The Shape of Evil and the Man behind the Mask

A Moment of Halloween 5

Michael Meyers is Evil. That is what we are told at least, by the characters of the Halloween franchise and by the text of the films themselves. Indeed, it is one of the largest constants throughout the films. When Michael, whose face we rarely see, enters the same scene as someone who isn't Laura Strode, we generally expect that person to die. And that is often the only reason we get as to why Michael kills them, they're there.

Although he does have at least one motivation, and to that end sometimes he targets people strategically, such as during his escape in the first film. He doesn't kill the nurse, as his objective is to steal the car so that he can return home. Much more so than killing, returning home is his stated objective within the films. Killing is merely incidental to returning home. And this is further portrayed in his other principle characterization, that of an (innocent) child. Such as in his trademark head tilt which shows his child-like curiosity.

And contrary to perhaps one's first intuition, there is a way in which one can be both innocent and evil. Perhaps it is even necessary that someone (or something) that is fundamentally evil is also necessarily innocent. In the same way in which a carnivore must kill to survive — it is part of their nature, they cannot survive without the death of others — and thus for them to kill or not to kill is not a moral choice, so to is something that is intrinsically evil cannot be held accountable for being evil, it is a part of them, not a moral choice that they made.

Michael's supernatural natural, which grew in prominence as the films developed, reinforces this reading of him, for he would have to be something non-human, something other, in order for him to be intrinsically evil and thus not accountable for an supposedly moral choice he makes. And this almost works, it almost does. But the thing is, Michael is, or at least was, human.

Dr. Loomis describes himself as spending "eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up." He says he is "purely and simply evil." There is no hope trying to reach him. All that can be done is to try to stop him, try to kill him. But his story doesn't bear out. He says he was silent and unreachable ("I watched him for 15 years, sitting in a room, staring at a wall... not seeing the wall, looking past the wall... looking at this night, inhumanely patient."). He paints him a demon only focused on the horrors he is going to commit, nothing else. Inhuman. So, that's how people treat him.

But there is a scene in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (from about 01:26:50 to 01:27:50) where Michael is approached not as an other, but as another human, and he has a moment of hesitation before returning to his killing. Jamie asks him to remove his mask, and he does. All that is needed to begin to peel back the defenses that he has built to protect himself is merely for someone to ask, for someone to want to see him as a human. It is brief moment where Michael is treated as a human. A brief moment, very small in comparison to the years that Dr. Loomis spent trying to "reach him", but yet what do we see? Not a brick wall of evil, not an impenetrable façade, but a vestige of humanity. We don't see Loomis' attempts to reach Michael. All of the times when Loomis speaks to Michael in the films, it is in an attempt to trick Michael. From what the text shows us, in this moment in Halloween 5 the account that Loomis gave in the first film no longer seems plausible.

Loomis' words do provide an alternative explanation to this. Around 01:17:00, he says that the "little girl can stop the rage inside." But Loomis says this to Michael. And what does Michael do? He hesitates, he listens to Loomis! And Loomis goes to take away Michael's knife in his hesitation, while Loomis is trying to explain to Michael that Jamie can do what he failed for so many years to do. And it is only in this moment, when Loomis goes for the knife, that Michael switches, and slashes Loomis and throws him from the balcony they stand on. But, if you were imprisoned for 15 years and one of the principle symbols of that imprisonment tried to take from you the one object that has given you your freedom, would you let him take it? And although perhaps it is not very substantive, note that Michael slashes Loomis across the chest and throws him from the balcony. Michael is generally perfectly capable of just stabbing someone and instantly killing them, why not here? Perhaps it is because Loomis words affected him, and thus he responded less methodically than he usually would?

Loomis is the one who calls Michael evil, and it is through his eyes, through his framing established in the first film, that we are told to see him. It is his framing that gives Michael Meyers his evil. If we look at the actions of Michael himself though, outside of this framing, is he evil? He killed his sister yes, but is the expression on his child face when the mask is pulled of one of pure evil, devoid of compassion and full only of death and a intrinsic compulsion to commit evil? Or maybe is it one of confusion, or neutrality? It does not seem like evil to me, but he killed his sister, thus he is a killer. Forever

The Cult of Thorn provides another explanation for Michael's "evilness" in Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Meyers, where they are the ones who have made him this way, who have made him evil. Who cursed him to kill his family that first Halloween when we first see Michael. But whether his killing comes from some cruel but human internal drive, a desire for survival, or even some silly curse by an ancient order of silly people, that moment in Halloween 5 shows clearly that he is not fully evil. That he is not the other, but othered. And while this curse may have made Loomis' task much more difficult, it does not change Loomis' failure, and the projection of his failure onto Michael.

Loomis, in the end of the producer's cut of Halloween 6, is forced to undertake the task of the Cult of Thorn for himself. But is he be forced to do anything different? Is there some mind control magic going on here to direct him to perpetuate the Cult of Thorn? The Cult of Thorn places voices in Michael's head to control him, but there was never anything shown to suggest the same for Wynn, the leader of the Cult of Thorn whose role Loomis is symbolized to now have undertaken. No, this simply revelation of what Loomis already knew, that he was already undertaking the task of the Cult of Thorn. He created Michael, he created the killer, he gave him the power, by othering him and by molding him into the murderer and symbol of evil that he saw him to be in his mind, rather than a disturbed boy that he failed to help. Loomis was always an agent of Thorn, the greatest agent of Thorn. And it is not the intrinsic evil inside of Michael, but rather his failure that brought death to the little town of Haddonfield.

And Michael, whose desire is just to go home, whose killing is a curiosity and a means to that end, is othered by Haddonfield, and othered by the viewer. He was made a monster, not born a monster. The evil is not inside him, it is a mantel placed upon him. And what can he, in isolation and when society has abandoned him, but bear that mantel?

In the most recent film Halloween Ends, this reading fact is blatant. So blatant it is a bit annoying, although I suspect that more fans of the franchise were annoyed with the film because of the reading itself rather than how blatant it was. As the first film begins with Michael murdering his sister, a murder that then characterizes all of who he will be in society, Halloween Ends begins with Corey accidentally knocking a child over a railing to his death. We see Corey with a knife in his hand, a knife he took because of his own fear, for his own protection, looking down on the body of the child being discovered dead by his parents. Then, he is the one that becomes othered by Haddonfield. He is perceived as a child murderer, evil. But, as society treats him like a monster so he becomes one. From what we see it is a choice he makes more actively than Michael, yes — Michael became the monster he was after being brought to an institution which he spent a decade and a half in social isolation interacting principally if not exclusively with the one cruel Loomis who thought that all he was, all he could ever be, is Evil — but it not something he chooses because in his heart of hearts he wants to, no, it is a defence, a defence against the society that has turned against him. He has taken up the knife just as he did in the beginning, just as Michael did, to defend himself.