![]() Zombie’s first movie dedicates the first half of its runtime to Michael’s childhood, beginning with the day that would lead to him killing his sister, followed by his time in the institution and his periodic visits with Dr. Carpenter’s movie begins with Michael as a child killing his sister, while we watch the murder through his eyes, and then jumps to 15 years later, where Michael breaks out of a mental institution and goes on his killing spree. They feel haunted, dripping with despair and choked with tragedy, about the architecture of violence and the echoes of trauma that is left in the wake of death. In fact, they barely feel like slashers at all. Rob Zombie’s movies, on the other hand, are not minimalist or simple. The focus needs to be on setting up the characters so we care about them enough for when they start being picked off, Carpenter can wring tension and sadness out of their deaths. ![]() Michael Myers doesn’t have a backstory because if we gave him one, the pacing would be thrown off and we would need to sit in exposition which would deflate the film of its tension. Carpenter’s movie is a minimalist masterpiece that takes a simple premise and builds a terrifying story of survival on top of it. What makes Michael Myers scary is the simplicity in Carpenter’s vision. ![]() What makes him scary is seeing the way he haunts a kitchen, before striking the victim. What makes him scary is seeing him appear from the shadows, as if materializing out of thin air, as Laurie stands in a doorway thinking she’s escaped. His lack of a backstory isn’t what makes him scary. In the first Halloween, Michael Myers feels like a ghost, and Carpenter uses him as this evil spirit haunting this suburban town. Michael isn’t as scary because the more we see of him, the more familiar he becomes. In reality however, the sequels aren’t as scary because they weren’t directed by a master craftsman like John Carpenter. Those sequels aren’t scary because they’ve reduced Michael’s essence down to something that feels a little more tangible, and less unexplainable. The audience scapegoated Michael’s backstory as the reason for the edge being taken off of the character. And of course, the way we’ve intellectualized the character has been used to discredit the sequels, when it was revealed that Michael is Laurie’s sister and he returns to Haddonfield so he can finish the job. Loomis is used as a tool to mythologize the evil of this central antagonist who kills because that’s who he is. ![]() This intellectualization of Michael Myers in Carpenter’s Halloween has been used to help explain what makes him scary, this idea that he is simply the embodiment of evil. But with Michael, they struck gold the first time out of the gate, and every successive appearance failed to live up to our expectations of what Michael Myers should be, which has forced a collective audience to overthink and intellectualize why he worked in the original, while in the others Michael just didn’t feel the same. ![]() With Freddy, our memory of him starts with three. With Jason Voorhees, our memory of the character comes from the later Friday the 13th sequels, starting with part four. Even when the sequels grew sillier, got convoluted and filled in a backstory, we all collectively agreed that Michael Myers is simply a faceless killer who aimlessly wanders around a suburban town and kills, not because he has any particular motivation, but because that is just who he is. Michael Myers is one of the only slasher villains who struck gold in the first movie, where our entire memory of the character and the traits we associate with him were born out of that first movie. ![]()
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