SPOILER DISCUSSION

1. The scene of Laurie in her classroom is fantastic in how it demonstrates Laurie’s intelligence (she’s able to answer a question in-depth despite not paying much attention which also accentuates her perceptiveness) and her unique ability to perceive Michael (she’s the only one who can see him).

There’s this constant unease as she looks across and perceives him just staring back at her which is made all the more meaningful by the question her teacher asks her, Laurie, about fate and its personification. It directly ties Michael to the personification of evil which makes us fear for Laurie’s fate.

2. Carpenter uses the carton of red rabbit cigarettes as a red herring twice. First, the camera shows a carton of them as an insert shot as Loomis drives with Marion (Nancy Stephens) to the inmate facility. They’re on the dashboard which makes our eyes naturally focus towards the front of the car. However, Michael makes his surprise appearance from behind the car, in complete contrast to where we expect him to appear. It’s doubly fitting that he’s bathed in the color red, tying him to the carton’s aesthetic.

The second time the cigarettes show up is when Loomis discovers a discarded car on the way to Haddonfield. He looks at the pack for a moment before turning away from the scene. It’s at this point the camera tracks towards the right and reveals a corpse hidden from sight. Once again, the cigarettes distract from the presence of Michael. It’s like the vice (smoking) intentionally helps him

3.Only Michael is allowed to scare people within the film with impunity as every other person who attempts to the same ends up getting scared by someone else.

The first time happens when Tommy tries to scare Lindsey (Kyle Richards). He gets up and hides behind the curtain before calling her name in a spooky voice. However, as soon as she gets up to heed the call he turns around and notices Michael carrying Annie’s (Nancy Kyes) corpse to the front of the house. He gets scared of the scene and screams which in turn causes Lindsey to scream which scares Tommy even worse.

In the next scene, Dr. Loomis sees children messing around the Myers residence so he calls out to them pretending to be a ghost and ends up scaring them off the premises. As soon as he starts to laugh in enjoyment at his success, Sherriff Brackett shows up behind him which scares both him and the audience a fair amount (one of the most effective jump scares in cinema and a testament to how much Carpenter has really wound us up). It makes sense given that Michael is the emissary of evil ,fear , and the holiday itself so only he can embrace its traditions without any kind of “payback”.

4. Along with the likes of Psycho, Possession, and Polanski’s “apartment trilogy”, I think Halloween demonstrates one of horror’s greatest uses of architecture in relation to theme. From the start of the movie, it’s clear that the movie is about the inability of idyllic suburban life at containing the violent forces of evil. We start with Michael looking at this house from the front and then entering from the back. The back of the house is an alternate entrance, not the primary one. It’s fitting then that Michael, the representation of evil, is unable to enter the front of the house. He’s not welcome. He’s only able to traverse through the door after killing Judith. By corrupting the the house, he removes it’s normalizing function and can thus pass through it freely.

Likewise, after killing Annie he has removed the Brackett’s house’s protections. As such, he takes Annie’s body from the back of the house to the front of the house. He is able to enter the proper entrance. It’s doubly fitting that Annie is Sherriff Brackett’s daughter, making this the house of the law. It’s only fitting then that the “law” that was meant to protect becomes the abode of the evil it’s unable to stop.

When Laurie finally goes inside the residence she’s initially unable to enter from the front. This is no longer a house of “normalcy” so an agent of normalcy can no longer come through the front. Like Michael at the start of the movie, she’s forced to enter from the back where she’s horrified to discover the mutilated corpses of her friends. First, she sees Annie positioned on the bed with Judith’s headstone above her – a sick recreation of Michael’s “first time”. After recoiling, she sees Bob (John Michael Graham) hanging upside down. Next, she goes to a closet where Lynda’s (P.J. Soles) body is stored. Every domestic space has been transformed into a tomb, thus inaugurating the house of the living as the mausoleum of the dead. The suburban environment is unable to keep evil at bay and succumbs to it eventually, like all other things. It’s a confirmation of our worst fears.

The fact that this corrupted house exists across the street from the house Laurie is sitting at is more than just convenience to help the plot get along. It also reinforces Michael’s role as a cinematic force of horror. In the normal domesticated house where Laurie maintains control, the children watch a horror movie. The terror is kept within a frame that they can control on a screen. It can be turned on or off and the horror within can never come out to effect them in “reality”. In stark contrast, the Brackett residence is the horror movie come to life, no longer capable of being contained by the screen. This is Michael’s story and we have no control over any of it. It’s like the introduction was a warning.

