Tracing The Shape 5: He's Gonna Get You

Michael Myers doesn't become The Boogeyman until he encounters a child.

John Carpenter has done his part over the decades to reinforce the idea that his monster is more force of nature than man, something echoed by Dr. Loomis throughout Halloween. There was a time when it felt that simple to me, and certainly that's the role Michael plays within the story, the way he appears to everyone else. But these days, I don't entirely buy it.

Michael's story over the course of this film is one of near-constant transformation, of evolution. He does not emerge fully formed from Smith's Grove, and while he reaches his final shape (pun absolutely intended) within 24 hours, he does have to make certain choices which imbue him with The Boogeyman persona which will torment Haddonfield.

Some of these are moves of necessity, like escaping the sanitarium and killing the truck driver to get hold of some regular clothes. I'd bet that if you were able to ask Michael, finding the mask was also a necessity, not just to hide his face from anyone on his tail, but to add a layer of armor, of power. You can imagine him, as Rob Zombie did in his reboot films, sitting in the sanitarium and dreaming of that mask, of the moment when he could disappear into it again the way he did when he killed Judith, so he had to pick that thing up.

But despite his shark-like pursuit of his victims and the heavy breathing behind his mask, Michael is not simply a predator out to feed. He makes choices, human choices well beyond simply killing everyone in his path. Until Laurie showed up at his front door, he was just hanging out in an old house, yet to kill a single person in Haddonfield on October 31. As we talked about last time, if he really wanted to, he could have sprinted down the sidewalk, killed Laurie, and been gone again before anyone realized what was happening. He doesn't do that.

Instead he becomes The Boogeyman.

It's here, for me, that the "purely and simply evil" side of Michael described by Loomis (and Carpenter) starts to meld with the human side, the side that chose his escape date with care, who found his way back to his old home without detection. This is when he realizes the power he holds, the spell he can cast.

To better understand this, we need only look to Tommy Doyle, confronted by his bullies after school, who promise him that "The Boogeyman is coming." Tommy does his best to be defiant, but he believes these taunts somewhere down in his bones, believes them in a way no one will understand until later. We'll speak more about Tommy a bit further down the road, because his point-of-view in all of this is important, as Carpenter's camerawork in this scene makes clear. The angles are low, emphasizing the dominance of Tommy's bullies, the smallness of this earnest little boy who just wants to have a fun Halloween.

And then, one of those bullies runs face-first into Michael Myers.

The angles are still low, still at kid-height, but now one of the bullies is dominated, frightened into silence and near-panic by the sudden arrival of Haddonfield's resident monster. You don't ever see the kid's point-of-view, but you don't need to. Your brain immediately fills in the sight: That white mask, the wild synthetic hair, the breathing...

It's the moment that unlocks Michael's full power. He was already dangerous, and he's been dangerous ever since he was six years old, but now he has a taste of his own aura. He hears the kids talking and decides they meant him. He understands the spell he can cast on this town, on these people who forgot about him, who turned their backs.

In 1978, Michael kills his first victim offscreen. He even kills his first animal offscreen. We will not watch him kill something as an adult until well into the film. He's scary now, in this moment, not just because we know what he's capable of, but because he has begun a new kind of ritual, a summoning of his true self, his full potential. He is transforming, emerging from a prison that might as well have been a chrysalis, stretching his dark moth wings.

Throughout Halloween's second act, Michael Myers will enchant the landscape of Haddonfield, place it under his dark spell. He stands outside windows, hides in hedge, follows little boys in his car. He taunts Loomis without Loomis even realizing it. He steals his sister's gravestone. He haunts his house. He tries on the role of Boogeyman and finds that it suits him. If Michael has ever loved anything, it's this.

This enchantment, the menace that it adds to the entire landscape of this town, is something that will be echoed across virtually every other major slasher film produced in Halloween's wake, something the film's sequels will never be able to escape, but it all starts here. Soon the very fabric of reality as Haddonfield's residents know it will begin to fray. Soon things will get more hostile, people will grow more self-interested, social contracts will be severed. Life in this town will never be the same.

Because The Boogeyman is gonna get you.

Next up: Annie and Lynda are here, and they are horny!