Can a Halloween reboot actually work?
2018’s Halloween sequel is a success on many fronts. In general, the Halloween franchise has been increasingly convoluted and complicated, each film recreating and adding to the mythology of Michael Myers.
Myers was the original slasher, the one that led to the creation of Friday the 13th’s Jason and countless other slasher icons. He was the epitome of the silent stalker, the unrelenting force, the immortal, invulnerable murderer.
There’s only so much character development that can happen when an antagonist doesn’t have facial expressions or speak. The sequels filled the blanks with backstory, often ignoring previous plots and events for new ones. Halloween has a history of rebooting and remaking, sometimes shot for shot, the original 1978 John Carpenter film. And so, this new film does a lot of good things, things not found in many of the other films.
A better film might have left Michael Myers out entirely for an honest look at the lifetime effects of trauma on the families of Myers victims. Fans would hate it and I doubt anyone would want to watch it, but that would be a great way to subvert expectations and focus on a different kind of horror. Halloween 2018 touches on this, to be sure, and it does so to its credit.
The new film continues to focus on the Strode family, but it ignores all the previous films except for the first. This is a direct sequel to 1978 Carpenter film, meaning that Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is not Michael’s sister, just the last unfortunate victim of a Halloween Night tragedy. Since that night, Laurie’s life has never been the same. She lived 40 years dominated by fear, with failed marriages, a lost daughter, and a problem with alcohol. Her paranoia has caused her to barricade herself in her home, on the outskirts of Haddonfield, preparing for Michael Myers to return and finish what he started.
Michael Myers has spent the last 40 years in treatment, silent and waiting. He is being transferred to a new facility on Halloween Night when his bus crashes and he is once more unleashed upon the world.
This is all pretty standard fare, as far as slasher movies are concerned. The film is capably and entertainingly made, peppered with some genuine gore and occasional humor.
The 1978 original was never funny—it didn’t need to be. The last few years have led to the necessity of meta-humor in horror films, sometimes to their detriment.
But the good things in this film outweigh the awkwardness. In particular, John Carpenter has returned to score the film. The music was essential to creating the original atmosphere and Carpenter’s presence, even in this small way, elevates the action to its former glory.
As I mentioned above, the family elements also work well. There is evidence of serious trauma caused by Michael Myers and I would have loved for the film to have spent a little more time on this element. But then, this is a slasher movie and no one comes for uncomfortable emotion. They come for murdered teenagers.
Early on in 2018’s Halloween sequel, a character notes that the original murders are relatively tame compared to the current state of the world. In 1978, Michael Myers stabbed five teenagers to death before being shot by his psychiatrist. Since then, the US has seen over 200 mass shootings, the worst of which ended in fifty-nine deaths and 851 injuries from gunfire.
Just this week, there have been 14 assassination attempts on prominent Democrats, a racially motivated slaying in broad daylight at a Kentucky grocery store, and yet another mass shooting, this time at a Pittsburg synagogue, where the assailant shouted “all Jews must die” before killing 11 worshippers and firing on police that arrived at the scene.
Halloween 2018 is right: the evil of Michael Myers has become almost quaint in comparison. The current climate in the United States makes it hard to take a film like this one seriously.
Maybe we’re not supposed to.
Maybe the violence of Michael Myers allows us to compartmentalize the real evil of the world. Myers has no motivation. He kills indiscriminately becase he can. He’s evil incarnate. The devil we know. The worse evils are the ones we create.