Movies

A beginners guide to… Halloween

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20 October 2018

By Kieran

The Halloween series primarily focuses on serial killer Michael Myers and his would-be victim Laurie Strode. I’m going to do my best here to boil down the franchise into its bare essence. I sat through all ten films for this and that was like a part-time job in itself so by golly I’m gonna write about ’em.

Michael Myers

Myers is the antagonist of every film (except the third one which weirdly isn’t connected). He’s a lunatic who, after killing his sister when he was six, was locked in an insane asylum. Myers is a large man usually dressed in a blue boiler suit and iconic white mask. He is incredibly strong, impossibly durable and illogically stealthy. He basically originated the slasher tropes as an unstoppable monster. Michael tends to kill just because he can and generally doesn’t have any rhyme or reason for doing so. As an adult, Myers never speaks and rarely even makes a noise. I think he says ‘die’ once in the 2009 reboot sequel directors cut but he certainly could never get a job with B**p with that average word count.

Continuity

This is where it gets complicated. The original film was followed by nine (soon to be ten) sequels. Some of these disregard other films, some are reboots and three of them have the exact same name. I’ll break it down in segments but here’s a handy infographic I made to aid understanding.

Halloweens 1 and 2

The first two films both focus on the same night. Michael escapes and murders a handful of teens before being seemingly killed by his psychiatrist Dr Samuel Loomis. Also, in part two, Laurie is revealed to be Michael’s other sister.

Halloweens 4, 5 and 6

Laurie died in an unrelated car crash so Michael (who survived) begins hunting Laurie’s young daughter Jamie. It’s these films that really cement Michael as basically unkillable because they reveal that he’s actually cursed and immortal and he needs to kill his entire family as part of a cultish ritual or something. They aren’t very good.

H20 and Halloween Resurrection

This is the first reboot. H20 ignores all the events of 4, 5 and 6 and continues the story of the first two films. In these, Laurie actually faked her death to start a new life as the headmistress of a private school while raising a son. Michael finds her and after a few murders and fights, she beheads him with an axe.

In Resurrection though, it is revealed that Michael swapped his mask with a paramedic at some point and Laurie had actually killed an innocent man. Michael then finds her and finally murders her before being killed by Busta Rhymes. I’m not joking.

Rob Zombie reboot

Rob Zombie rebooted the series completely in 2007 with two films that start the story again. They’re largely similar to the first two and very little happens of note.

Halloween (2018)

And that leads us to here. So, after all that research and 20 hours of viewing time, which continuity do we need to remember for the new movie? *checks notes*… oh… they’re ignoring everything except the first 1978 film… so the only events that we need to know are that in 1978, Michael killed like three teens and Laurie survived. He’s not immortal. She’s not his sister. He’s just a madman with a grudge.

Well, that was a waste of time.

 

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