Whenever asked to name my favorite
horror film I always arrive at one of two movies, both by the legendary John
Carpenter: Halloween and The Thing (I’ll write about The Thing
soon enough). I find both to be strong
contenders content wise and excellent examples of the qualities I am arguing
for. To wit, that a good film,
regardless of its genre or labels, should not only deliver on the expectations
of its audience, but also subvert those desires and produce something unasked
for, but equally satisfying.
Halloween
is so beloved not because it’s another slasher with a body count, but instead
because it is a thriller that delves into the uncanny. Haddonfield isn’t just a town in Illinois; it’s
also your hometown. Laurie Strodes lives
on your block. Almost two-thirds of the
story is dedicated to a day-in-the-life portrait of these young women, making
the switch in the final portion all the more stark.
Not all of
them are necessarily likable, but you have by this point spent enough time with
them to know them as more than the card-board cutouts you might find in the lesser
titles of the genre. They feel like people
that will be missed by someone and that makes their passing more real. Michael
Myers is the caprice that fate sometimes deals out and these young women cannot
escape him. Carpenter has stated that
all of his early films dealt with the notion of fate and how intractable and
immutable it is. Michael Myers is
presented as an unstoppable force. His
motives are his own and nothing can deter him.
The terror and dread that you feel in watching this movie directly stems
from the fact that Michael Myers’ motivations and thinking are unknowable
and un-understandable.
Not only is he incomprehensible
internally, being unable to visually decipher him is also built into the film. Just consider the approach taken to filming
Myers. He is almost always obscured and
his actions take place almost exclusively in shadow: Peeking around a hedge,
hemmed in by car windows, between a series of fluttering sheets and always
surrounded by darkness. Or, examine it
more meta-textually—in the credits for this and all films, he isn’t listed as Michael
Myers, he is The Shape.
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| In each instance, it is clear that he is present, but impossible to determine his complete shape. |
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There are
two ways that you can read this text and both versions are totally dependent on
which edit you’re viewing. Firstly, you
can read it as part of a series, whereupon it is revealed that Myer’s is homing
in on his long lost sister in order to fulfill some sort of familial
bloodlust—the reasoning for which becomes increasingly more muddled and
strained as the installments move on. Or,
secondly, as a stand-alone movie (as it indeed was during its initial release),
John Carpenter’s singular take on the burgeoning slasher genre and not part one
of an eight-part (or seven if you’re splitting hairs) franchise. In this latter scenario Laurie is a
beautiful, charming young-lady who has the misfortune of drawing the attention
of one deranged individual.
I have seen both cuts of this film
and feel that the original, theatrical edit is the superior. The reason for this should be clear to any
fan of the original: Halloween is an exercise in restraint. The other cut, and sequels, give too much information,
overstate the motives.
I completely see the reasoning
behind the additional footage. From a
technical standpoint, when it was re-cut to be aired for television some of the
more graphic moments had to be dropped, which necessitated filming new material
to fill that space. By this point the
sequel had already been created and established the new continuity that the
rest of the franchise would build on.
But, the
additional scenes in the extended cut fundamentally change the reading of the
story. The clearest instance of this is
the bloodied word scrawled on his wall back at the asylum: SISTER. With that one added detail, we can all
breathe a collective sigh. The movie
becomes safer to watch. It always had to
be Laurie; this is her birthright. Even
had it been us who walked in front of the Myer’s house first that Halloween
morning, he still would have chosen her.
We no longer have to worry tonight when we turn the lights off.
Loomis senses the evil in Myers,
knows of the preternatural patience, but Myers in this reading is still a
man. Not the avatar for the Spirit of
Samhain or virtually immortal as he becomes in later installments. He is human; he drives a car (There’s even
that very upsetting sequence where he slowly follows Tommy as he heads home
from school—it’s shot over the shoulder and feels so much like Kidnapper POV
that I’m glad they only use it once.).
He eats, even if the only thing he could get was a stray dog.
To me that
version is scarier. I don’t anticipate
running into too many druidic demi-gods in my lifetime, but the other reading—that
sort of evil lives in many hearts—the other reading is the stuff headlines are
made of.
Of course
to refer to him as a man gives the mistaken impression that he has conformed to
what society would expect of that term.
