In 1978, John Carpenter's "Halloween" was released and became an instant hit
that spawned a huge horror franchise. It’s a beloved classic, but not everything in
the series was well-received. Here are examples of questionable storylines.
With over 10 entries in the "Halloween" canon, it can be challenging to remember what has happened
before any given movie, and that's not entirely the viewer's fault. "Halloween" debuted in 1978,
and by the time "Halloween H20: 20 Years Later" was released in 1998, there were six movies filled
with different characters. Instead of trying to tie together the plots of all the films,
"Halloween H20" retconned everything outside of the original movie and its sequel. In this version
of events, films four through six never occurred, meaning Laurie Strode never had a secret daughter
who Michael Myers murdered. Instead, Laurie faked her death, assumed a new identity, and had a son.
Nine years later, Rob Zombie tried his hand at making a "Halloween" movie,
but he started over with a rebooted, completely separate timeline,
creating his own version of the characters. When the franchise returned in 2018 for a soft reboot,
it erased everything except the original "Halloween" as if it were a direct sequel
40 years in the making. It slyly addressed this in the 2018 film when one character
brings up plot points from 1981's "Halloween 2" and is bluntly told those were only rumors.
Though the branching arcs and characters may intimidate new viewers,
at the end of the day the series is still relatively straightforward.
The Strode family is haunted by the trauma of the events of the original "Halloween,"
and a relentless serial killer terrorizes the town of Haddonfield.
"Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers" starts with Michael hunting down Laurie
Strode's 15-year-old daughter, Jamie, and her newborn baby. Knowing Michael is after her,
Jamie calls into a radio show to ask Michael's former psychiatrist,
Dr. Sam Loomis, for help. She then immediately hides her baby. Soon after,
Michael finds and kills Jamie, but her baby is found by a grown-up Tommy Doyle — the boy
Laurie was babysitting in the first film. Theorizing that Michael is intentionally
targeting members of his own family, Tommy does his best to hide the infant from the killer.
Being the nigh-unstoppable killing machine he is,
Michael eventually catches up with the baby, and in the fabled "Producer's Cut" of the film,
a character tries to stop Michael from killing the infant by suggesting it might be his child. Since
Laurie is Michael’s sister, this presents the idea that he had a son with his niece.
The implication of incest is thankfully omitted in the theatrical cut, which without a doubt,
makes it the stronger version. Given the uncomfortable nature of this reveal, it's
probably better to stick to the wider release's story and pretend incest never happened.
The hectic opening of "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers" should tip viewers off right away
that this will not be an average entry in the franchise. A woman giving birth is surrounded by
doctors wheeling her gurney through an industrial area, then into a stone-carved cavern lit with
torches. Once the newborn is delivered, it's given to a mysterious figure before the baby's mother
has a chance to hold him. The infant is then placed on a stone altar and has a symbol drawn
in red on its stomach. Surrounding the newborn are three figures clad in black robes. It’s unlike
anything that has been seen in a "Halloween" film until this point in the franchise.
These robed figures are the movie's primary villains, and it's eventually revealed that this
cult has found a way to control Michael using an ancient rune of darkness known as the Thorn. Their
claim seems to be confirmed in the producer's cut when Tommy succeeds in halting Michael's
rampage by using ancient runes of light. However, thanks to difficulties with the production, the
cult storyline never fully took shape, and it's no wonder that future sequels let it go altogether.
Though Donald Pleasence died unexpectedly in 1995, he remains a fixture of the "Halloween" franchise
thanks to his character, Dr. Sam Loomis, and his importance in the Michael Myers story.
Having been assigned to Michael Myers' case, Dr. Loomis had 15 years to treat the boy.
By the time of the first film
he decided Michael was no longer a man, but evil in a human shape who had no chance of redemption.
"I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply evil."
From the moment Michael escapes, Dr. Loomis is hellbent on taking Michael down by any means
necessary. This includes blowing himself up, traumatizing children, giving a bunch of
locals inferred permission to patrol the town with rifles, and holding police officers at gunpoint.
Throughout the series, the authority figures who interact with Loomis repeatedly dismiss the
doctor and underplay Michael's threat to their communities. This isn't restricted to police
chiefs, sheriffs, or government officials; even the psychiatrist's colleagues believe he should
be receiving mental health counseling instead of dispensing it. While he is undoubtedly obsessive,
Dr. Loomis is almost always right whenever he suspects Michael is at large. The only
time Dr. Loomis is repeatedly wrong is in his guesses of how to kill Michael Myers.
No matter how many times he tried, Loomis never could quite get rid of his least-favorite patient.
There are numerous shots throughout the "Halloween" franchise of Michael
locking eyes with his victims in a menacing fashion. These are always tense moments,
as they often signal the victim beginning to understand the danger they're truly in. These
shots also have a sort of calm-before-the-storm vibe to them, focusing on stillness and inaction
to better punctuate the frantic fleeing and stabbing that is usually about to commence.
However, one odd choice throughout the franchise is the tendency to follow
a specific sequence of shots in these interactions. First,
the camera shows Michael staring at his victim. What follows is a reverse shot of
the victim looking at Michael. Then, the camera cuts back to where the character is staring,
only to show an empty, Michael-less space. Sometimes, this gives Michael the appearance
of teleporting, as the character's gaze doesn't tend to follow him to where he might have moved.
