Prologue
Darkness falls on Haddonfield...
I was eleven years old that fateful summer, visiting cousins in Virginia and going through my tween life with the confidence and assurance of a boy who believed everything was always going to work out for the best—that nothing bad could ever happen. Little did I know that just two short years later, both of those beliefs would be utterly shattered… but even less did I realize that it was a legendary slasher film set in the suburbs of Illinois that would first illuminate me to the idea that bad things could happen… and they could happen anywhere at any time.
Halloween wasn’t the first movie I watched in the series, though. A lot of people are surprised to find that out about me. I grew up very poor and would often have to vicariously live through either 1) stolen HBO because my uncles were self-taught electricians or 2) the descriptions of movies I would read on the back of VHS tapes at Kroger while my grandmother was grocery shopping. One of those tapes was Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers and during a time when we had a little extra money, my grandmother let me rent it since one of my uncles had given us a hand-me-down VCR of our own.
It wasn’t a great movie, but it did get me interested in the mythology of Michael Myers, Haddonfield, and the boogeyman in general. It wasn’t until the summer of 1990, however, that I got the chance to view the original film. My aunt was a little more easy going than the rest of her generation, so she let me and my younger cousins rent it one Friday night. I still remember the anticipation. Already in my mind, Michael Myers was this larger than life figure with a mysterious backstory that I was getting ready to dive into. So we all dimmed the lights, popped in the tape, and got under the covers as my cousins and I tried as best we could to prepare ourselves for what we were about to watch.
The only way I can accurately describe what happened next is that the movie Halloween reached out, grabbed hold of me, and some 33 years later has never really let go. I find myself drawn back to this universe time and again. I’m simultaneously fascinated and horrified by the idea that evil itself can be found walking through the backyards of a sleepy little town any night of the week, and you might never know it… until it’s too late.
Everything you thought you knew about life can change in an instant.
I think it’s this specific fear—and the reality of the life I’ve experienced that lies so neatly congruous with it—that brings me back to this movie for… something? Inspiration? Answers? Comfort? Excitement? Catharsis? I don’t know. I’ve never really been able to figure out why this was the movie that I latched onto and not something else like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or any of the early Star Wars films, though I love those as well.
Nope. Not me. I picked… Halloween. I have no clue why.
But as I fill these virtual pages and you eventually read them, I suppose I will try to answer that question… and perhaps others as well.