Is Halloween (2018) really a sequel to the original?

Michael-Myers.net General Discussion
1

The original Halloween to me is at its core all about the simplicity. The plot is honestly pretty thin as are many of the characters- beyond some broad archetypal strokes most of the characters aren’t very developed (I do want to focus solely on the original with regards to this point). Laurie is just that shy, brainy type. Lynda is the cheerleader fun-seeking gal and Annie is… to be honest I can’t exactly even pinpoint much in the way of Annie’s character beyond her being the daughter of the town’s sheriff, and that she has a younger sister and a boyfriend. Even Dr. Loomis isn’t developed much beyond a kind of Captain Ahab type. Michael Myers himself is a mysterious, seemingly unstoppable madman.

But all of that works not in spite of the lack of complexity, but because of it. The story and its drive isn’t dependent on the characters. It’s not a movie where we delve deep into the psyche of anyone- it’s very much “imagine being stalked by an unidentifiable, murderous force in the confines of your neighborhood haven”. The scares are all things that could happen back in 1978- that can STILL happen. Everything about the movie works to drive that point- only fleshing out The Shape enough to demonstrate the threat he poses to the cast.

And ultimately in a franchise sense, that’s also arguably its biggest downfall. After all, where do you go from there that can preserve the simplicity and the mystery- the unknown- without it being a paint-by-numbers rehash of the original? Hell, most people I would argue would say that IS the case with the sequels. H2-H20 attempted to continue and flesh out the story using a family connection, but ultimately none of them can really hold a candle to the effectiveness of the original. Halloween: Resurrection just didn’t even try in my eyes lol. Rob Zombie’s attempt in his remake is something that I initially disliked (and still do, honestly), but eventually grew to appreciate because he was bold in his creative choices to flesh out the characters. The characters are more developed with stronger voices in each of the characters and I feel you get a better sense of a history behind for example Laurie, Annie and Lynda’s friendship that you did with the original. Hell, Rob took the mask which John used to effectively hide all but the barest semblance of humanity and used it to project Michael’s character onto it.

That brings me to the latest iteration, Halloween (2018) and presumably its upcoming sequels. Given all I’ve laid out above, I believe writer Danny McBride took the best approach to proceed with the franchise. It fleshes out the protagonists and the supporting characters to infuse thematic elements to the narrative, using nostalgia to demonstrate the threat Michael poses even after all these years. As a revisiting of the original, it places Michael and Laurie as icons (which they are) or titans gearing up for their inevitable showdown. In terms of the narrative, I feel they made a decent attempt at picking up from the original and showering the salient elements with reverence…

And yet, because of that, to me it’s spiritually a polar opposite to the original. It’s no longer “simple”. The original Halloween has Michael almost as an incidental character. The thrust of the horror that was The Shape wasn’t that it was Michael Myers. The thrust was that anybody could presumably throw on a costume that makes you virtually unidentifiable and hunt you down. It could happen to you. With the latest installment, that fear is gone. It’s no longer just some maniac after YOU, it’s a particular iconic maniac in a specific setting after specific people (I know there are some side characters who bite the dust in it as well, but really it’s about Michael vs. Laurie). That omnipresent terror no longer exists. Now- that’s totally fine and it’s clearly worked given the film’s critical and commercial success (I know there are naysayers etc. but let’s be honest- it was reviewed more or less favorably, and you’d have to be delusional to deny it was a financial windfall), but in spirit I feel in many ways it’s in almost direct opposition to what made the original a classic… but then again, is it really possible to do all it needs to do (nostalgia-fest for the original while also setting up stories and characters that can go beyond a movie) whilst trapped in what made the original so iconic, when that is predicated on its bare-bones minimalism?

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that H40 couldn’t really be any other way with what it needs to set, what it needs to respect and what it needs to do to effectively revive the franchise, but at the same time I also lament the direction it maybe had no choice but to take.

2

All very well said! I agree for the most part. I still stand by my comment that the only way to truly make Myers scary again is to go back to that simple formula but change it. Michael is now an icon. He’s too recognizable as a character to truly be scary in a reboot. If you’re going to re boot it… keep that simplicity but change other aspects and you may have a chance to bring that fear back to the character.

3

I agree with your overall premise, but take issue with one argument. While the original’s concept is simple, I don’t believe that the character development is thin. You’re looking at this from the standpoint of 40 years of movies copying the characters from H1. The archetypes you describe weren’t nearly as common 40 years ago. I’d argue that I know more about Laurie, Lynda and Annie after one after-school walk than I do about ever character in the entire Friday the 13th series combined, or most other horror movies that followed. The brilliance that Carpenter and Debra Hill demonstrated was their ability to communicate so much so efficiently and simply. The setup is perfect and I feel like I know each of the characters personally. In fact it’s amazing how developed their personalities are with so little screen time, which is what makes the suspense to follow so effective: you care what happens to them. That doesn’t happen in all the copycat movies that followed. Yes, that brilliant simplicity makes it a difficult act to follow, and maybe it’s impossible to ever catch that lightning in a bottle again, but honestly that’s partially our (the fans) fault. After H1 everyone wanted to see more Michael, and the popularity of characters like Jason and Freddy made it worse: fans didn’t have the patience for the stalking and suspense, they just wanted to see Michael in action. Ironically that’s now the most common complaint I read about H40, the lack of stalking. The mystique of Michael was never going to be the same after the first movie. It’s not dissimilar to Alien. There was no way to make a sequel that had the same suspense because we knew too much, so Aliens was a completely different type of movie: it was the exhilarating roller coaster ride to the original’s terrifying haunted house. I’m not advocating that the secret to a great Halloween sequel would be having the National Guard (colonial marines) hunting Michael, just that maybe any sequel will always be destined to fall far short, which I think we both agree on.

