Although John Carpenter’s great 1978 horror filmHalloweenis certainly a masterful example of filmmaking and the creation of suspense, much of the film’s effect also owes to the power of sheer simplicity.
The film opens on Halloween night in 1963 in the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois, with an unbroken sequence in which a six-year-old boy named Michael Myers eventually stabs his older sister to death. Michael is subsequently institutionalized until July 19, 2025, when he escapes and returns to Haddonfield, where he targets a row of teenagers on Halloween night. He’s pursued by his psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis, who sees Michael as the embodiment of pure evil. It’s very straightforward.
In contrast,David Gordon Green’sHalloweenrebootsequel trilogy is convoluted, with pointless secondary characters and subplots, and certainly lacks Carpenter’s absolute understanding of how to generate suspense, especially regarding Michael Myers, who appears in the trilogy not as a pure source of evil but rather as a stunt person who hides behind a pale mask. He’s not scary.
Why did theHalloweenreboot sequel trilogy fail to do justice to the 1978 film? How should a directHalloweensequel, as well as any subsequentHalloweensequels, have been plotted, and what if the now iconic 1978 film had simply been left alone without a sequel?
The Night He Vanished
Thesimplicity of John Carpenter’sHalloweenis evident in terms of how the film conceptualizes Michael’s evil persona and gruesome psychological design. Indeed, Michael is presented in the movie as a murderous artist whose dominant mode of artistic expression is, obviously, death.
In one scene, Michael tilts his head while admiring his butchery after pinning a victim, a teenage boy, to a wall with a knife. In another scene, the heroine ofHalloween, Laurie Strode, discovers her friend Annie’s wide-eyed corpse lying on a bed, staring upward beneath the unearthed tombstone of Michael’s murdered sister.
The image of the sister’s tombstone on the bed represents Michael’s masterpiece, the culmination of approximately fifteen years of inhuman patience and silence from the previously institutionalized Michael. Conversely, this psychological dimension is precisely lacking from the trilogy films and certainly should have formed the basis of both a direct sequel to the 1978 film and any subsequentHalloweensequels.
Also, one of the most interesting aspects of Carpenter’sHalloweenis the film’s supernatural explanation for Michael’s disappearance at the end, after being shot multiple times by Dr. Loomis. As Michael is seemingly killed and then reborn several times in the film, his ultimate disappearance, his vanishing, further suggests that Michael is, indeed, the embodiment of inhuman evil. Accordingly, what if Michael truly disappeared at the end of the 1978 film and was never heard from again until the next Halloween night or maybe ten, twenty, or thirty years? What if he really was the boogeyman?
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Laurie Strode: The Aftermath
In theHalloweenreboot sequel trilogy,Laurie Strode appearsas a twice-divorced alcoholic and PTSD sufferer who has a strained relationship with an estranged daughter and a granddaughter.
However, given that Laurie appears as a shy virgin in the 1978 film, given the trauma she endures throughout the film, is it all plausible that Laurie could have ever gotten married or managed motherhood? Also, what happened to teenage Laurie in the aftermath of the 1978 film?
Like Sue Snell, the lone survivor ofCarrie, both the 1974 Stephen King novel and 1976 film of the same name, how does Laurie face high school graduation, and prom night, after the events of the 1978 film, which includes the murders of her best friends, Annie and Lynda? This would be a fascinating area to explore in aHalloweendirect sequel film. The sight of Laurie grieving her friends would be more emotionally impactful than anything that exists in the reboot sequel trilogy.
Moreover, what about the specter of Michael Myers? If Michael was apprehended following the end of the 1978 film, or if he vanished without a trace, how could teenage Laurie, or young adult Laurie, ever resume any semblance of a normal life with the knowledge that Michael was still alive?
In fact, one of the suggested storylines for the 1981 filmHalloween II, the first direct sequel to the 1978 film, had Laurie moving to a high-rise apartment building, where she’s eventually tracked by Michael. Again, any storylinethat focused on Lauriein the aftermath of the 1978 film, or even a few years afterward, would be more compelling and frightening than how she was presented in the recent trilogy.
Related:Halloween: John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis & More Talk Making Michael Myers Scary Again
Halloween Has Achieved Immortality
Initially, John Carpenter never wanted there to be a sequel to the originalHalloweenfilm. However, the film’s commercial success and the threat of a lawsuit forced Carpenter, and then-production partner Debra Hill, to grudgingly produce and write the first directHalloweensequel,Halloween II, though Carpenter steadfastly refused to direct anotherHalloweenfilm.
What if Carpenter had gotten his way and no direct sequel toHalloweenhad ever been made? As revered asHalloweenis today, what if the mystery of Michael’s disappearance at the end of the film had been left forever unresolved? Regardless, none of the subsequentHalloweenfilms have come close to equaling the impact, and certainly the quality, of the firstHalloweenfilm, especially the recent reboot sequel trilogy films.
While David Gordon Green, the estimable director of the filmsPineapple ExpressandUndertow, doubtlessly brought genuine enthusiasm and respect to hisHalloweenreboot sequel trilogy, the flawed construction of the trilogy,beginning with 2018’sHalloween, only became exacerbated with the silly, sloppy sequels.
Although Green’sHalloweentrilogy was a financial success, as hisHalloweengrossed approximately $260 million at the worldwide box office against a $10 million budget, this trilogy, like the previousHalloweensequel films, was seemingly doomed to failure.
