Editorials
The One Nagging Problem the ‘Halloween’ Franchise Needs to Permanently Retcon
John Carpenter and Blumhouse Productions are bringing Michael Myers back to the big screen in 2017. Let’s hope they toss one of the Halloween franchise’s biggest problems out the window.
When John Carpenter’s Halloween was released in 1978, audiences were terrified – and we’ve got the vintage audio to prove it. The independent film, which played no small part in launching the slasher boom of the early-mid 1980s, introduced the world to a nightmarish boogeyman in the form of “The Shape,” who would of course come to be known by the human name Michael Myers.
But in the original film, The Shape wasn’t quite human so much as he was a supernatural force, hell-bent on brutally butchering anyone who happened to cross his path. Fifteen years after snapping and slaughtering his sister for unknown reasons, Myers escapes from a sanitarium and goes on a murder spree through his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, a blank white mask covering his face and effectively wiping away any semblance of humanity he once had.
What happened to Michael that caused him to snap? And why does he set his sights on young Laurie Strode and her friends? Carpenter never answers these questions, and it’s because he doesn’t that Halloween remains one of the most genuinely terrifying films in the history of the horror genre.
When Rob Zombie came along and remade Halloween in 2007, he gave Michael Myers the full “origin story” treatment, explaining away his source of evil as the product of a disturbingly troubled childhood. In doing so, Zombie turned The Shape from a potent symbol of terror into your ordinary white trash serial killer, and many fans may never forgive him for that. But let’s be real here: Myers was humanized, in a damaging way, long before Zombie gave him a beard and a backstory.
In the original Halloween 2, reluctantly co-written by John Carpenter, we learned that Laurie Strode was Michael’s sister, thereby explaining why he targeted her in the 1978 film. With that one major addition to the mythology, Myers was more or less given a motive, and if you’re asking me, that motive did a whole lot more harm to the character than good. The Shape’s familial connection to his victims went on to become a nagging issue that plagued the entire franchise, as it suggested that he was only really interested in killing family members. And that’s just not that scary.
Certainly not as scary as a masked maniac choosing his victims at random.
“Michael Myers was an absence of character,” Carpenter noted in a 2014 interview with Deadline, hitting the nail squarely on its head. “And yet all the sequels are trying to explain that. That’s silliness – it just misses the whole point of the first movie. The sequels rooted around in motivation. I thought that was a mistake.”
At this time, it’s unclear what direction Carpenter and Blumhouse are taking the franchise in – and they assure that they don’t plan on giving it the remake or reboot treatment – but if they hope to recapture the terrifying simplicity of the original classic, one thing they simply must avoid is connecting Myers to any of the victims he decides to stick his trademark knife into. Hell, they’d be wise to ditch his human name entirely, as The Shape becomes more and more terrifying when there’s less and less humanity present in him.
In order to make Halloween great again, they need to make The Shape scary again. And the easiest way to accomplish that goal is to retcon all motivation out of the franchise.
Because Carpenter’s right. All that family stuff was a huge mistake.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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