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.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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