Editorials
Infectious Evil: How ‘Halloween Ends’ Finally Does Something the Franchise Has Long Been Teasing
On Halloween night, 1988, as Michael Myers lay still on the ground, his young niece touched his hand either out of curiosity, or sympathy, or some unknowable kinship. As her foster sister warned the little girl to stand back, Jamie Lloyd jumped out of the way as a firing squad blasted Michael down a mineshaft to hell. With the evil finally behind them, they returned home, only for Jamie to put on a mask and stab her foster mother in the bath. Covered in blood, the girl stood silently, breathing heavily, and Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers came to an end, beginning the cycle a new, and promising a radical new direction if the series were to continue from there.
That was not what we got. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers was released only a year later, showing a Jamie who was affected by the trauma of her encounter with the shape, but still a sweet little girl, no more murderous than she had been at the beginning of Halloween 4. Michael Myers returned to Haddonfield for his annual slaughter and for all the movie’s well known eccentricities, it was by all accounts a traditional Halloween sequel. The evil had not been passed on, the possibility that it could not be contained only an apparent myth. Michael Myers was evil, but remained the only one of his kind. Jamie did not take up the mantle or take on a role as an accomplice, as the ending of Halloween 4 had seemed to explicitly suggest. Michael Myers would continue to be the sole face of the series—so to speak—and the future teased by the end of that fourth entry would not come to pass until Halloween Ends hit theaters on October 14th, 2022.
The new film, especially for a finale, is obviously divisive. Spoilers ahead, as we’re going to get into the meat of the story. This movie not only goes in a completely different direction from the two entries before it, but from really any other movie in the series as a whole. Even Halloween III had the benefit of completely wiping the slate clean, so that its brand new, unconnected story was just that. Halloween Ends introduces a new protagonist/antagonist in Corey Cunningham, a boy accused of killing a local child in what was actually a tragic accident. He tries to find a way to move on from what happened, but the town’s perception of him is concrete and unwavering. After being attacked by a literal band of bullies, Corey has an encounter with Michael Myers that leaves him changed. Something happens the moment they lock eyes with one another, and the two become connected. Corey is infected by the evil within the shape, and it grows inside of him (or awakens something within him) until it takes him over completely. From there, it is a glorified remake of Christine with Michael Myers instead of a car.
It is at its very core, not for everyone. Maybe even not for most. It is a big swing, especially for the concluding chapter of a trilogy, not to mention the entire franchise. Allegedly. As someone with a deep love of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, I am not the person to speak to that particular point. And I don’t want to deride anyone’s tastes if they absolutely despised this movie, but if this movie is not right up my alley, then I truly don’t know my own tastes. What I really want to do though is simply take a look at the specific big swing this movie takes, the central concept of a character becoming infected, possessed, aligned with and even an accomplice to Michael Myers. Because even though that might be incredibly jarring to see play out on screen, it is something that has almost happened several times in this franchise’s 44 year history. It is an idea that has been constantly touched on but never truly explored until now.
The most obvious example would be the end of Halloween 4, as I pointed out, but the kernel of this idea dates all the way back to Halloween II. That film is infamous for its big twist. Laurie becoming Michael’s sister is the first time a protagonist is directly tied to the killer in this series. And she’s never told about it; she pieces it together through dreams, so it is an almost psychic connection there, particularly in her knowing he’s coming for her at the hospital before she possibly could.
Halloween 4 is still the most overt building block. Once the sibling connection was established, it set the franchise down a long path of movies about Michael targeting his family members. This time, he’s after his young niece, Jamie. When she touches his hand at the end, it is incredibly similar to Corey being immediately affected by simply looking into Michael’s eyes. One moment of contact is all it takes. Jamie, after that encounter, puts on a mask and starts stabbing, as does Corey, eventually. I almost think my litmus test for if someone is likely to enjoy Halloween Ends is to look back at any posts they might have made about how the ending of Halloween 4 should have been the new direction for the franchise and ask themselves how much they really meant it. What that movie only teased, Ends embraces. It jumps into that incredibly intriguing, exciting concept of “We don’t know what happened to Michael, we don’t know what transformed him, but what if it happened again?”
