And Still It Comes: Fate and Mortality in the Halloween Franchise

Gwyneth Peaty

The Halloween series has gripped audiences since the original film was released in 1978. The 12^th instalment, Halloween Kills, is due for release in 2021 and promises to deliver what fans have come to expect: the return of Michael Myers from beyond the grave. Given the avalanche of successful horror movies released since, one might ask why a serial killer like Myers continues to be revisited over 40 years later. What is the attraction of this impassive, rather plain figure when there are so many new and more spectacular horrors to enjoy? Brand recognition explains some of the commercial lure. It works as well for Myers as it does for Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13^th franchise; the familiar mask provides a handy shortcut for filmmakers looking to promote their work to an existing fan base. It might also be tempting to attribute the ongoing production of Halloween films to a lack of creativity in Hollywood. In 2006, critic David Church described “countless remakes and tired formulas” as the sign of an imagination shortage in the horror genre. But even if we accept this general premise, it still does not explain the specific pull of the Halloween series and in fact threatens to erase the singularities of its ongoing impact. As Steffen Hantke has warned, a “rhetoric of crisis” in discussions of the horror genre’s failings is often accompanied by “the tendency to equalize differences, to pass overly generalized value judgments, and thus to miss what is genuinely unique about individual films” (21). Accordingly, in this essay I aim to highlight unique aspects of the Halloween films that perhaps help to account for their intergenerational popularity. More specifically, I propose that there are aspects of this narrative that hold timeless appeal because they speak to universal human challenges.

The in/human killer

As an elder statesman of the slasher genre, one might argue that Myers is popular culture’s most famous zombie. He has been shot, burned, stabbed and decapitated across multiple alternate timelines in the Halloween universe, but still rises to walk on with that slow, steady gait. No mercy can be expected. Relentless, he does not speak but pursues his victims with unexplained, near mindless brutality. Like a zombie, his condition is also potentially contagious. In Halloween 4 (1988) Myers passes his ‘curse’ to niece Jamie (Danielle Harris). The film ends abruptly when the young girl assumes a mask and stabs her mother, seemingly infected or possessed by Myers after touching his hand. Many other moments in the franchise support the idea that “the darkness within Michael isn’t restricted to one man. It’s something that can survive… and spread” (Zachary). A human body may be the vessel, but the contents have been hijacked by something else.

It is no coincidence that The Thing from Another World (1951) plays on television as darkness falls and Myers circles his prey in the original film. As an intertextual reference it signposts the threat he represents. The Thing is a mysterious and deadly entity that transcends our ability for understanding. It hides inside living bodies, confusing species boundaries and categories of being. The trailer for The Thing makes such tensions explicit: “Is it human or inhuman? Earthly or unearthly? Baffling questions, astounding questions that not even the world’s greatest scientific minds can answer!” In the original script for Halloween, Myers is described only as ‘The Shape.’ Co-writer Debra Hill explains that a white mask was chosen to implicitly frame the antagonist as an in-between creature; he is “faceless — this sort of pale visage that could resemble a human or not” (cited in Burns).

Within the film itself, Dr Loomis (Donald Pleasence) has no hesitance describing Myers as an “it” rather than a “him,” stating that what lies within is nothing but the immoral embodiment of evil:

no reason, no conscience, no understanding, in even the most rudimentary sense, of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong […] I realized what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply evil. (Halloween 1978)

Myers is not a monster in the physical sense, but a monstrous concept made flesh. “You were the first one to see it,” observes Dr Wynn (Mitchell Ryan) to Loomis in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), “You recognised its power… evil. Pure. Uncorrupted. Ancient.” Myers is explicitly framed as a conceptual vehicle within the Halloween franchise—a way of exploring the notion of timeless evil. An audience survey from the early 2000s indicates that viewers readily adopt this perspective. In a widespread study designed to investigate why people feel “connected” to filmic monsters, Fischoff et al. found that Myers was most often seen as representing “pure evil” (406). Yet the films also repeatedly interrogate and undermine this categorisation, foregrounding the basic humanity of their villain even as they insist upon his monstrosity.

