Last year saw the release of Halloween Ends, the controversial final installment to director David Gordon Green’s trilogy of sequels to John Carpenter’s horror classic. Although well-regarded on the whole, the 2018 film left some viewers scratching their heads at some of the odd choices made by Green and company, confusion that only grew with each subsequent film. To say reactions were mixed would be an understatement, with Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends becoming some of the most hotly debated in the franchise. They’re nothing like your typical slashers, breaking form, betraying audience expectations, and doing just about everything they can to question the legacy of its central antagonist.

And I absolutely love them for it.

Now since a lot of you are losing your fingers on the keyboard, let me just say that I get it. We all have certain thrills and set pieces we’ve come to love from horror films, and to see the films move further away from that with each installment can be very frustrating. But maybe that was the whole idea, because weren’t those expectations themselves a departure from the original Halloween? In order to fully appreciate Green’s films, we need to understand what the original film is truly about and how the 2018 film refocuses the story.

The original Halloween is a coming-of-age tale about a babysitter named Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis in her feature film debut) as she and her friends are stalked by an escaped mental patient on Halloween night. Though Laurie survives her ordeal, the ending is hardly triumphant. The film ends with her weeping in a corner while the heavy breathing of the villain is heard all around her. She may be alive, but the security she once felt is now just a memory. And that’s the secret to Halloween. The killer was never meant to be a horror superhero alongside the ranks of Freddy, Jason and Chucky. Halloween is about a girl.

Laurie is a girl struggling to open up, with her friends Annie and Lynda offering some not-so-gentle encouragement to do so. This interplay between the three is in many ways the film’s primary focus, much time devoted to their conversations over the phone. Annie and Lynda aren’t killed for the audience’s amusement, but to show how Michael Myers, also known as the Shape, has invaded Laurie’s social circle. Laurie hearing Lynda’s murder over the phone triggers the finale of the film, punctuated by the Shape picking up the phone and listening to Laurie, having fully injected himself in place of her friends. At that point, he’s become the most important person in her life. 40 years later, he still is.

The first installment of Green’s trilogy, 2018’s Halloween, is the simplest of the three. It refocuses the story back onto Laurie and explores how deeply her experiences have damaged her over the past forty years. Now in her late 50s, Laurie is even more of a recluse, obsessed over her would-be killer and spending her entire life preparing for his return. This obsession has driven a rift between her, her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). As the original focused on Laurie’s relationship with her friends, her relationship with her family takes center stage here. Karen and Allyson have vastly different views on Laurie. Allyson longs for a deeper relationship with her grandmother, while Karen, still reeling from a traumatic upbringing, is hesitant to get close. While Karen does ultimately care about her mother, the family is still broken, leaving them all vulnerable when Michael inevitably returns. It’s territory the series toyed with before in previous entries, most notably 1998’s Halloween H20 which the 2018 film is often compared to.

On the surface, the two films may appear almost identical. Both center around Laurie struggling with her experiences and her relationship with her family, ultimately building up to a confrontation between her and Michael. But in H20, her son John Tate acts more as a filler character in the lead into the film’s finale, while in 2018, Karen and Allyson are much more essential to the narrative. In H20, Laurie was targeted by Michael and manages to turn the tables on him after 20 years of running. 2018 sees a more confrontational Laurie gunning for Michael from the beginning, with the Shape oblivious to her plans.

The main reason for this is the filmmakers decided to sever the brother/sister connection established in 1981’s Halloween II, a revelation that served as the basis for every sequel and remake since. These films followed the Shape as he stalked and attempted to kill his surviving family members, something that became the character’s defining trait. But one of the things that made the original so frightening was the randomness of Laurie and Michael’s encounter, and the idea that anyone could have been a target. It’s for this reason that director David Gordon Green decided to ignore the events of Halloween II, instead creating a direct sequel to the original that turns the killer back into the random madman he was before.

