It was promised at the end of last year that 2018 would be the horror film’s revival and the prediction was not far off. With surprise successes such as John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place and Ari Aster’s Hereditary, this year has gone a long way to re-establish the genres socio-political significance beyond Hollywood’s jump scare cash cow. In this context, the eagerly awaited return of horror legend John Carpenter’s Halloween franchise appears just as terrifying now as it did when the masked killer, Michael Myers, first stalked our screens in 1978.
Despite trite assertions that the horror genre is nothing more than lowbrow, cheap entertainment, the true fear lies within their ability to encapsulate our social concerns and anxieties, making them more pertinent than existing simply for shock value. Certainly, Andrew Tudor argues that horror films are embedded into our social lives, in the sense that they are ‘intelligible and coherent experiences in the cultural milieu of the audience’s world’.[1] Essentially, what makes a well-rounded horror, is one that is a product of the sociocultural environment in which it is made. The fear then becomes less about the monster itself and more about what it represents. It is for this reason that Jordan Peele’s Get Out, was lauded so critically and commercially last year. Peele tapped into the prominent cultural anxieties surrounding racism and the dangers of liberal ignorance which bubble to the surface and manifests itself into a nightmarish final solution. Fundamentally, what scares us the most is the idea that this could happen to us, it gets under the skin and lingers in the mind because the underlying horror is all too familiar, forcing us to confront the monster within ourselves.
‘If every age has its symptoms, ours appears to be the age of trauma…we are living in an age of PTSD’
It is exactly this which makes Halloweenas relevant now as it was forty years ago. The original slasher film introduced us to Michael Myers, who, on Halloween, murdered his sister as a child. He returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, 15 years later stalking and killing teenage babysitters on October 31st. Although slasher films have been deplored on the claims that they eroticise violence against women as punishment for sexual activities, I would argue that Halloweenacts as solid artefact for representing fears surrounding women’s liberation. In reading horror films in such a feminist framework, Cynthia Freeman wrote that ‘horror is concerned with borders’ and the fear is the ‘things that threaten the stability of the symbolic order’.[2] One of the biggest fears of the 1970’s was women’s liberation, and Carpenter’s original conveys these anxieties by killing of sexually assertive or promiscuous women because they are a threat to patriarchal norm. Jamie Lee Curtis, the original scream queen, plays Laurie Strode whom discovers her friends, having been brutally murdered by Michael Myers. Having to face Michael alone, Laurie survives because of virtue of purity. Carol Clover’s famous ‘Final Girl’ theory suggests that Laurie fits the ideal compassionate, sensitive and tender gender role, and her reward for this is surviving.[3]
It could even be suggested that both Michael and Laurie are sexually repressed, this being the reason Michael murdered his sister and Laurie’s being trapped in her traditional role. The real horror Carpenter captures is the growing fear of women’s liberation symbolised through sexual promiscuity. However, by supposing Michael and Laurie are sexually repressed, Carpenter raises questions about traditional gender roles since complying to the norm results in repressed sexuality unleashing in violent acts. Since horror films should be studied by their role in culture, it’s interesting to see how the latest instalment encapsulates the fears of today’s society. Discounting the past seven sequels, half of which don’t follow chronologically, David Gordon Green sets up Halloween as a sequel to the 1978 original. With Carpenter and Curtis serving as executive producers, and updated score by Carpenter himself, the film is set up well as a worthy sequel. Exactly 40 years later, Laurie awaits the return of Michael Myers, to seek revenge and ultimately so she can finally move on from the events that still haunt her. The film is less about the fear itself, but mastering anxieties brought about a traumatic event; the core subject of the film is trauma.
