itself is a worthless, meaningless speck in the cosmos that might be obliterated in the blink of an eye. To capture this kind of terror and nihilism, Lovecraft wrote about monsters so abominable and formless, his characters couldn’t comprehend these creatures and went insane. In Annihilation, Garland gives us a strange, formless entity so abstract it looks like it doesn’t even belong in this dimension. When talking about the humanoid doppelgangers it produces, or the nature of the Shimmer itself, the characters explain that they don’t even know “what it wants, or even if it wants.” This dialogue is the key characteristic that makes the Shimmer’s entities so terrifying—they’re so beyond our understanding that we can’t relate or understand them. Even more uncanny is that the Shimmer’s influence fuses alien DNA with human, asserting that people (including Lena in the end) have changed into something less human and more alien.
In the context of Halloween, I realize now that Michael Myers is no different. He’s not an alien from space or an Eldritch God or anything, but much like them, Michael is unknowable. Dr. Loomis studied the man for years, and what did he discover? Absolutely nothing. All the film tells us is that Michael is devoid of personality and soul. Even doctor Loomis characterizes him as simply “evil” and the label persists throughout the series. Just as science can’t explain Cthulhu or the cloud thing from Annihilation, it also can’t quantify Michael’s thought patterns.
If there is any scene in Halloween that genuinely scares me, it’s the opening. It’s an ingenious sequence in itself, filmed entirely in first-person POV. We see through Michael’s eyes as, without any explanation or precedent, he picks up a knife and butchers his sister. It’s such a senseless and brutal murder as it is. Coming from a six-year-old, it’s unfathomable because we usually associate children with innocence and purity. The contrast is highlighted by the film’s style and music, painting the scene in a seemingly unholy light. It establishes all we need to know: that Michael is unfeeling, unyielding, and beyond comprehension.
Michael’s only other characteristics throughout the film are mostly physical. We see that he’s a tall, imposing figure, capable of lifting people with ease and doing incredible harm. Bullets and blades don’t stop him. He says absolutely nothing—the only sound he makes is the heavy breathing through the mask. All characteristics that reinforce Michael as an unthinkable monolith in human form.
His most defining characteristic is the mask. In itself, the mask is a blank, pale slate lacking in expression. It’s a reflection of his own soul—vaguely human in shape, but lacking emotion and definition. The one time Laurie manages to unmask Michael, we only see a brief glimpse of a man—he very quickly pulls the mask over his head, as if covering up the normal, petty mortal hiding beneath his inhuman self. The mask is the character in the end.
One of the most chilling murders in the film shows Michael stabbing a guy against a door, and the knife pins the body above the floor. For a long time, Michael just stands there and cocks his head side to side, studying his victim as the life slowly drains from him. In any other person, committing murder would elicit some kind of emotional response. The first murder is often the most traumatizing, because it crosses a moral threshold that can’t be reversed and most human beings react emotionally to it. Michael didn’t show any emotion when he killed his sister. In this later scene when he studies his victim, he shows a cold, dispassionate interest in suffering, and nothing more. The T-1000 in Terminator 2 does the same thing repeatedly, presumably to compute suffering and use it as an advantage later to make him a more efficient killer. That is why, while holding Sarah Connor under knife-point, he says “I know this hurts.” With Michael, I’m not even sure he knows anything he does hurts his victims—something as human as weakness, pain, and suffering are all alien to him. Which is appropriate, because he’s alien to us.
Uncanny
Uncanniness in horror fiction refers to the effect in which normal things feel slightly off. Annihilation is loaded with uncanny details, thanks mostly to showing a whole forest evolving into an alien ecology that shows us normal forms (trees, grass, plants, deer, bears) in an unnatural way (tumor-like growths and fungus, mutations). This also extends to characters—when they are copied by the alien presence, they become emotionless forms that look human but lack personality. They don’t act like their normal selves.
Michael similarly comes off as uncanny because he looks human, but acts in a way that’s contrary to what we associate as a human being. As described above, he’s beyond understanding because he lacks empathy. Dr. Loomis suggests he also lacks thought and a soul—any spirit inhabiting his body is simply “the evil.” Even in the credits, Michael is listed as simply “The Shape.” That’s the essence of Michael as an uncanny person—a human shape, and nothing more.
What really pushes Michael into uncanny territory is his characterization as a “boogeyman.” It’s not enough that Michael stalks a bunch of teenagers and kills them. He’s also a supernatural force that literally teleports in and out of reality. One minute, he’s staring at Laurie from behind a clothesline. The next, he’s gone. This happens repeatedly throughout the movie.
Michael is also capable of murder and robbery—all of which are shown in their aftermaths, but no details are given about how he accomplished these things. Even more confusing is how he found time to do these things within a day. He steals a gravestone at some point, hauls it around all day, then manages to place it in an upstairs bedroom by the evening. But how? We never actually see. While carrying this tombstone around all day, he also manages to stalk Laurie, then rip off a store in broad daylight (presumably, I mean he was right there when Laurie and Loomis visit the place), then stalk some more. He spends the whole evening trolling and killing random babysitters, and he goes so far as blocking exits at key moments. How does he know enough to plan these murders and even forecast the inevitable chases? He simply does.