This version of the Shape is perhaps the most frightening since the original. Many forget that in the original, the Shape is a practical joker, playing numerous pranks on victims such as locking Annie in a laundry room or donning a bed sheet to spook Lynda. That playful side returns in the 2018 film. We see the Shape dropping teeth in a bathroom stall to spook a target or using a motion-sensitive light to startle a target. Perhaps the biggest example of this is during the final confrontation with Laurie, where the Shape meticulously sets up several mannequins she’d been using for target practice, hiding behind one and waiting for the right moment to give her a big boo!

Green’s first movie treats violence more like the original film. When most people think slasher films, we think about gore and creative kills to show off makeup that’s equal parts repulsive and dazzling. In the original, the violence was not only underplayed, but unappealing and awkward, much more in line with the real world. Michael’s first onscreen murder in the 2018 film depicts him breaking the neck of a kid. It’s hardly a crowd-pleasing moment, but it offers a taste of what’s to come. Though there are some exceptions, on the whole, the violence here isn’t played up, with much of the killings being bloodless or occurring offscreen. A big example of this is the killing of Ray, Laurie’s son-in-law. Despite being a major character, his demise, the final killing in the film, is abrupt and bloodless.

Rather than the killing itself, the film uses the Shape’s randomness to build tension. One of the film’s most impressive sequences is an unbroken shot following the killer through multiple homes, claiming multiple victims along the way. While the original film saw the killer targeting a specific group of teens, the 2018 film gives him free rein over an entire neighborhood, with no clear indication of when he’ll pop up next. It’s used to play with audience expectations, such as a scene where Karen comes home to find her house broken into. We as an audience expect Michael to target the family based on previous sequels, only to find the intruder is Laurie herself. It’s also used effectively during the attack on Vicky, Allyson’s friend and a babysitter like Laurie. The Shape’s presence is signified by his heavy breathing, leaving us in anticipation of where he’ll appear. His sudden entry may have been one of the series’ most effective jump scares had it not been spoiled by the advertising.

Ultimately the film isn’t about Michael’s killing spree, but rather how it unites a broken family, which H20 never really committed to. At the start of the film, none of the three women are well connected to each other. Allyson has a combative relationship with her mother due to the latter’s treatment of Laurie. Laurie goes behind Karen’s back to give Allyson some money and invade her home. Despite this, Allyson and Karen still have a functioning family in which Laurie is very much an outsider. How Laurie’s obsession with Michael has harmed her relationships is shown perfectly at the end of the first act, where she misses Allyson’s induction into the national honor society to stake out Michael’s transfer. Things further take a turn when Laurie has a breakdown at a family dinner. Laurie does care about her family, only doing an interview with ill-fated podcasters in order to get money for Allyson, but she’s too wrapped up in her trauma to get close to her loved ones.

On that note, the film presents an interesting problem. If Michael is no longer after Laurie specifically, how does the film throw them together? The answer is one of the film’s themes, which is that of obsession with our villains. The film throws Michael and Laurie together less through Michael’s own mission and more due to how others’ attempts to dig around inside his head. The trilogy begins when two podcasters named Aaron and Dana visit Michael in captivity, showing him his old mask in hopes of getting a reaction. Michael’s fellow patients detect a change in him, launching into a panicked frenzy. It’s implied that this moment is when Michael awakens. While on the surface, Aaron and Dana may be viewed as mere tools for exposition, they’re the ones who ultimately arm him. Their documentary not only re-awakens the killer, but it’s what allows him to track them down, him spotting the pair when they come to visit his sister’s grave. He trails them to an auto shop, killing both to reclaim his old mask, thus becoming The Shape once more. This moment when he dons the mask for the first time in 40 years is one of the franchise’s most chilling moments.

Another person who shares the guilt of Michael’s rampage is his current doctor, the controversial character of Ranbir Sartain. Often considered the weak link of this new installment, Sartain is the polar opposite of Loomis, viewing Michael as a mystery to be learned from, and seeming to believe they share a personal relationship. It’s he who orchestrated the meeting between Michael and the podcasters, and perhaps even helped Michael escape, though the film never confirms this. Sartain is eventually consumed by his obsession, attacking a police officer (Will Patton) and taking Michael and Allyson both to Laurie’s home in the hopes that his patient will finally reveal something to him. Michael awakens, however, allowing Allyson to escape while he assaults and murders his doctor. Sartain’s last words are a final, desperate plea for Michael to ‘say something.’ It’s the obsession of both Sartain and the podcasters that set Michael on a collision course with Laurie, who has given him the most power of all.