While this is obviously an attempt by the filmmakers to make Michael Myers more threatening,
it actually raises more questions than it answers. In a matter of seconds, Michael seemingly warps
across the room or safely off-screen, breaking some of the tension that was previously in the
scene. Though it may admittedly be awkward to watch Michael walk from point A to point B
in every instance, some creative editing may help to make these moments more believable.
By the time "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers" happens, 17 years have passed since
Michael escaped from the institution in which he was previously imprisoned for 15 years for
murdering his older sister. Upon obtaining his freedom, he returned to his hometown of
Haddonfield to attack high school babysitter Laurie Strode, who was later revealed to be
his younger sister. This means Michael's murders have haunted the town for years.
However, "The Curse of Michael Myers" is the first time the holiday seems to have
been curtailed by the local government ahead of time. In fact, when the film takes place,
Haddonfield residents are just beginning to fight back against the restrictions.
It seems odd that Haddonfield would go so far as to restrict the public celebration of a
holiday entirely, and especially odd that they only thought to do it 30-some years after the
first Myers murder. Aside from the two Halloweens where Michael murdered one sister then attempted
to murder his other one, there have been several incidents that probably should have been on local
officials' radars. In "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers," one of the local problems is that
so many kids have dressed up as their town's favorite serial killer that it's hard to find
the real one. A similar problem presents itself in the following film,
"The Revenge of Michael Myers," where a local kid dresses like Michael as a joke,
allowing people to mistake the real killer for a teenager messing with his friends. Instead of
banning the whole holiday, it seems like banning the costume may have been a better choice.
Rob Zombie's "Halloween" films are contentious among fans of
the franchise. While some admire the depth of backstory for Michael Myers,
others find that the characterization diminishes his impact and is unnecessary. However, what most
fans agree on is that Rob Zombie's "Halloween 2" is one of the most bizarre entries in the series,
feeling much more like a hyper-stylized Rob Zombie acid horror trip than a "Halloween" film.
To some extent, Zombie's "Halloween 2" follows similar story beats to the original "Halloween 2."
Both films confirm that Laurie Strode and Michael Myers are siblings, but
unlike the original, Zombie's "Halloween 2" focuses more on the
psychological aspect of the characters and delves into surrealist territory.
The film features several hallucinations that link the siblings' minds, including
scenes in which Laurie begins to envision herself carrying out Michael's past murders.
Eventually, Laurie is sent to an institution similar to the one that held her brother for 15
years. Here, we see the most outlandish imagery in the entirety of the "Halloween" franchise:
a hallucination of a white horse that feels more akin to a fantasy film than something that should
be in "Halloween 2." Overall, Zombie's "Halloween 2" is one of the oddest films in the franchise,
and the abstract nature of the movie is often forgotten or
ignored when discussing some of the latter, more disliked, films in the series.
One of the most effective ways to make a horror film scary is through
clever sound design. Most people familiar with jump scares know that music and sound
effects are frequently used to get a reaction out of audience members.
Beyond jump scares and the use of a film's score, sound effects that aren't made to scare in and of
themselves can be hugely effective in ratcheting up the tension of any given scene. For instance,
the metallic "shing" of a knife as it's drawn helps reinforce its sharpness in the mind of
audience members, and the loud "thwack" that rings out when that same blade is plunged into
its target can make the impact seem much more terrifying than the visual alone.
With so much potential to enhance the mood of a scene, the misuse of sound effects is often
glaring and can take the viewer right out of the movie. While the "Halloween" films
generally use sound effects well, there are a few unforgettable instances where they feel distinctly
out of place. The best example of this is found in "Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers."
During a comedic scene between two police officers, a series of clown sound effects,
including honking, are played during their banter without any explanation.
"Fortunately we're lousy cops... Sorry."
"Halloween: Resurrection" features a group of teens wandering around
the abandoned Myers house on Halloween night as part of an internet livestream. This
reality show functions by having all the cameras accessible for audiences to watch at any time,
and the contestant that most viewers choose to watch is the winner. However,
little do the participants or the show's producers know that Michael Myers has made
his way back to his childhood home, and he’s ready to kill anyone he gets his hands on.
When it becomes clear to audiences that contestants are actually being murdered
and aren't playing pranks on the others for views,
the mood inside and outside the house becomes less lighthearted. Luckily,
one contestant has a friend watching who texts her Michael's location while checking other cameras.
This ends up saving her life a couple of times and even earns the guy a shoutout
once reporters show up to get a statement from the survivor, who’s still wrapped in a shock blanket.
While this works well for the characters in the film, it seems a bit suspect that
a livestream with upwards of a dozen cameras all broadcasting live would have no lag while
operating within a small Illinois town's 2002 internet infrastructure. Aside from having
instantaneous uploading, there also appears to be no issue with buffering or loading on
the viewing end as up-to-the-second info on Michael is sent via text. Even if the show
was done today, there would likely be at least a several-second-long delay for viewers at home,
and certainly, a few more seconds to wait for a text message to send.
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