4

The story may be a direct sequel, but the atmosphere and mood are a continuation of the sequels.

After months of promise from McBride, David Gordon Green, and Jamie Lee Curtis, regarding the authentic minimalism and return to form, it was ultimately just another sequel in a sea of sequels that misunderstand its source material. It felt familiarly post-Marvel.

5

Yup, :supz:

6

Unfortunate but too true

7

I wouldn’t say he was after a specific character at all. He doesn’t know where Laurie is when he arrives in town, and likely isn’t even interested. There’s a moment when he’s fighting her in the top room of the house and stops and tilts his head, and I still think that’s the first time he realises who she actually is, rather than the mirror scene. I think that’s more that he’s realised a gun is pointing at him, and he’s remembering what being shot feels like. Hence his quick exit and getaway.

That said, there was promise in some scenes, and huge missed opportunities. The Elrod backyard scene where he’s lurking in the trees is good, and I think the scene with Laurie searching the rooms is quite tense, but the rest of it just isn’t scary or tense enough, and scenes which should have had him in the background watching were just empty. The big hammer attack scene was diminished by having the music play over it - I thought that scene in the trailer with the kids singing went over much better.

It’s not a bad film - but Michael is too overt and a bit clunky. For someone who was so stealthy in the original, he walks around clomping those big boots for most of the film, and yet when he kills the lady looking out of the window she doesn’t hear him.

A missed opportunity. I think, presuming he targets Laurie at the hospital, that with a confirmed target early in the film, ‘Kills’ might give them a better opportunity to explore the stalking/lurking aspects a bit better.

8

Yes.

9

Didn’t feel like original Myers to me. Was let down by the H6 type gore (boot stomping a head like a grape).

10

Wow, I really love what you said about the original. How it was an unidentifiable, random, stalker. It wasn’t about Michael Myers, it was about a secret, serial killer. I believe Maybe John Carpenter didn’t want you to get attached to the characters because also like you said, it was just a small glimpse into a random town, that a serial killer decided to come and do what a lot of serial killers from 1960-1980 actually did in real life. I’m watching mindhunterz on Netflix, and it focuses around a lot of serial killers around 1970-1980 and I think ur absolutely right about ur little speech here, good shit man. No wonder the rest of the Halloween’s couldn’t keep up, they went to in depth with everything, everybody knows Michael Myers, and they say his name way to fuckin much. It’s not scary anymore because u know what’s gonna happen, and u know how Michael acts.

11

Absolutely, and ur totally right about the Friday the 13th line lol I never really thought about why the sequels fail, or Atleast just aren’t as good, and I’m glad u guys talked about it. It is because we know to much now.

12

I guess thin was the wrong word choice, but rather lean. I don’t doubt or debate the original’s precision and efficiency and establishing the characters. I do still want to hold though that the characters in the original Halloween aren’t particularly nuanced. I barely know anything about Laurie for example compared to more character-driven stories like the original NOES, but the goal and the narrative drive are completely different. Halloween does not need that- and if anything I strongly believe it would have been to the detriment to the impact the movie has if John and Debra were to attempt to flesh out the character more. the fact that Laurie and her friends don’t have any specific character traits beyond the archetypal broad strokes is necessary to establish them as the stand-in for the audience. To give them more distinguishing features would take away from the core horror of the film- thati s, “it could happen to anybody”.

13

As a huge fan of Friday the 13th, I have to say the focus of those movies for the most part have never been the story or the characters. They’re essentially the modern celluloid versions of campfire tales at their best and as such the narrative scope is just not nearly as prominent as it is for Halloween. Kind of a journey vs. destination thing to me, I guess- Friday the 13th is about the “destination” or in this case, the cheap thrills of nubile teens getting hacked off in creative ways by a backwoods monster. Halloween is all about the journey, taking in every step of the way. It’s all about the foreplay.

14

Agree completely, which is why I feel very strongly that not one sequel has justified its existence. The only premise that might have worked was tweaking Carpenter’s “Someone’s Watching Me,” but he decided against that when agreeing to a sequel he was opposed to making anyway. I’m more than satisfied with Carpenter’s original and its perfect ending: The Shape is gone but not dead and could return, as evil never dies and no one and no place is safe from its ravages.


