His Halloween II eschews everything from his first Halloween and fixates on ethereal images of Michael’s mother and a white horse that guide him back toward Haddonfield. Still, as is par for the course with this franchise, Zombie backs himself into a corner. The film also looks great, and has a gonzo, throwback charm that renders it better than it appeared when first released. That sequel, though, messed things up all over again.Īs a standalone work, Zombie’s Halloween II explores some fascinating ideas. Outside of its prologue detailing Myers’ origins, Halloween (2007) was a faithful, albeit more violent, revisitation of its source material. Then came Rob Zombie’s remake and its sequel. The franchise, once more, was left with nowhere to go. But H20‘s gangbusters ending was immediately retconned in its sequel, Halloween: Resurrection, with Laurie killed off on account of the most ludicrous case of mistaken identity imaginable (thanks, Kevin Williamson). To rectify this, the first soft reboot of the franchise, Halloween: H20, saw Curtis return as Laurie and ignored 4, 5, and 6 entirely. The prevailing theme throughout: Efforts to complicate a simple monster sullied the Halloween series. Wynn (Mitchell Ryan) placed the curse on Michael Myers in 1963, thus inciting his entire killing spree. (As a bonus, those bearing the curse are bestowed with inhuman strength and ostensible immortality.) Allegedly, Dr. As the story goes, one family was chosen to bear the curse -the caveat being that the bearer needs to murder their entire family in order to spare their neighbors from further tragedy. The plot of both The Curse of Michael Myers and its Producer’s Cut explore the Curse of Thorn, a mystical runic symbol with links to its namesake constellation that appeared during Samhain. In Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Michael’s mythos only gets messier, adding druid mysticism, cults, and more religious iconography than there are Haddonfield residents. A hulking child murderer with a complicated family lineage and psychic links? Not so much. In Halloween 4 and 5, he’s ephemeral, scary for as long as he’s on-screen and nothing more. Worse still -and I say this as a fan of both films -it further distances Michael from what makes him Michael. It’s psychobabble and more complicated than it needs to be. Jamie’s mother survives, and Halloween 4 is treated as a fluke in favor of a new angle: Jamie’s psychic connection with Michael. But in Halloween 5: The Return of Michael Myers, this is swiftly retconned. Halloween 4‘s ending further explored the Myers mythos, suggesting in its final reel that Jamie -who stabs her adoptive mother as Loomis looks on in horror -had embodied Michael’s evil. Also Read: Halloween II - The 1981 Sequel is a Worthy Follow Up that Didn’t Need to be Retconned The movie’s infamous twist is the foundation for the first of Halloween’s original timelines, and led to Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers-an entry that no less controversially killed off Laurie off-screen and followed her daughter Jamie Lloyd’s (Danielle Harris) efforts to escape Michael’s wrath. He wasn’t after anyone else but his sister, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). Michael Myers isn’t Haddonfield’s boogeyman, but everyone’s boogeyman.Ĭarpenter himself opposed Halloween II, and for good reason: In that 1981 film, Myers went from universal monster to Haddonfield native. But he’s also nebulous enough to affect audiences on mass scale. There’s specificity to Michael Myers insomuch as he’s a symbol of suburban ennui and burgeoning crime. Loomis won’t soon let you forget it-but an abstract evil, no different than Leatherface carving up interlopers in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Billy reinforcing regressive patriarchal ideals in Black Christmas. He is, as listed in the end credits, “The Shape.” He’s evil, yes-Dr. In John Carpenter’s original, Michael Myers is simply the boogeyman.
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