5. Lynda’s death is horrific and plays out like a sick joke – very on brand for Michael’s agenda of perverting the normal order. We already know that Michael has killed Bob, so when we see the ghost show up at the door we know who it is.

The “ghost” boyfriend being the killer of the actual boyfriend is twisted enough, but the sick part is Lynda is unaware that this is not her lover so she flirts with beckoning him to the bed again. Given we’ve established Michael is engaging in sex qua violence, her teasing her lover/killer is all the more disturbing.

To make things worse, Lynda decides to stop playing along and goes to call Laurie on the phone. Up to this point, the phone has been a tool of peace and openness. The girls have constantly used it to keep in touch with each other and open up about different issues. It’s fitting then that Michael , the non-communicative executor, would use this symbol of merry conversation to brutally kill Lynda. What connects them ends up killing them. To add insult to injury, Laurie thinks that Lynda is having sex with Bob on the other side of the line. It’s what Lynda initially thought would happen and for Michael it is the equivalent to a “sex act” so Laurie’s interpretation is doubly fitting in the worst way possible.

The cherry on top is in her death throes, Lynda manages to remove Michael’s disguise. When she’s no longer able to communicate to Laurie, she’s able to reveal to Laurie the visage of the killer and nothing else. However, Laurie can only hear the silence. The silence of Lynda’s dead body. The silence of Michael. And the silence of death that unites them. Communication thus becomes silence. The horror cannot be described. It’s a fitting punchline to a macabre series of jokes.

6. In the review proper, I made a reference to how Michael feels akin to a xenomorph, a connection which I think is even stronger when looking at the way he reacts to certain deaths. As Sherrif Brackett and Loomis’s investigation of the Myers residence revealed, Michael was eating the remains of a dog. He sees them as nothing more than a food source which fits in with the predator notion of a xenomorph.

When he stalks Annie, he sees and kills Annie’s dog. The camera makes specific notice to focus on the dog’s feet which go limp upon Michael presumably choking it to death. When Michael kills Bob by stabbing him against a cabinet, there’s an almost exact duplicate shot of his feet going limp calling back the dog.

After this death, Michael tilts his head curiously investigating the corpse, looking at it more like an amalgamation of flesh than a person. There’s seemingly no difference in how Michael perceives humans and non-humans. They’re all just creatures to be eliminated because they exist. The cold indifference in relation to the mission to consume feels very close to how the xenomorph acts in Alien.

8.As Laurie and Annie drive around town, Michael pursues them from behind, like the shark from Jaws. He keeps a safe distance from his prey and is never noticed by them. Even though the girls enter the proximity of both Sherriff Brackett and Dr.Loomis, Michael manages to evade the both of them. Brackett goes in before noticing the car and Dr. Loomis, the more cognizant of the two, senses something is off but is unable to locate the car. When he moves his head the car moves the opposite direction, constantly evading his gaze. Michael can exist in the “normal” social order, hidden in plain-sight. As a force of evil, he’s so powerful that even the agents of the legal order meant to stop and control him are unable to recognize his presence, let alone stop him.

9.For all the praise I give the opening sequence of Halloween, I have to do the same for the ending which cements the movie’s status as picture perfect. Just as we lose hope, Loomis comes in to save the day by shooting Michael repeatedly. We watch the evil juggernaut fall off the balcony to his apparent demise and finally feel a sense of relief. Multiple life-ending bullet wounds surely must have dealt a blow capable of ending the monster.

We see the limp body on the floor and feel the hope slowly come back. However, we realize we’ve been fooled as Loomis goes over to check and notices the body is no longer present. Laurie breaks down into tears as the truth hits her and his eyes get wider in shock as its become clear to the two of them that there truly never was a chance – Michael is force beyond their control.

The theme song that invited us into the movie plays again to lead us out and as if we needed any confirmation, we hear Michael’s deep breathing once again while the movie proceeds in montage going over the different locales of the movie, establishing once and for all Michael’s domain and Michael’s power. No matter where you are. No matter where you hide. Michael can and will find you. Without fail. Now that’s what I call an ending.