How Laurie reacts to the Shape’s escape only widens the rift between her and her family. Laurie’s breaking into Karen’s home and scaring her and her husband leave them unreceptive to her warnings. Karen thus doesn’t warn Allyson, leaving Allyson unaware Michael is on the loose. The fractured nature of the family is used to create suspense, with Laurie driving around town in search of the killer while Allyson unknowingly goes to meet up with friends in the Shape’s hunting ground. It’s when she and her friend are attacked that Allyson learns of the danger, not from Laurie or Karen. Similarly, it’s the police who are able to convince Karen of the danger rather than Laurie herself. Not even Laurie and Karen bring Allyson to Laurie’s compound, but the unhinged doctor Sartain.

The final set piece at Laurie’s compound is where this family and the Shape collide. Just as the Shape invaded Laurie’s life in the original, he has re-invaded it here. This is highlighted in perhaps my favorite cut of the film, which shows the looming Shape on the left-hand side of the frame in one shot, before cutting to Laurie and Karen cowering in the basement on the right side. Though they’re not in the same room, he has backed the two into a corner. The family is still not fully united though. Only Laurie and Karen are present, and as in H20, Laurie insists on facing the Shape alone. But while in H20 this was portrayed as triumphant and crowd-pleasing, Laurie’s confrontation with the Shape here is desolate and dangerous. Her booby-trapped fortress acts as a maze in which Michael has numerous places to hide, with her own tools, such as the aforementioned mannequins, only adding to his arsenal. Though Laurie survives this altercation, she is gravely wounded, and Michael is the clear victor.

Unlike in H20, it’s not until Laurie faces him alongside her family that they score a decisive victory. The tables turn in their favor when Allyson finally arrives and joins forces with her mother and grandmother against the killer. Karen and Laurie each deal some damage to the Shape in this next round, but the two are struggling and clearly losing the fight. It’s only when Allyson picks up a discarded knife and joins in that the three are able to subdue the Shape, trapping him in the basement and setting the house ablaze. This act not only defeats the Shape in this film but also destroys Laurie’s monument to a 40-year obsession. It says a lot that while in H20 Laurie ends the film with Michael’s corpse, here she ends it surrounded by her daughter and granddaughter, the family united at last.

Green’s first installment in the trilogy is considered by many to be the best, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s the one that adheres closest to what we’d expect from the genre, boasted a triumphant return for Curtis following her disappointing demise in Halloween Resurrection, had a pretty well-rounded cast of interesting characters, and, after years of diminishing returns, made the Shape scary again. But at the same time, it felt strangely disjointed and incomplete, which led to my initial review of the film being mixed. What about Allyson’s boyfriend Cameron, who vanished from the film after an awkward fight at a Halloween party? What about Hawkins, the officer who arrested Michael after his original spree who seemed to be a major character before being attacked by Sartain? And couldn’t filmmakers have found a less contrived way to bring Michael and Laurie together than his insane doctor? If this film has a weakness, it’s that it’s not a complete movie, because the re-unification of this broken family is just the first half of a larger, grander story.

Michael’s and Laurie’s characters in this new trilogy can be best summed up where they meet each other again for the first time in 40 years. After investigating a call on her police radio, Laurie spots the Shape seeming to stare out at her from an upstairs window. She shoots, hitting what turns out to be the Shape’s reflection in a mirror, causing him to flee. Two important things here. One, Michael wasn’t going after Laurie, but running away, fully positioning her as the pursuer in this story. Two, despite appearances, Michael wasn’t even looking at Laurie. It was an illusion created by him looking at his own reflection. It’s a pivotal moment that serves as the basis for the second half of the story, where this family, briefly united by a shared tragedy, loses everything.

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