51 GREATEST FICTIONAL BAD GUYS

#22. MICHAEL MYERS/THE SHAPE from HALLOWEEN

I don’t think sequels are bad. Some even surpass the originals (STAR TREK II, DESPERADO, EVIL DEAD 2). But for the most part, the first ones are lightning in a bottle: they grab you by the balls and remind you why you watch these things in the first place.

This is a huge problem in horror films. Sequels, reboots, remakes, and prequels are the gold standard in the genre. But sequels breed familiarity, and familiarity breeds passiveness — and passiveness is the last thing you need hanging over a horror movie. Which brings us to the existential mystery of Michel Myers and just who and what the hell he is.

People whose names aren’t John Carpenter and Debra Hill have been trying to answer that question over eight films now, and if you ask me, it’s a fool’s errand to ask it. Explaining away Michael Myers’ origin holds as much interest to me as to whether or not Jesus was black, white or an agent of the planet Voltron. Creating exact details on a myth — effectively labeling and compartmentalizing them — may coddle your desire to understand it, but it sure as hell takes a dump on your imagination. It does me no favors believing Michael is the living voodoo doll of a druid cult, or that listening to songs written by Gene Simmons made him snap one day (possibly the most believable reason). And although I do enjoy Laurie Strode’s journey through the films, it adds nothing that she’s his actual sister.

What does matter to me is the unknown quantity. Forty years after the first one, I’m still clueless as to what Michael Myers’ true motives are and why he does exactly what he does. The sequels never captured his true essence. In the original, he’s a cross between a child playing psychotic pranks and an obsessive-compulsive continually transferring a moment from his past onto new prey. He gloms onto Laurie because she approaches his old house (therefore she comes to him first); he digs up his sister’s tombstone and places it above Annie’s corpse; he wears a ghost sheet and glasses just to unnerve Linda. Future versions would just have him pounce from the shadows and eviscerate people in some gruesome fashion. The powers that be were yelling “fuck that artsy shit, get to the grue.” And that’s like someone making a STAR WARS film saying “screw the philosophy lesson, the Force is just super-powered magic!”

I love how the entire film we’re told by his psychiatrist he’s evil incarnate. Carpenter keeps telling us over and over again he’s something more than man. Sure enough, we start seeing questionable things. He seems to have an omnipresence to him; he always knows where people are; he slips around undetected; removes huge grave markers with no help. So the seed has been firmly planted. Only when he gets stabbed by a knitting needle and still keeps coming do we firmly believe Dr. Loomis’ (and Carpenter’s) warnings.

And this is the part which is genius to me.

At the climax, Laurie unmasks him. We see for a few frames that he is just a man. He has somewhat of a dull stupor to him, but he is not an unearthly Demon in human form — he’s just a normal, everyday guy standing there. He even halts his assault to get that mask back on: obsession is so rooted in his makeup, he has to rigorously follow unspecified rules to a game only he knows.

When he gets shot and dives off the house, we know he’s dead. That’s it. He’s dead. But of course, he isn’t. Because he is the Boogeyman. If the footage was edited to not show his human face beforehand, there would be no doubt that he was always evil. Showing it allows us a moment of reason, that we do still live in an age of science over superstition. With one shot — an empty front lawn — Carpenter egregiously rips that reasoning away — again.

The remaining shots are of the houses The Shape has breached and the neighborhood he dwells in. His breathing implies he is everywhere now: an ethereal wraith that forever haunts suburbia.

Loomis: “You’ve fooled them, haven’t you Michael? But not me.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_tGvktfjjk