He may be adult sized, but in many ways he stopped growing up the night
he murdered his sister. It’s evidenced
by the Halloween style pranks he plays during the movie—stealing his sister’s headstone
so that he can use it to scare Laurie, dressing up as a ghost before killing Linda
or the macabre, but darkly funny, ways he hides the bodies for Laurie to find
(they’re literally popping out at her). But
I think the most unsettling thing he does in this vein occurs right after he
kills Linda’s boyfriend. Myers pins the
teenage boy to the wall like an entomologist and then stares at him as his life
slips away. He tilts his head from one
side slowly to the other, almost as if he is confused by what is happening,
like he didn’t know if he played that hard with his new toy it would break.
* * * *
To examine something, to shine a
light upon it, the item in question must cast a shadow. I feel this is the true value of the horror
film. It allows us to discard the
saccharine sentimentalities and the plaintive dialogue of mainstream films and
terrify us. By exposing our fears, it
points out the things we hold most dear.
By acting as a silhouette the darkness inherent in the horror film is capable
of giving us the clearest outline of our souls.
Halloween
is terrifying not because some guy in a washed-out William Shatner mask is
stalking about with a 15 inch blade, but because he is there at all. Michael Myers is in our yards, in our
garages, our bedrooms. His blank face is
waiting to be filled in by someone—perhaps that person you passed on the way to
the car, the person in line beside you in the supermarket—and his motives, like
his face, are never clear but still fatal.
He is the Boogey Man. He can be
anywhere for the simple fact that he can be anyone. Laurie Strodes dropped a key off for her
father and it aroused the attention of the wrong person. Halloween reminds us that no matter
how our work day might have gone, the errands we ran, the chores we performed, throughout
the small and large of daily life there is always, always, underneath it all an ache that never stops buzzing: I want
to feel safe. Bringing that to light
underscores just how quickly a situation can go from being labeled “secure” to
being “dangerous”.
Let’s take
one of the film’s final moments as an example.
This scene fills me with dread like no other part: Laurie has narrowly
escaped the first encounter with The Shape.
She smashes her way out of the neighbor’s house and limps her way back
to the street. The entire time she is
screaming at the top of her lungs for help.
No one answers. One house goes so
far as to turn the lights on and peek through the window, but nothing else. She is left to fend for herself as The Shape
pursues. This is a familiar street and
she knows the people that live here.
None of that matters now that he is here.
What bothers me most about this scene
is how starkly alone Laurie is revealed to be.
She might as well be on the moon—her neighbors simply refuse to help. And what is truly horrifying is how this
scene was inspired by a real event. In
1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered in front of her apartment and anywhere from a
dozen to 40 neighbors heard the attacks and her cries for help, but no one came
to help her. It makes my blood turn cold
when I think about it.
Beyond the
realm of fiction, the events in this movie have some anchor to the real world. Freddy is a spirit, Jason a ghoul, Pinhead a
demon (or angel to some), but Myers is a flesh and blood maniac.
And while
you can argue that most of the killers in slasher movies were also flesh and
blood maniacs, you have the extra removal from real life by the locale. Halloween isn’t set at the first
Valentine’s Dance in ten years in a remote mining town, or on Prom Night, or at
a summer camp, or on a speeding party train—situations that you might find
yourself in, but certainly far from ordinary backdrops. Halloween, as I’ve said before,
happens in our yards and our own homes.
And if there is one place in your
day to day life that you should feel safe, it is your home. That is the heart of the uncanny in this film—that
the most familiar setting in your life should be un-made, that your home should
become an un-home. How would you
ever be able to sit down in your living room and watch a movie comfortably
again knowing that he was
there? How would you be able to sleep in
your bed? It wouldn’t matter how many houses
Laurie moved into from that point on, that thin veil, that illusion, that is
our only security has already been cut. When
you get down to it our home is no more a fortress than any other place, but to challenge
that, to make the center of our lives the springboard for such a threat is a
subtle and truly insidious thing to do.
Consider
this final subversion: As a child the closet was always the place to be feared
because it was from there that the monsters tried to escape. It was dangerous because it was dark and
unknown. During Laurie’s final
confrontation with The Shape, she hides in the closet. Here the monster wants to break in. And she is in the most danger in this scene
when she is exposed by the light. If the
closet can be seen as a spiritual Pandora’s Box—everything evil we can imagine
is contained within—what does it mean that The Shape wants to break in? Or the role-reversal of light and
shadow?
It’s as if this creature wants to
destroy Laurie (and by proxy us) on both levels, physically and mentally. By leaving no corner secure, The Shape
ensures that after this night we all understand that no one is ever truly safe.
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| Coming eventually... |
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