Tracing The Shape 14: Lynda's Last Date

The Boogeyman is officially inside the house.

This is the part in the slasher movie where people who tend to talk at the screen really start chirping, because of course they know what Lynda and her boyfriend Bob (John Michael Graham) don't: That Michael Myers is there with them, and he's going to kill them, and they're going to be helpless to stop it. My musings on allowing horror characters to make "bad" decisions that get them in trouble will have to wait for another time, because I could fill a book with all of my feelings on that, so for now let's just concentrate on Lynda, Bob, and the looming specter of Michael as they arrive at the Wallace house.

We talked earlier in this series about the carefree nature of so much that's going on in Halloween, the feeling that Halloween in Haddonfield is and should be fun for everyone involved, creating a sort of light magic to counter the dark magic of The Boogeyman. Bob and Lynda, arriving in Bob's hella sweet van, are the last dregs of that magic, the last truly carefree people we're going to see all night, and honestly, watching them slip into each other's arms is both remarkably joyous and ultimately tragic.

Lynda, as we discussed during her introduction, is a deeply caring, warm person who loves her friends, and clearly loves Bob too. She's having a wonderful time, and she's participating in a time-honored ritual for so many teenagers who couldn't have sex under their parents' roofs: Shuffling from house to house to find a safe spot to get it on. Annie's babysitting gig was the perfect cover, and she and Bob are already well into their own private party, lost in the freedom Annie's so graciously provided them. They're so carefree and locked in on each other that they don't even close the door of Bob's van as they go in the house.

Of course, that also means that they don't notice when Michael is watching them from the entryway as they make out on the living room couch.

I think that, as a fandom, we've sometimes given Lynda short shrift because her role in the story is, put simply, to die. She's there to get in Michael's way, to add two bodies to the count, and of course to freak out Laurie later. What makes Lynda work is the characterization driven home by Debra Hill and P.J. Soles, the feeling that she's such a warm soul even if she is a bit careless and self-centered. That carelessness, or at least the sense that the only person she cares about in the moment is Bob, makes her the perfect target for Michael, and it kicks the film's dramatic irony into all-out overdrive.

We'll talk more about Lynda and Bob's final fates in other essays, but for now I just want to sit with this a moment, to focus on Bob and Lynda (how cool is it that they basically have the same names as the Belchers?) and the feeling that, in these final minutes before they're gone, something is being lost.

What makes Halloween scary is not just the murders and the mask and the score and the atmosphere. What makes the film linger in your imagination in so many ways is the feeling that Michael Myers is not just killing individuals, but stripping away the façade of safety, comfort, and carefree joy that was so present in Haddonfield before he came home. He's killing people, but he's also killing an idea of a town, the town where Sheriff Brackett breaks up kids in parked cars and busts people for having a little weed. Haddonfield's scar, the Myers murder of '63, is supposed to be in the rearview. As the cemetery groundskeeper tells Loomis earlier in the film: "Every town has something like this happen."

But it's not supposed to happen again.

There is something heartbreaking, and deeply effective, in the juxtaposition of this idea with the final moments of Bob and Lynda, not in spite of but because of their ability to unmoor themselves from any trace of perceived danger. Horror movie characters don't make bad decisions in the context of a horror movie because, so often, they don't know they're in a horror movie. They're having a fun night out, they're babysitting, they're getting laid. The horror movie is not supposed to happen to them, which is of course what makes it so scary and tragic when it actually does.

So as Lynda and Bob make out on the couch, and Michael is revealed in the foreground, it's not a case of two kids being stupid and inattentive to the world around them. It's a case of two kids being kids, unaware that death is a few feet away. Bob and Lynda have to die because that's what the story requires, but Bob and Lynda are not mindless cannon fodder. They are the last shreds of innocence left in Haddonfield, and soon they'll be gone too.

Next Time: The Longing of Laurie Strode