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15

Yep

16

Look, it’s like this, and this is the bottom line, Michael after 40 years in pop culture has crossed over into iconic movie monster territory. He will never be truly scary again because once a horror villain reaches the rank of iconic movie monster, it will always and forever be about seeing the monster, not the victims.

Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, Wolfman, Freddy Kruger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and more recently Ghost face, to name a few, have all entered the hall of horror monster icons. These characters are the reason people want to see the films they are in, because of that legendary status they have established by standing the test of time.

All forms of these characters are staples of Halloween costume shops every year, and have made their place in pop culture to the point that most movie goers are not going to see their movies to be scared, but to see the monster in action. Because of this, your never going to get that magic back of the first Halloween, or the first films in any of those characters stories. The only way your going to get what your looking for, is from new original stories with new unknown villains.

They can try their hardest to get back to the simplicity all they want, it’s never going to work the way it did the first time when they were relative unknowns. Like it or hate it, the ship has sailed on making any of these characters truly terrifying again. Once they hit that pop culture icon rank, the best they can do is build stories around the monster and flesh that out so the audience has something to chew on while they watch their favorite horror villains in action.

Even kids of todays generation are well aware of Myers, along with the other iconic horror villains, and so it won’t even work for them if you try to nail down a “simple and scary” film. They will see the name, and automatically know who the villain is in said film, and will want to see it for the villain.

Because of these facts, I think with H40 they did the best they could to serve all walks of life, knowing full well that audiences were going to come out to see Michael Myers. For us hardcore fans, there is plenty to debate about in H40, but for general mass audiences it worked big time, for exactly the reasons I stated. Look at how much money it made, that is exactly why it made that kind of money. They had not seen Michael Myers in almost 10 years prior to that, and they turned out in droves to see the return of their favorite horror icon.

Like I said, the only way your getting anything truly terrifying, or simple and scary again, is with new original stories involving new unknown horrors. And that’s the bottom line because Graves said so :wink: :drinkers:

17

I agree with everything you said but I do think it’s possible. Not probable but possible. They would have to re invent it. Think The Blob and The Thing. Both took the original formula but changed it up. They would have to make some bold moves… probably changing the mask would be involved. We all love that iconic mask but there’s other possibilities out there. Take something as simple as moving from the Myers mask to just a plain un altered kirk. Still creepy but different. You would have to do more than a subtle change like that though. It’s been done many times over the years successfully and can be done. The question is would the fan base support those changes if the new result was truly terrifying again. I would instantly. You can’t make a new classic without changing some things up. There are those who are fine with a neverending schmorgasboard of entries in the current iteration of the character and that’s fine. Your example of Dracula was spot on Lawson!! But to truly become a modern classic… they’re going to need to change some things and probably give some time between that new idea and previous entries in the current run of the character.

18

Bingo. Someone finally gets it. I know it’s hard for some of these guys to admit that Michael Myers isn’t scary, but let’s all say it together

19

Your right man, it’s definitely possible, and your ideas of what they could potentially do with a new story, pretty much falls into the slot of new fresh stories, with an unknown evil. Known but unknown, perhaps unknown due to the changes they would need to make in Myers himself.

Let’s face it though, that would be a polarizing change to a beloved horror icon, and it’s going to be a hard sell for general audiences. Look what happened with Rob Zombie, especially his H2, that for all intents and purposes changed the Myers character and attempted to make it scary. There are those out there that loved it, but a lot more hated it because it wasn’t the traditional Myers they know, along with the rest of the story that went along with it. The money made on it showed that the general masses had no interest to take a risk and try something different.

So hardcore fans may love it, but $283 million dollars love it? It’s hard to say that would be the case. It could very well be, but the fact remains that this is a business at the end of the day, and what really sells is the icon Michael Myers. It would take lightning striking twice so to speak, and would be a big gamble for the “business” end of filmmaking.

Now that they saw what made them record breaking dollars, it’s even more unlikely they would change the formula. But is it possible? Yes, it’s still possible, but it would take a big gamble to get there. That’s why I say new stories with new unknown horrors have more potential to make that happen, versus toying with a pop culture horror icon.

Don’t get me wrong here, I want them to find that lightning in a bottle again too with my favorite horror film, but what it would take is for all the stars to align in a big way, so I’m not holding my breath. After we get through these next two films, (which I’m actually excited to see what they do) we will see what they come up with. Because even though it’s title is Halloween Ends, we all know it will never truly end…

20

Its definitely a hard sell for those who love the Myers character, even me, but I’m also a realist. It’s just too engrained into the pop culture now. And let’s be honest, they have made several attempts at changing up the character and story to make it “scary” again. It might not be what you or I would do with the story and character, but several attempts have been made, and each time all it does is further engrain Myers into pop culture horror icon status instead of making him scary again. It’s just the way it is.

It doesn’t mean I love the character any less, it just means that ship has sailed. Lightning striking twice in a tiny bottle would have to happen, and since at the end of the day it’s a business intended to make money, it’s unlikely the risks would be taken to potentially capture that lightning again. Especially after the current formula just made them $283 million in record breaking dollars. Now it’s even more unlikely they take those risks.