“Walk like a man”

Humanity is essential to the threatening core of the Halloween franchise. “To make Michael Myers frightening, I had him walk like a man, not a monster” explains John Carpenter, who co-created the character with Hill. The idea that Myers could be ‘just’ a man has since become essential to the logic of the films. His emotional disturbance and preoccupation with family, especially sister Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), is repeatedly identified as the source of his violent urges. More recent instalments grapple vigorously with this point, focusing on Myers’ origin story, developmental psychopathology, and the impacts of trauma. “Evil is not a diagnosis,” insists Dr Sartain (Haluk Bilginer) in Halloween (2018), “Michael Myers is an evolving, aging creature like we all are.” Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake in 2007 builds a whole detailed backstory in which Myers is bullied and neglected from a young age. His violent tendencies are shown to emerge early, through the killing of animals, and there is nothing supernatural about his condition. According to Rob Zombie’s Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), Myers is simply a psychopath “created by a perfect alignment of interior and exterior factors gone violently wrong – a perfect storm, if you will.” His aggressive behaviour is rationalised in medical terms by doctors in an institutional setting. As one reviewer noted, the 2007 film “works as a kind of mirror image to Carpenter’s [original] film, delving deep into the psyche and history of Michael Myers and portraying him not as a knife-wielding cypher but as an abused, broken kid” (Phipps). Significantly, Carpenter was annoyed with Zombie for depicting the character in this way:

I thought that he took away the mystique of the story by explaining too much about [Myers]. I don’t care about that. It’s supposed to be a force of nature, he’s supposed to be almost supernatural. And he was too big. It wasn’t normal. (cited in Chichizola)

Contradictions built into the figure of Michael Myers are writ large in Carpenter’s critique. The slippage between ‘it’ and ‘he’ is significant. Rob Zombie’s interpretation is wrong because his Myers is both too human (overly explained) and not human enough (too big). Yet this is precisely the tension that sustains the film series.

Part of the enduring impact and popularity of the Halloween franchise can be linked to its interrogation of what it means to be human; where and how we draw the line between human and monster. This can lead to moments of confusion for filmmakers who try to strike a balance where one does not exist (Miska). In their viewer survey, Fischoff et al. note curiously that Michael Myers receives the highest audience score for “the embodiment of pure evil” but “stands apart from others in his highest score for serious psychological problems” (420). The authors seem perplexed but as I have pointed out, this is entirely consistent with the way the character is represented. Audiences recognise he has one foot in either camp, straddling the line between pure monster and troubled man. Myers is perpetually almost supernatural.

All that is human

Mortality lies at the crux of this killer’s liminal status. If he is supernatural, he can transgress the boundaries of life and defy death. If he is human, he cannot. Here the importance of Laurie Strode becomes clearer. She is the other half of an equation, or perhaps question, being presented to the audience. Strode’s determination to destroy Myers embodies her conviction that he is human throughout the series. Even as he rises again and again from her blows, she maintains her belief that he can be killed. After all, death is the ultimate fate of all that is human.

Mortality is a fate that has no face but must be faced. Carpenter says as much in his DVD commentary on Halloween: “Fate is like a natural element. As is evil. It’s undeniable and will not die.” Unlike a person, ‘it’ cannot be outrun, outsmarted, or annihilated. We will all die. As individuals and as a species we must face this truth again and again. But how do we muster the courage to go on, knowing what is coming?

It is no accident that an early scene in the original film features Strode analysing the nature of fate in her high school English class. As she stares out the window and sees Myers for the first time, her teacher’s words float in the air.

Teacher: But what Samuels is really talking about here is fate. You see, fate caught up with several lives here. No matter what course of action Collins took, he was destined to his own fate, his own day of reckoning with himself. The idea is that destiny is a very real, concrete thing that every person has to deal with. How does Samuels’ view of fate differ from that of Costaine’s? Laurie?

Between the slats of the window shade, Strode has noticed ‘The Shape’ in his blank white mask standing opposite the school, watching. The teacher calls her attention back to class.

Strode: Costaine wrote that fate was somehow related only to religion, where Samuels felt that, well, fate was like a natural element, like earth, air, fire and water.

Teacher: That’s right, Samuels definitely personified fate. In Samuels’ writing fate is immovable like a mountain. It stands where man passes away. Fate never changes.

When Strode looks back, her observer has disappeared. But the spectre of fate, of mortality, has come into view permanently. ‘It’ will now haunt the rest of her life. If Michael Myers is indeed a concept made flesh, it may be more accurate to say he is a personification, not of evil in a moral sense, but of death as a reality of nature—immovable as a mountain. Framed in these terms, the duelling figures of Myers and Strode can be seen to both facilitate and mediate audience engagement with primal fears surrounding the human condition. Through Strode we experience the dogged pursuit of a faceless threat, a force that cannot be stopped but must still be fought every step of the way.