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers does not completely abandon the supernatural connection between Jamie and Michael by any stretch, but certainly downplays it. One year later, Jamie cannot speak, which could be caused by her trauma or could be a lingering effect of Michael’s psychic bond with her. At the end of 4, she stabbed her foster mother with a pair of scissors, but now she’s using her newfound abilities to track Michael like a nine-year-old psychic detective. It only rarely touches on the darkness of her connection with Michael and what it could mean. The highlight of the movie, as far as this plot point goes, comes in a rare emotional moment for the shape. Jamie asks Michael to remove his mask, sees the face of what could be any ordinary man, and says “You’re just like me,” as Michael sheds a single tear. It’s as if, for just a second, whatever supernatural evil is rooted deep within him loosens its grip. A second later, Michael is disgusted by his own display of emotion and starts destroying everything around him out of what appears to be genuine embarrassment. It’s just a little scene, but it’s so fascinating and raises so many questions about the nature of the evil inside Michael, but it’s never really addressed again.
In Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers that evil is explained in no uncertain terms. Michael was inflicted with the curse of Thorn, an ancient Celtic curse that would infect one member of a family and cause them to kill their bloodline so that other families would be spared and crops would flourish. Curse is the first movie to directly revolve around the notion that Michael’s evil is something that can be passed onto another, and much of the plot deals with the notion of one cycle ending and another beginning. Though, once again, that does not come to fruition. In both the endings of the producer’s cut and the theatrical cut, Michael survives to continue doing what he does best.
Perhaps the most important movie to examine when thinking of the building blocks of Halloween Ends is Halloween H20, not necessarily for the movie it is, but the movie it could have been. As some fans are probably unaware, that was set to be a very different film before Jamie Lee Curtis returned to the role. Dimension had been ready to send the Halloween franchise direct-to-video as they would do for Hellraiser, The Crow, Children of the Corn and more, thanks to the lukewarm box office of Curse of Michael Myers. Curtis single-handedly saved it from that fate with her suggestion to return for a twentieth anniversary movie. The pre-existing script by Robert Zappia was basically combined with Kevin Williamson’s treatment for a Laurie Strode-centric sequel.
The original concept evolved through several scripts from Halloween: Two Faces of Evil to Halloween: The Revenge of Laurie Strode to finally H20, but it basically dealt with a killer being obsessed with Michael Myers to the point that they would take on the mantle for themselves, only to come face to face with the real shape by the end. It’s intriguing, I’ll admit, but also sounds very much like a Dimension DTV sequel. It’s kind of fascinating to think that the scrapped plot for Jamie Lee Curtis’ first big return to the franchise is so similar to the plot of her final return to the franchise 24 years later.
Rob Zombie’s Halloween II also deals with notions of a character being affected by Michael’s evil, a surprising move for a sequel to what had been an overwhelmingly realistic first movie. This time, the person being affected by Michael is Laurie herself. She sees visions identical to Michael’s own, which Zombie simply suggested on the commentary to be her having an identical illness to her brother, but since absolutely none of that is how mental illness works, it has to be read as some kind of psychic connection. After all, she not only sees visions of her mother before she even knows anything about her own origin, she sees her dressed in the same clothes that Michael sees, and there are points when she and Michael are literally interacting with the same vision at the same time.
The two versions of Zombie’s Halloween II end very differently. In the director’s cut, Laurie is shot down by the police while standing over Michael’s body, and as she dies, she sees a long white hallway, smiling a broken smile as she accepts her own death. The theatrical cut, however, does not kill Laurie, and that final shot of the hallway only looks like she has been taken away and her smile looks like the grin of someone who has finally given in to the rage and violence that has been tightening its grip on her throughout the film. It looks like she’s taking up the mantle for what appears to be an unequivocally dead Michael, and is extremely similar to the tease at the end of Halloween 4. Again, that obviously didn’t happen.
David Gordon Green’s new trilogy has dealt with this concept from the beginning. Taken on its own, 2018’s Halloween is actually the first sequel to inject a second killer into the heart of the story with Dr. Ranbir Sartain. Touted as the “new Loomis” he’s actually the anti-Loomis in that Sartain has no intention of stopping Michael. In fact, he is so obsessed with learning the pleasure Michael feels by killing that he appears to kill Officer Hawkins just to feel that for himself. However, Halloween Kills reveals that Hawkins lived and Sartain didn’t actually kill anyone, right in its opening scene. Much of Kills is even about the opposite; rather than a killer following in Michael’s footsteps, the town’s fear of him turns them into a rampaging vigilante mob that leads to the death of a man they wrongly believe to be Myers. It’s a heavy handed, blunt, and gruesome scene about how their paranoia has turned them into monsters, that ends with Brackett literally saying that it has turned them into monsters.
