This is a hot take, but true fans of the Halloween franchise will hear me out. Michael Myers was awful and was a literal serial killer, but being that he is a fictional character, I think it’s possible to rationalize with him. If he were real, it’d be a different story.
This past weekend I decided to watch the very first Halloween movie. Learning Myers’ lore is always interesting, but the film was not the best. I know it was made in 1978, so I had to overlook the bad acting and the weird and unnecessary sexual scenes and innuendos.
But as I was watching the movie, I noticed a pattern. Anytime Myers sees someone being bullied or if he’s the one being bullied, he either scares the bullies away or murders them. Bullying was some sort of a trigger for him. This alone made me see his human nature. Somewhere inside of all of his darkness, there is a light. But because we get so caught up in his senseless killings, we don’t always acknowledge this.
I would go as far as saying that many of the villains we see in a cinema have some sort of reason behind their behavior. In some instances, this could be pointing to trauma or alienation, which deserves a bit of sympathy. Instead of them finding ways to cope with the treatment they received from other people, they instead chose to be heinous in response to it.
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Whether you like it or not, this is the case for Myers. I don’t think Myers was born mentally ill. He was made into the monster that we all know him to be. I say this because he shows that he has heart in the ways he protected those who were bullied.
Knowing that Myers was an anti-bullying king makes me wonder if he could have been saved. The first movie doesn’t go into much detail about Myers’ life, and I think that maybe allows the audience to try and piece things together, so hear me out as I try to do so. I think Myers was definitely mentally ill, but just because someone has a mental disorder does not automatically make them evil. Horror movies often make this assumption and it’s concerning, but that’s a topic for another day.
Since Myers was the youngest child in his family, I think that he was often forgotten about. His parents would go off to do something and his older, teenage sister would be somewhere with a guy, as the first movie points out. Due to his constant isolation and neglect from his family, Myers became angry and lost touch with reality. This is what turned him into a monster.
It’s scientifically proven that social isolation can lead to negative mental health symptoms that can then morph into disorders, like psychosis and depression. You could drive yourself mad from a lack of human interaction, that’s why it’s important to have people to navigate life with. Myers didn’t have this and it sent him straight into insanity.
In my opinion, monsters are born from the absence of love. While Michael is still considered a monster, I can’t help but acknowledge that his transformation into the man we know him as was not inevitable, but rather a tragic outcome of neglect and abandonment.
Amyri Jones is a 22-year-old digital advertising and religious studies senior from Baton Rouge.
