From Our Nightmares: The Shape, Halloween Ends (2022)

[The following essay contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

Evil is a virus. As glimpsed in 2021’s Halloween Kills, its infection corrupts even good, honest people into irrational, bloodthirsty savages, consuming them from within.

Four years after Michael Myers’ return and subsequent rampage, the sleepy town of Haddonfield is once again scarred and traumatized. This time, however, the grief cuts deeper: the killer has managed to evade capture, vanishing without a trace. Deprived of closure, the community must invent new Boogeymen onto which they can project their fears and anxieties.

Their favorite target is Corey Cunningham, a young man accused of manslaughter following the tragic accidental death of a child left in his care. Despite being acquitted of the crime, Corey finds himself ostracized, persecuted, and even outright harassed by his neighbors, driving him into self-imposed isolation. But a fateful encounter with a gravely injured (and greatly diminished) Michael Myers sparks a flame in the previously unassuming social pariah: he resolves to reflect his tormentors’ hatred and scorn back at them—becoming the very monster that they believe him to be.

Thus, the cycle of violence continues.

[FINAL WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW THE BREAK!]

From Our Nightmares: Michael Myers, Halloween Kills

[The following essay contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

Despite the clear iconography associated with the character, the Halloween franchise’s Michael Myers has always been defined by his anonymity. From his haunting, featureless mask to his unnerving lack of a concrete motive, he was designed to be universal—the ultimate blank slate onto which the viewer can project literally any fear. Even the scene descriptions in John Carpenter’s screenplay never refer to him by name, identifying him only as “The Shape.”

The sequels, however, suffered from excessive specificity. Halloween II, for example, revealed that Laurie Strode was Michael’s sister (and, by implication, the intended target of his rampage, rather than just another random victim), while The Curse of Michael Myers reimagined him as the pawn of a nefarious pagan cult. Fortunately, David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018)—which ignored every movie in the series apart from the first—took a refreshing “back-to-basics” approach to cinema’s original slasher, carving away the convoluted mythology and reestablishing Michael as a relatively mundane (albeit unusually resilient and brutal) serial killer.

In Halloween Kills, on the other hand, The Shape once again transcends his humanity—though this time, he delves not into the domain of the supernatural, but rather into the realm of the metaphorical. Through such recurring characters as Tommy Doyle and (former) Sheriff Leigh Brackett, Green and his collaborators explore the invisible scars carried by the survivors of the Halloween Massacre—the legacy of trauma and grief left in the wake of Michael’s violent spree. And in the fiery aftermath of his “triumphant” return home, that lingering pain and anxiety erupt into something truly terrifying: mass hysteria that transforms the ordinary citizens of Haddonfield into a disorganized mob of unruly, bloodthirsty monsters—with disastrous (but not entirely unexpected) consequences.

No longer is Michael Myers a mere external Boogeyman; he is now a twisted reflection of mankind’s darker nature—the repressed savagery and hatred that exist beneath the fragile façade of “culture” and “civilization.”

The Boogeyman lurks within us all.

Recently Viewed: Halloween (2018)

Got off of work early enough to catch a screening of David Gordon Green’s Halloween, and boy, am I glad I did! This is the sequel the world has been patiently awaiting for forty years, the Aliens to the John Carpenter classic’s Alien. It shares some thematic and stylistic DNA with its predecessor, but evolves in bold and exciting new directions, pursuing its own agenda without losing sight of the elements that made the revered original so special. Whereas the the first film was about fear and vulnerability, this one’s all rage and righteous fury, reimagining Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode as a pissed off, gunslinging granny. Despite her strength, however, she’s also deeply flawed, allowing her single-minded obsession with overcoming her trauma and conquering her personal Boogeyman to poison her relationships and splinter her family. 

Speaking of The Shape, Green and his collaborators (Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley) take a refreshing “back to basics” approach to the iconic killer, abandoning the occult nonsense that made the later installments in the series such a convoluted mess; apart from his ability to endure an absurd amount of physical punishment, Michael Myers is a perfectly mundane psychopath, murdering for inscrutable and arbitrary reasons—his lack of a greater purpose is the very quality that makes him so terrifying.

I loved everything about this movie, from the brilliant opening credits sequence (a rotted jack-o’-lantern gradually rejuvenates, symbolizing the dormant franchise’s return from the grave) to the cathartic climax. I look forward to revisiting it again and again as part of my annual October horror-fest.

Random Thought Before Bed: As a Matter of Fact…

If Jamie Lee Curtis playing a pissed off, gun-toting grandma ends up being the only good thing in David Gordon Green’s upcoming Halloween sequel, it’ll still be well worth the price of admission.

From Our Nightmares: Michael Myers, Halloween (1978)

You can feel them. Frigid as a bucket of ice water poured straight down your back. Eyes. The eyes of a stranger. Stalking you through the sunlit suburban streets. Lurking in the shadows of your own home. Wherever you go, the eyes follow. Suddenly, a twig snaps, or an empty bottle rolls across the floor. Your knees lock. Your heart freezes. You turn around and see--nothing. Only air.

Perhaps you've just survived an encounter with Michael Myers.

There's a good reason little Tommy Doyle repeatedly calls John Carpenter's cold-blooded killer "The Boogeyman": Michael personifies fear itself. His expressionless white mask is a blank canvas onto which the viewer can project... pretty much anything (even the screenplay approaches its antagonist in vague terms, referring to him only as "The Shape").

Consider how Carpenter ends the movie. After Dr. Loomis discovers that Michael's corpse has (unsurprisingly) vanished, the director cuts to a series of dark, empty rooms in the Strode household. And on the soundtrack, the implacable killer's muffled, labored breathing--monotonous, oppressive, taunting. But do these shots conceal a monstrous murderer... or simply reveal the stuff that haunts our dreams?

[Part 11 in a special series of Halloween-themed posts. Have a spooky day!]

Part 1: Candyman

Part 2: The Cenobites

Part 3: The Thing

Part 4: The Xenomorph

Part 5: The Shark

Part 6: Orlok

Part 7: Mamiya

Part 8: Hannibal Lecter

Part 9: Hans Beckert

Part 10: The Demon Woman