Finally, all of these elements come together in Halloween Ends. With Laurie Strode now representing the hope of overcoming a traumatic past and Michael Myers representing what happens when you succumb to violence entirely, enter new character Corey Cunningham, poised directly in the middle between the two. Like Laurie, he was a babysitter, and like Michael, he’s a town pariah. Corey, at the beginning, simply wants to go about his life. He was a good kid in a miserable situation. Both he and Laurie are harassed simply for things that have happened to them, and that connection is important, because Halloween Ends is at its core about the fact that you cannot control people’s perception of you, you can only control how it changes you. The supernatural turn, and the metaphor, come about when Corey first looks into Michael’s eyes and that infection, and kinship between the two, begins.
(from left) Billy (Marteen), Corey (Rohan Campbell) and Terry (Michael Barbieri) in Halloween Ends, co-written, produced and directed by David Gordon Green.
I can’t even express how it felt to finally see that. This was a scene I’d seen play out before in Halloween movies, as I’ve pointed out. It felt so similar to Halloween 4, in particular, only now it’s not coming at the very end to tease a sequel that the next filmmakers are by no means obliged to make. Now it’s coming at the end of the first act. This is, finally, that movie. The notion that Michael’s supernatural evil can be strengthened or dormant from moment to moment from Halloween 5 is in there when a feeble, broken Michael stabs a cop to restore his own strength. The idea that the cycle is beginning anew, a background plot point from Curse, is central to this film. The rejected plot of H20, in which a young imposter takes on the mantle of the shape is the whole concept of Halloween Ends.
Whether on a large or small scale, all of these things made it into this film that is all about internalizing an external evil, exploring the concepts of Halloween from the inside out. And as out-of-left-field it is for a franchise finale, it ties itself back to the original in some clever and surprising ways. For example, Michael kills three people in the movie, the same amount he killed on Halloween night 1978, has almost the same screen time as the original, and Laurie is not aware of the threat of Michael until the moment she comes face to face with him, just like the first time.
For only focusing itself as a sequel to the 1978 classic, this trilogy has always kept the other sequels in mind. Like Halloween II, Halloween Kills features a bigger body count while Laurie gets sidelined in the hospital. There are kids running around in the Silver Shamrock masks from Halloween III. The mob leading to Tivoli’s death in Kills is extremely similar to the group of drunken rednecks who accidentally shot local citizen Ted Hollister in Halloween 4. On this level, Halloween Ends is not a surprising supposed end to this series, because it is factoring in the saga as a whole to an even greater degree than its predecessors. Halloween Ends takes all of these abandoned threads, all these promises of a wildly different take on the Halloween formula and simply makes that movie. As divisive as it is, no matter how time treats it or how its reception changes if at all, it will always be a fascinating footnote in a larger legacy.
And I, for one, am grateful for it.
Editorials
How Marina de Van Uses Body Horror and Pain to Explore Trauma in ‘In My Skin’ and ‘Dark Touch’
Pain is the language of New French Extremity.
Known for excruciating violence and gore, what often distinguishes these visceral films is the depiction of emotional turmoil manifested as the destruction of human flesh. Few filmmakers make this comparison so literally as Marina de Van.
The French writer/director burst onto the scene in 2002 with her shocking In My Skin, a tale of self-discovery via grisly self-harm. Eleven years later, she would write and direct Dark Touch, the harrowing story of a traumatized girl who expresses her pain through telekinetic force.
Though they differ wildly in tone and subject, both In My Skin and Dark Touch deal with the horror of unexpressed agony and its tendency to break the skin, ripping and shredding through anything in its path.
In My Skin (2002): Self-Harm as a Response to Emotional Repression
This intensely personal film stars de Van as Esther, a corporate analyst on the verge of having it all. Her adoring boyfriend Vincent (Laurent Lucas) is poised to move in, and she’s been targeted for promotion thanks to her diligent work. During a high-pressure networking party, Esther wanders outside and trips over an open construction site, ripping her pants on an abandoned tool. It’s only later that she notices blood on the floor and realizes that she’s torn the skin of her calf as well. Surprisingly, Esther has not felt a thing.
