Why The ‘Halloween’ Remakes Quite Simply Do Not Work

My twin sister and I are huge fans of the first Halloween movie. The 1978 version may have some cheesy moments, but it remains a very good horror movie to this day. Every October, we end up watching it multiple times like we’ve never seen it before. It has always been a joy for us. We were excited when the 2018 version came out. We wanted to know how they were going to make a timeline, with just the first one as canon, work. It was an okay movie. The violence was gruesome, but the scariest part was the teen boy making the horse jump scare.

As time has passed and the pandemic changed the original date of the next Halloween movie, we’ve had more chances to see the 2018 version. As we continued to think on the new one and the old one, it just didn’t add up as a singular timeline. And as huge fans of the first one, but also critical of movies, it must be one damn good movie for us to want to put it on our movie list. But as more years went on, the second one seemed more like an overloaded mess of past movies with no real reason for it.

We decided to pick out a few things that make the new Halloween Timeline a questionable choice.

Laurie and Michael’s Relationship

In the 1978 movie, Laurie was the first person that Michael saw in Haddonfield when she left the key under the rug of his old home. Piquing his interest, he followed her for the majority of the movie but was never focused on just killing her. He took to murdering her friends and only because she came over to check on them and find them dead, did he decide to go after Laurie.

In the 2018 movie, they make it as if the two have some connection to one another. Michael did not make any movements to any of the mentions of the murders that the interviewers were asking him. The only time he made any movement was when he pulled out Michael’s mask. Michael wanted his baby back. And that was what got him to get out of the sanitarium.

When Laurie sees Michael in his mask and already on his brutal rampage, she’s the one that calls him. He makes no attempt at trying to get to her. All of their moments were by coincidence or made possible by those around them. Michael was doing his usual, killing babysitters and everyone else on his way to Haddonfield. He was just a killing machine. Their “fateful” meeting was made possible by Michael’s sociopathic doctor obsessed with hearing Michael talk(kind of nice seeing him step on his head. Plus that Jack-o-Person was creative. He might want to think about pumpkin carving instead of carving people). He makes it to Laurie’s house because of the police presence and ends up in her trap. Never because he purposefully was trying to find her.

Laurie’s Obsession over Michael

It’s not hard to understand Laurie’s PTSD with the murders of her friends, the attempted murder of her, and the knowledge that the boogieman was real and still alive. Her “training” and “training” of her daughter, prepping for that night she finally got her meeting with Michael, is fully captured. Her home is an entire trap to lure and kill the man that had done so much damage in the past and psychologically ruined Laurie. But that’s it. It’s just Laurie.

Besides Laurie’s obsession and PTSD that is targeted towards getting her revenge on the man that ruined her life, there is no connection to the two that would make Michael “care” that Laurie is still alive or even know what she looks like. This is supposed to be a mutual relationship of a desire to eliminate the other, but it isn’t. Halloween 2 was vital in providing a reason for him continuously going after Laurie. She was his sister. Even Halloween H20, captured that relationship and the “end” of their battle perfectly. Even if his mask was a nightmare. H20 painted the perfect picture of a relationship and obsession. The haunting trauma of a sister with a murderous brother who she intended to end. The movie was the perfect end to what made that relationship of brother and sister so integral to the movie’s plot. But the 2018 one has none of that. It isn’t Michael obsessed with killing Laurie or even finding her. It’s Laurie’s obsession with Michael and her desire to kill him and end her 40-year trauma. Nothing else.

Halloween 2018 or Every other Halloween Mixed together 2018

The 2018 Halloween movie feels like a deja vu trip and that is because it is. The entire movie is just a mash-up of parts of the older Halloween movies mixed into one. It looked like they watched all the movies and just decided which parts they thought were good and would be perfect for the script.

* Michael getting out psychiatric custody.
* Michael still knowing how to drive with no previous lessons(if we take out the other movies).
* Michael knows where Haddonfield is when he hasn’t been there in 40 years.
* Him finding a local gas station and killing the attendants and getting himself a new jumpsuit.
* Finding himself a knife from the local granny.
* Killing some babysitter and her boyfriend.
* Showing up in mega speed.
* Pretending to be dead.
* Kill my nutjob of a doctor
* Get shot and walk away unscathed.
* Burn and come back for the next movie.

Oh and the kills; choking someone in a car, knifing, tagging the boyfriend to the wall.

Now if they said it was a remake, then that would have been different. But this was supposed to be the second movie to a movie over 40 years ago with none of the others being canon. That wasn’t the case though. So it was just trying to recapture the old movies without having the old movies be included. Didn’t turn out so great.

The Institution

Where the hell are they keeping Michael? This institution looks like it’s just a few miles away from Haddonfield. I know Michael isn’t exactly one to be taking too many chances on, but if he hasn’t left in 40 years, he must have been an excellent resident.