Do not go gentle

Philosophers throughout history have explored concepts such as free will and the inevitability of fate. In Western philosophy, existential questions revolve around mortality as a defining characteristic of the human experience. Friedrich Nietzsche advocated for stoicism through his concept of amor fati – love your fate (54). To achieve greatness, Nietzsche argues, we must accept with equanimity all that has and will happen to us, including suffering and death. I would argue that while the character of Strode rejects fatalism, she embodies an awareness of death’s inevitability. She knows prison cannot contain Myers. She amasses weapons and sets traps in preparation for his arrival. When others freeze in fear or give up, Strode fights on. “Why are you all just standing here?” she rages in Halloween (2018), “Do something, damn it!” Alternately lying in wait and seeking it out, she never passively accepts the reign of death. At the same time, there is evidence of connection and even similarity between the two characters. The series gifts its heroine with her own form of immortality. Like Myers, Strode is killed off and resuscitated multiple times. In Halloween 4 (1988) she is said to have died in a car accident, only to reappear ten years later in Halloween H20 (1998). In Halloween: Resurrection (2002) Myers apparently stabs Strode to death, only for her to reappear in Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake. In a director’s cut of the Halloween II (2009) remake, she is shot to death accidently by police (who mistake her for Myers), only to reappear again in Halloween (2018). Myers and Strode are both opposed and overlapping; they reach out for unity even as they strive to annihilate one another.

Philosopher Martin Heidegger argues that the experience of human life is one of perpetual “Being-towards-death,” a fate that results in anxiety “as a basic state of mind” (252). To escape this trauma, we repress our awareness and primarily view death as something that happens to others. A franchise such as Halloween tears at the veil hiding death from us as individuals. To quote the original film, “The idea is that destiny is a very real, concrete thing that every person has to deal with.” Strode is destined to her own fate, her own day of reckoning with herself. Because that is what Myers is: her own death. Even if she stabs it repeatedly through the heart, it cannot be killed. But having activated this anxiety, the films show us power in agency; she fights on, earning extensions of her own life and saving the lives of others. The performances of Jamie Lee Curtis have brought additional strength and authenticity to this role over time, as the actor herself has not given up but returns to fight again and again, looking increasingly battle-hardened.

I argue that, despite their dark reputation, the Halloween films embody a spirit of both hope and acceptance. We know deep down Myers will be back, but Strode speaks to the importance of keeping on going, never giving up. In difficult times such as the present, this narrative becomes more critical than ever. Faced with death, especially on a large scale, it is easy to doubt how much control humans truly have over our own lives. How can individual choices impact a world so large and how fiercely should we fight rather than accepting fate as an inevitable force? The Halloween series appeals because it shows that while we may learn to accept or even ‘love’ our destiny, we need not, in the words of poet Dylan Thomas, “go gentle into that good night” but “rage against the dying of the light” to the very end, and perhaps beyond.

 

Works Cited

Chichizola, Corey. “John Carpenter’s Blunt Opinion on Rob Zombie’s Version of Halloween.” Cinema Blend, 25 Sept. 2016.

Church, David. “Return of the Return of the Repressed: Notes on the American Horror Film (1991-2006).” Off/Screen, vol. 10, no. 10, Oct. 2006.

Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton University Press, 1992.

Fischoff, S., Dimopoulos, A., Nguyen, F., & R. Gordon. “Favorite Movie Monsters and Their Psychological Appeal.” Imagination, Cognition and Personality, vol. 22, no. 4, 2003, pp. 401–426.

Hantke, Steffen. “Introduction: They Don’t Make ’em Like They Used To: On the Rhetoric of Crisis and the Current State of American Horror Cinema.” American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium, edited by Hantke, University Press of Mississippi, 2010, pp. vii-xxxii.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, Blackwell, 1962.

Miska, Brad.  “‘Halloween’ Director Defends That One Moment That Humanizes Michael Myers.” Bloody Disgusting, 26 Oct. 2018.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Vol 17 – Ecce Homo. Translated by Anthony M. Ludovici, MacMillan, 1911.

Phipps, Keith. “Will Anyone Remember Any of the 21st Century Horror Remakes?” The Ringer, 2 Oct. 2018.

Thomas, Dylan. Collected Poems, 1934-1952. J. M. Dent and Sons, 1956.

Zachary, Brandon. “Halloween: Is Michael Myers Supernatural or What?” CBR, 2 Oct. 2018.