The surgeon who stitches up the wound marvels at this lack of sensitivity, wondering if the problem is not her shredded flesh — she’s still able to feel the lightest touch — but a misalignment in her head. This wound unlocks a disturbing pattern of dissociative self-mutilation as Esther begins cutting and gouging her skin to cope with moments of emotional stress.
Her first intentional act of self-harm follows a minor mistake in a document. After noticing that she’s misused a word, Esther fixes the error, then sneaks away to slice her thigh with a stray piece of metal. Though she has caught the mistake herself, Esther anticipates punishment for imperfection. The subsequent wound on her thigh is proof that she has paid for her transgression and can now return to solid ground, having completed the cycle of shameful correction.
As we peel back the layers of Esther’s life, we’re aghast at the toxicity of her environment. The inciting fall happens shortly after she politely declines a dinner invitation from her older colleague, an inappropriate sexual advance dressed up as an offer for mentorship. At another party, her male coworkers drag her towards the pool, threatening to pull off her pants when she screams that she’s not wearing a bathing suit.
Esther flees this disturbing scene, but not because of the men’s aggressiveness. She’s disturbed to find that her struggle to break free has reopened the still-healing wound on her leg, causing unsightly blood to seep through her pants. Like many women in the corporate world, she’s been conditioned to view her presence as an optional privilege and to create comfort for her male colleagues. Should she negatively react to their atrocious behavior, they may deem her “too emotional” and take away her hard-earned position.
But this toxic environment only exacerbates Esther’s need to self-harm. At a working dinner, a wealthy client pressures her to drink expensive wine, then continues to refill her glass. Increasingly unmoored, Esther finds her hand creeping onto her dinner plate. After repeatedly dragging it out of her food, she notices the appendage lying limp on the table, completely disconnected from her upper arm. This surrealist moment in an otherwise grounded film is a turning point in her violent journey. Esther sees how desensitized her body has become and the lengths she will go to perform unobtrusive compliance.
Desperate to regain control, Esther gouges her forearm with a steak knife stolen from the table, hiding the carnage under a napkin. Humiliated, she concludes the evening in a nearby hotel, where she indulges this dangerous new compulsion. For hours, Esther lovingly slices her arms and legs, gnawing on loose flesh and suckling blood from extensive wounds. She seems enamored with her ability to feel again without being perceived by anyone else.
Disturbed by her scars, Vincent offers shaky support while contributing to Esther’s unexpressed pain. During an intense discussion about buying their first home, Esther forgets her PIN at an ATM and bursts into tears on the street. Vincent offers an easy solution, only showing his frustration behind closed doors. He lashes out at his stunned girlfriend, conflating her emotional stress with his own inadequacy.
Clearly destabilized by her tears, Vincent baits Esther into soothing him, an echo of the cycle she performs at work. We see that even at home, her emotional needs come second to men who are unequipped to handle their own feelings. Esther has internalized the responsibility of managing Vincent alongside the message that any break in her calm demeanor will lead to more suffering later on.
In the wake of this argument and a rebuke from her boss, Esther suffers a panic attack while walking to work. In a daze, she buys another knife, then takes a hotel room for the day. Blood runs over Esther’s face as she again luxuriates in self-mutilation. De Van finds an uneasy juxtaposition between gruesome carnage and euphoric escape. Alone again with her exquisite pain, Esther seductively runs the knife over her face, digging into the skin around her eye. She chemically preserves a severed piece of flesh then lovingly tucks it inside her bra, a keepsake to honor this violent vacation.
The next day, Esther prepares for work, pulling office attire over her blood-stained skin. De Van does not follow her out the door, leaving us to imagine how she will be received by the men in her life. Will they finally see what they’ve put her through, or will life continue as before, with Esther pretending that nothing is wrong and performing perfection until her body gives out? De Van ends the film with the striking image of Esther lying on the hotel bed, fixing the audience with a knowing stare. Though she carefully hides her fragility, we alone have seen the true cost of survival in this destructive world.
Dark Touch (2013): Trauma, Abuse, and Supernatural Revenge
In many ways, this shocking story of catharsis through violence feels like a thematic response to In My Skin and Esther’s unexpressed pain. Also written and directed by de Van, Dark Touch follows an Irish girl named Niamh (Missy Keating) who becomes the sole survivor of a massacre.