But when Laurie went to kill Michael when they were transferring him, and then went to her granddaughter’s dinner, it made it seem as if the institution was right down the street. Especially when Michael escaped, it didn’t take him long to get to Haddonfield after he took a u-turn to go get his mask from the podcast duo. And he was there right on Halloween after taking the day before to get out, do a little killing, and get his mask. He made it with time to spare and no one had a BOLO out for a psychotic killing machine.

His Age

In the first movie, Michael was 21. Of course a 21-year-old would have enough stamina to run around the town and kill people. Plus the kills were all mostly in the same home. The mechanic was the only killing, besides the dog and the old man, that was not localized in mostly one home. He barely moved out of the same neighborhood besides when he was driving. But while on his killing spree, they weren’t everywhere or even that brutal.

Michael is 61 years old in the second film. His kills were beyond brutal in the second film. Something I wouldn’t think a 61-year-old who’s been in a psychiatric facility for 40 years, and outside time was chained to a boulder, didn’t look in any way different from what would be expected of a 60-year-old. Especially since he looked like he didn’t age too well if you saw the movie. And he was blind in one eye. He ripped open the mouth of one of the mechanics. Stabbed a teenager to the wall and one to a gated fence. Got hit by a car, acted dead, stepped on his doctor’s head, and turned it into mush. He was moving around faster than we’d ever seen him do. I know we all joke about him teleporting, but as far as it’s said, he’s just an evil human.

This man looked like he could give Superman a run for his money, but that’s it. Even if it is a fictional movie, Michael was only designed to just be some killer with a knife. But even when he was young, it made no sense that his teenage sister couldn’t take the knife out of her six-year-old brother’s hands. Everything is ludacris. With that being said, the first one was a lot more realistic than the 2018 movie.

Tommy and Lindsey

Tommy and Lindsey seem to be a missing link left out of the podcast duo’s interview sessions into who exactly Michael Myers is and what happened that day forty years ago. Tommy and Lindsey were just children when they encountered Michael. They were terrified, especially Tommy who was the one who continuously saw Michael, but was not believed until Laurie encountered him. The two were there when Michael was trying to kill Laurie. They were still scared when she said she killed him and told them to run and go get help. They left the house screaming, trying to get someone to listen to their cries for help. But all of their trauma is not even a thought when it came to studying what happened on Halloween 1978. They were never a source in the eyes of the podcast duo. Whether the two still live in Haddonfield or got the hell out when they were old enough to go on their own, it wouldn’t be hard to at least make them a part of your podcast. Or try. But the kids were never a mention. Even if rumors have it that the two are in the next film, it feels like a lost opportunity. Were they left just as traumatized as Laurie?

Michael vs The Shape

The line seems blurred between where Michael starts and the Shape begins. It was always supposed to be that he didn’t have a name. He was just some rampage killer who came during Halloween. But that seems to be an impossible task, even with it being the premise of the original movie. John Carpenter falls short with keeping that line between Michael and the Shape. Michael Myers is the Shape.

In the 1978 movie, Michael is said by name. Even if Dr. Loomis refers to him as evil and pure evil, he still calls him by Michael. Giving him an identity that is human. With a name, there is no way to place him as anything but a person. If they wanted to keep it unanimous and unknown, they would have never given him a name or a backstory. Don’t even mention a past story. The past story just makes it seem like an angry 6-year-old because his sister didn’t take him trick-or-treating. And is somehow capable of killing a teenage girl, getting him put into an institution and never released until he escaped years after the killing of his sister. For what reason, that is never known and never explained.

Even in the 2018 movie, that same line became blurred also. He is still pictured as that killing machine with no regard for who he kills or how many people he kills. But then they put the trauma aspect and Laurie back into the movie. And again Michael is brought up. Michael as a human is a vital and integral part of the two-sided coin concept that they play with on Michael and Laurie. Yeah, it may just be a name, but a name brings a more human side to someone that you are trying to just make out to be a killer who kills to kill, not for any other reason. But they want to give it a reason. I don’t think the writers or even John Carpenter himself knew exactly what the consequence of giving him a name would be. Michael is still a rampage killer in the 2018 movie, but with the addition of Laurie’s story back into his, it doesn’t just make him into the Shape. It makes him into Michael Myers; a psychiatric patient who killed his older sister when he was six, has been locked away for years without any explanation on why he killed or is still there, and tries to draw a connection between him and Laurie that they try to ignore, but can’t. The final battle was always supposed to be between Laurie and Michael. There was always more than just the Shape.

With the future slated for two final Halloween movies, it will be fun to see if they try to break away from that background and humanity they give Michael without even knowing. My sister and I are both still very huge fans of the first Halloween movie and have a lot of criticism of even that. But we want to see if the timeline will still stay a convoluted blurred line, or if they will be able to separate Laurie and Michael from the Shape.