Speaking of stalking, how exactly did Michael learn to drive? He spent his whole adult life in an institution. This point is even brought up in the film, and Loomis just kinda assumes somebody at the institution taught him. But there’s no evidence of this whatsoever and it wouldn’t make sense. This is another one of those things operating on a supernatural level. I don’t believe anybody taught him to drive—knowledge simply comes to him.
Undying
At the end of Halloween, Michael Myers’ body vanishes, promising that the terror is not over. It might never be over. Laurie Strode will be haunted and on-edge for the rest of her life.
Or at least a whole bunch of sequels and reboots. After the 1978 original, seven sequels were released. Then the 2007 reboot, followed by a sequel. And now, there’s a new reboot that ignores all previous films, picking up only after the ’78 original. Confused yet?
It’s a testament to the effectiveness of Michael’s characterization as a unknowable boogeyman—he scared us so much that he became cemented in the cultural zeitgeist. He exists in the same pantheon as other long-lasting horror icons, including Jason Voorhees, Norman Bates, and Hannibal Lecter. Physically, Michael is closest to Jason since both are imposing, invincible entities that can’t die, and both wear masks. When thinking about psychology, however, the unknowable depths of Michael’s mind and abilities are just as unfathomable as studying Norman’s or Hannibal’s minds. All these gentlemen exhibit uncanny traits that seem inhuman. But at least these killers could speak and operate in human society—Michael is simply a shape that moves lucidly through suburbs and cities. Unlike these killers, Michael can’t be studied, reasoned with, or reached.
You can see more of these aspects in Michael as the sequels kept rolling out, although it’s not always effective or even welcome. Halloween 4 in particular paints Michael as an unstoppable bullet-sponge able to single-handedly knock out a town’s power grid and communications. It’s almost ridiculous, but that’s probably one of the reasons why I enjoy that film so much.
Where the sequels fall short is in how they try to explain away the mystery behind the mask. In the second film, they tied Laurie to Michael by making them secret siblings. It does alter the way you can view the first movie, and it kinda makes sense in its own way—this is an angle that seemed much better handled in Rob Zombie’s remake, where the connection is explicit and you see how Michael proactively goes after Laurie out of some kind of latent compassion. But this is also where that film failed—by adding human traits to Michael (including the backstory), the film erases all sense of mystery, and with it the “unknowable” aspect of him. He becomes a human, plain and simple.
There are other aspects to the sequels that bug me. One of the biggest concerns the transition between Halloween 5 and 6. Number 5 had a real sucker-punch of an ending, in which a stranger in black appears and shoots up a police station, ensuring that that evil will live on uninhibited. What I admired about this setup was all the added mystery: who was this guy, where did he come from, and why did he do it? In #6, we learn that he’s simply, a guy. And we learn that there’s a cult that supports Michael. I was utterly underwhelmed, because all the questions I had were answered in the dullest way. A cult—nothing more than mere mortal people—does nothing to add mystery, story questions, or even fear to the franchise. What really would have wowed me is if the man in black was actually something else—the Shadowman for example. Michael is himself supernatural, so why not expand on that and add more entities to the films? Why not expand the world-building?
Even if they stuck with the cultist angle, there are endless ways they could have handled it to generate more suspense and fear. As it is, the sixth film disappoints me in all the same ways folks are disappointed in Star Wars: The Last Jedi—these are films that ignore fan expectations and deliver answers to gloss over loose threads in previous films. But Halloween 6’s shortcomings didn’t stop the series from ending by any means—H20 brought Jamie Lee Curtis back into the fold, and now she’s back after 40 years. All reboots in a way, each bringing their own tropes and stories to the table, but Michael’s appeal as the ultimate bogeyman keeps him coming back time and again.
Unforgettable
I was never a huge Halloween fan, but it could be the case that I never really learned to appreciate the films (or at least John Carpenter's original) as they were meant to be seen. The context of cosmic horror made me realize that Michael Myers is a chilling villain precisely because of how little we know about him. Whatever's going on inside of his mind or soul cannot be understood. He can't be fought or killed. He can't even be human.
The films make all this obvious by painting him as a "boogeyman," but the term always fell flat for me. Probably for the same reasons it falls flat in other films (like, say, the actual films entitled Boogeyman), and why other terms like Babadook or Tommyknockers make me roll my eyes. These are children folk-tale type of names that horror stories typically invoke to create contrast, or to suggest that these silly stories actually have a terrifying basis. For me, it's a technique that never worked because so many other films do it and I feel it's a cliche. But tell me that Michael Myers is an entity, spirit, demon, or alien in human form, and I'm genuinely unsettled.
The original film uses techniques in its photography, performances, and script that underscore how terrifying a villain he actually is, and the movies work because of him. They also fail when they lose sight of why he works. The key lesson with Myers is that less is more. The less details we see, then all we have is a vague shape that creeps us out. The less we know about him, the greater the fear.
No comments:
Post a Comment