Who Framed Michael Myers?

Some movies, that are otherwise very good, commit what might be called unforgivable sins. An unforgivable sin in the movies is that one flaw that is so gaping, that hemorrhages with such ferocity, that the rest of the movie is spoiled, because our consciousness is forever after preoccupied with wondering why the fault was committed alongside what would have otherwise been a very well done movie. The strength of these kinds of movies can be measured by how far they rise above the flaw, which itself is measured by how much, and with what rapidity, the audience forgets the flaw because of the movie. I forget about M. Night Shyamalan’s screed against movie critics when the character Harry Farber (movie critic) is mulled alive by a Scrunt while reciting what is supposed to be hackneyed, screenplay plot twists in an effort to mock his critics in a fit of self-referential irony. It falls flat, but the rest of the movie redeems that mediocrity.

One wonders, however, about the wisdom of revealing the past of Michael Myers, shown to us as a boy, a deeply disturbed boy lets not forget, but a boy with gleams of hope (you wonder), gleams that could have been nourished if the boy had lived in a more loving home. I don’t wish to resurrect the beaten-to-death horse that is the nature vs. nurture debate, but if the Halloween series could be any more clear, we’d have to give Michael Myers the ole’ nature-option. No matter what stinking environment he would have grown up in, we feel sure that his evil knows nothing about the caresses or love that might have come from a nurturing family; pure evil is as undomesticated as a force of nature, so that the momentary entertaining of the nurture-option is a waste of time. It’s a category mistake. Sure, we see the beginnings of his inner demons in the torturing and murder of small animals, a half-conscious tribute to other serial killers whose confessions revealed the same obsession before their evil-maturity blossomed into more interesting victims. But the latest Halloween installment by the talented hand of Rob Zombie makes the nurture-option a distinct possibility. The evil of Michael Myers can now be more accurately theorized about. Before, our theories were wild, in the dark, and had about as much luck as the ancients who, without the necessary perspective, wrongly hypothesized the shape of the earth to be flat. Now, we have a foot-hold. A debate can get off the ground. What was before undebatable because we didn’t have enough knowledge for there to be a debate at all is now an arena for pros and cons.

All we had in the first couple installments were speculations and confessions from Myers’ psychologist. Less was more, and we wondered how in the world something as evil as what the doctor was speaking could actually reside in the soul (if there was a soul) of this sick and twisted and morbid man. Our imaginations got lost trying to figure it out. This was the key element in the terror. But in the Zombie version, we were fed more biographical detail, detail that gave us new, valuable information as to what explains the behavior of the psychotic. What was before a mystery is now a faint and blurry image, a mirage that’s beginning to materialize. Instead of wondering what God-awful event or series of events could have given us a person this full of unadulterated evil, we actually do have the event or series of events that account for it. It’s a combination of elements that have recurred and have been reduplicated in thousands of homes across America.

There isn’t anything here unique except for the bloody and violent reaction. Thousands of homes have had a loud, cursing, verbally and physically abusive dad and husband; and perhaps thousands of homes have had the mom who means well, but supports the family doing dirty deeds during a seedy nightlife; and thousands of brothers have had favored siblings who get away what they were never allowed to get away with themselves; and thousands of more children have gone through getting picked on at school. There is nothing unique or startling about all the conditions that lead to the breakdown; the only thing unique in this whole biographical banality is the murderous reaction. But even here, things aren’t that extraordinary or exceptional. Sure, in reality, the gore in the murder scenes attains to a gruesomeness that would make the faint in heart sickened that such a diabolical will could go through with such a deed. But Zombie should have known that in the minds of horror fans, nothing new was produced, no murders stand out; the only thing that stands out as some sort of flimsy plot device is just the insipid facts of their hideous deaths. What’s so special about that?

The contradiction is that the evil of Michael Myers is supposed to special and unique and unmatched and inexplicable and unable to be theorized about. That got to the very marrow of his nature and why he became the cultural icon he is. It is because of this mythology that Zombie loves it, and it is because of that mystique that made him seize upon it for a remake. The only other condition that’s left hanging which accounts for his vileness is his descent into muteness, partly as a result of social detachment in the mental institution, yet another unexceptional variable heaped into the mix to make him more and more estranged from common humanity. With this move, Zombie takes us further away from a Halloween movie and more into the territory of the generic serial killer flick: the only indicator of the much-needed freshness that ought to be wafting our cinematic nostrils is the tone and personality of a talented film-maker. But that isn’t enough for a solid, uninhibited, illimitable reboot. The mythology-torch needs to be carried onward; things can’t regress so far in another direction that the myth’s cover is blown and the emperor was naked the entire time.