Trauma is conceptualised as covering a range of frightening or unpleasant events, such as child abuse and sexual violence. Considering the #MeToo movement, Halloween’s horror comes from confronting trauma. Jamie Lee Curtis stated that the film ‘chimes perfectly with the movement’s determination to highlight the deep, lasting effects trauma has on survivors of abuse and violence’.[4] The study of trauma has progressed with the increasingly high levels of trauma experienced amongst women such as child abuse and sexual violence. Although not exclusive to women, the increasing awareness of trauma has coincided with movements which encourage victims to tell their story. As a result, trauma theory has exploded, with Nancy Miller writing that ‘if every age has its symptoms, ours appears to be the age of trauma…we are living in an age of PTSD’.[5] We have progressed to a more holistic view of trauma, and particularly women’s representation within psychiatry, understanding that by challenging patriarchal norms trauma can be effectively treated. Modern horror, and Halloween specifically, serves as an attempt to help master these anxieties, with the monster then representing tradition and trauma, which must be confronted to overcome it.
‘The film chimes perfectly with the movement’s determination to highlight the deep, lasting effects trauma has on survivors of abuse and violence.’
Green’s Halloween, encapsulates the very fear of facing fear head on, facing a traumatic event that will continue to be re-enacted until mastered. Both Laurie and Michael are traumatised by childhood events that they cannot escape, which they are forced to re-enact until they face one another. Michael’s new doctor, Doctor Sartain, much like his predecessor Loomis, knows that Michael is evil and that his goal has always been to find Laurie Strode. After which, he himself doesn’t even know what will happen to Michael, because it’s all he knows. Likewise, Laurie is almost depicted as insane for being haunted by what happened back in 1978. Her family disown her because she has become obsessed with preparing for Michael’s return, even being told just to simply move on. When two journalists come to interview Laurie, they ignorantly attempt to blame Laurie for what she has become – failed marriages, getting her daughter taken away at 14 years old, and becoming a general recluse with a clear drinking problem. Laurie questions their logic by making her out to be a monster simply because she hasn’t conformed to patriarchal assumptions about women/mothers, reminding them that Michael is the real monster. Halloweenis a cultural product of our time, challenging patriarchy and gender assumptions which allows us to question and confront trauma, which moves away from victim blaming.
Although well past the golden age of the slasher film, Halloweenis still as terrifying because it speaks to our generation and acts as an artefact for our changing anxieties. There is little depiction of sexually promiscuous women in the film, more specifically, it is not juxtaposed with violence as seen in the original. Michael is ruthless and more spontaneous in this film, suggesting that the danger is the festering of deep-seated trauma which Michael can only master once he kills Laurie. It also makes Laurie and Michael equally matched in their strength and resolve to move on. It can be forgiven for reading the film in a feminist framework, since it depicts three generations of women; Laurie, her daughter, and her granddaughter, all facing events which have haunted their lives for years. It is a powerful film that will speak to an audience effected by the #MeToo movement, combating trauma through the shape known as Michael Myers. It’s not to say however, that this is a solution, because we are left wondering at the end how this will have effected Laurie’s granddaughter, who is left holding Michael’s bloody knife in an eerie flashback to a six-year-old Michael after murdering his sister.
Whilst Halloween offers a positive end to Laurie’s journey by offering her the grounds to build enough resilience to face her tormenter and seal the wounds she has been trying to conceal, this is not the case for numerous individuals who are forever left to battle the demons that haunt them from a past they cannot face and cannot close so poetically.
Author: Claire
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Andrew Welsh, ‘On the Perils of Living Dangerously in the Slasher Horror Film: Gender Differences in the Association Between Sexual Activity and Survival’, Sex Roles, (2010).
[2] Cynthia A. Freeland, ‘Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films’, in Film Theory and Criticism, Sixth Edition, by Braudy and Cohen, Oxford University Press, (2004).
[3] Carol Clover, Men, Women and Chain Saw: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, (1992).
[4] Clarisse Loughrey, ‘It’s a film about trauma’, The Independent, 19th October 2018.
[5] Nancy Miller, Extremities: Trauma, Testimony and Community, (2002).