We first meet this little girl screaming from her bedroom window, then running through the stormy night to the house of family friends Nat (Marcella Plunkett) and Lucas Galin (Pádraic Delaney). Niamh’s parents smooth over the incident, presenting the illusion of a happy home. It’s only when the doors are closed that we realize something is dreadfully wrong. De Van implies the worst as the sinister couple creeps into their daughter’s room, commanding her to be a “good girl.” But Niamh is saved from horrific abuse by furniture that seems to move on its own.
De Van leans into her French Extremity roots in what will become a gruesome execution. Niamh’s mother is crushed by a splintering bureau, a loose screw driving itself into her face. Her father watches his wife’s grisly death, then falls on the blades of an ultra-modern light fixture. Flames spread through the house as Niamh cradles her infant brother in a tiny cupboard. When rescuers arrive on the scene, we learn that the baby boy has died, mysteriously smothered by an inhuman force. Now an orphan, Niamh goes to stay with Nat and Lucas, who struggle to meet her emotional needs. Unable to explain her traumatic past, Niamh finds that things move whenever she cries, an outward manifestation of her silenced rage.
Though Nat and Lucas offer support, they only seem to make things worse. Lucas volunteers to stay in Niamh’s room when she has a bad dream, oblivious to the discomfort his presence might cause. Growing impatient when she can’t fall asleep, a snide comment betrays his empty concern. Niamh finally finds solace in photos of the couple’s older daughter, who died from cancer years ago. She clings to an image of the little girl blowing out birthday candles while covered in bruises, drawn to the familiar juxtaposition of a child suffering through visible pain while going about life as if nothing is wrong.
But this too enrages Lucas. When he finds the pictures under her bed, the weeping father shakes Niamh and demands to know what gives her the right to bring up such a devastating memory. While perhaps understandable, Lucas’ reaction tells the traumatized girl that his comfort is the true priority, and she is not allowed to soothe herself.
Niamh’s only friends in the tiny town are young siblings from a similarly violent home. Whistling to them in the night, Niamh uses her emerging telekinesis to kill their abusive mother in an attack similar to the one that destroyed her own family. When Nat arranges for Niamh to attend a birthday party, she bristles at the other girls’ treatment of their baby dolls. They slap and rip at their faux children’s hair, seeming to process their own quasi-abusive upbringing. As she bursts into tears, Niamh spreads fire through the party and melts the faces of the mistreated dolls. That night, she lures the children to school and then destroys the building, violently disrupting what she interprets as a continuous cycle of child abuse.
Next, Niamh turns her attention to her foster parents, telepathically trapping them in her former home. For hours, she puts them through a series of torturous humiliations we assume she endured at her own parents’ hands. Now, Nat and Lucas must suffer in silence as Niamh finally reveals the extent of her misery. Forced to sit with their tormentor at a dinner table, Nat and Lucas quietly weep as flames spread throughout the home. Like Naimh once did, they go through the motions of a happy family, unable to protect themselves. Their foster daughter smiles as the fire consumes them all, finally putting an end to her tragic life.
Despite this murderous conclusion, Niamh is not a traditional villain. She’s a horrifically abused little girl who can’t find a way to express her pain. Though she’s managed to remove herself from immediate danger, every attempt to heal is met with stigma, resentment, or the burden of caring for someone else. When her trauma becomes too uncomfortable, she’s advised to simply stay out of sight.
Like Esther, Niamh exists in a world that expects her to create comfort for everyone else, regardless of the suffering it causes her. But Niamh’s agony can no longer be contained. Abandoning all hope for a happy life, she channels her rage and destroys anyone who crosses her path. Perhaps this is not fair to Nat and Lucas or the children of this tiny town. But what happened to Niamh is also unfair, and her trauma can no longer be ignored.
Though they do not narratively connect, Dark Touch feels like a spiritual successor to In My Skin. Both Esther and Niamh try to swallow their pain, but find it too great to be contained. We leave Esther struggling to stay afloat in a world of male toxicity. Picking up Niamh’s story at a similar moment, we watch the child escape her own abuse only to find that the world doesn’t really care. Her community will only offer support if it doesn’t disrupt their own lives.
Though de Van does not offer us hopeful endings, there’s grim satisfaction in revealing the world as it is, one built on the expectation that women will suffer in silence. Both In My Skin and Dark Touch seem to argue that a society built on women’s pain does not deserve a second chance.
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