Tracing The Shape 28: Laurie Drops The Knife, Again

Laurie Strode has placed herself in an impossible position with the biggest gamble of her life. She'd hoped to lure Michael outside by opening the balcony doors in the bedroom, make him think he needed to go chase her through the streets, away from the kids, toward some kind of help.

We don't get to see what Michael does when he enters the room, because the camera stays fixed on Laurie in the closet. It's a smart move, because it tells Laurie, and us, that no matter how clever she thought she was, even if it worked momentarily, she didn't fool this man. Once he tries the closet door and realizes it's tied shut, he's ready to rip it to shreds to get to her.

The closet sequence is amazing, particularly when you're enough of a student of horror films to understand that Laurie's not actually going to die here. It's just packed with tension, from the swinging light bulb (more Hitchcock notes from Carpenter) overhead to Laurie's clever use of a wire hanger. She forces Michael to drop his own knife, then picks it up herself.

In this moment, Laurie is out of choices. She can't simply brandish the knife. She has to use it, and she wastes almost no time in driving it up and through Michael's torso. It is by far the most brutal thing she does on this particular night to survive, and she's so shaken by it that, for a moment, it looks like she's going to stab him again.

Laurie is no longer the person who barely picks up the knife, holds it limp in one hand. She's now the person who has to grip that thing like her life depends on it, and when she emerges from the closet you can see Curtis playing it like Laurie's considering using the knife one more time. She stops, takes time to study Michael's lifeless form.

And she still drops the knife, only this time it's less a drop than a toss. She flings it away, tells the kids to run down the street to call the police, and collapses by the door.

For a lot of people, this is the best shot in the movie. Laurie alone, exhausted, still putting her body between the kids and the prospect of Michael getting up again. It's the shot that gets everyone screaming as Michael sits up, makes his way over, resumes his brutalizing. It's the shot where you think Laurie Strode might have lost her mind for making herself this vulnerable after Michael's already gotten up once.

We've talked already about my theory that there are Final Girls who Drop The Knife and Final Girls who Take The Knife, but this particular moment goes beyond Laurie's simple discomfort with violence. She let the knife go the first time because she couldn't imagine using it, being like Michael. She lets the knife go now because, in some small way, she is like Michael.

This is not to say that Laurie Strode is just a few bad minutes away from becoming a masked killer in her own right, but it's clear how much this experience has changed her, drained out some of her brightness and painted in shade. Some of that is sheer physical exhaustion, of course, but watch the way she reacts in the closet again. Watch how she shifts from despair to terror to action to all-out violence. She didn't plan to take Michael's knife and stab him; it's just how events shook out, and it seemed like the next likely thing to keep her alive. But by the time she's doing it, her teeth are gritted, her aim is true. She has been pushed to a place where violence seems not only reasonable, but necessary, and she hates it.

Halloween's final minutes are not really about who lives or who dies. Those are the narrative stakes, sure, particularly as Loomis enters the picture in a few minutes, but if you've seen the movie more than once you know that we have already seen all the death this movie has to offer us. Carpenter and Hill have no intention of killing anyone else tonight. So what are the real stakes?

With Laurie, and later with Loomis, the stakes have moved beyond survival into a battle for their souls. It's no longer about whether or not they kill Michael, but how they feel about it when it's all over. Laurie has now given this man, another human being with a mother and a father just like her, two wounds that might have been fatal for anyone else. She has inflicted more violence on this night than she might otherwise have her entire life, and no matter what happens next, she will have to live with that. Throw away whatever you think you know about sequels; if there was never another Halloween movie, Laurie Strode would still be haunted by the feel of that knife in her hand for the rest of her life.

That's the real power of The Boogeyman. He will either kill you, or he will push you to destroy yourself. Laurie dropped the knife, but you have to wonder how long its shadow will linger on her palm, and whether she'll ever be able to wash the stain away.

Next Time: Michael Unmasked!