Halloween Questions

1) Comment on the camera angles used in the film. What impact does the camera angle have on your reception of the film?

Many of the camera angles used in the film gives you the point of view that Michael Myers has. The first scene in the movie does this exact thing, when Michael walks up his stairs to stab his sister, and eventually kill her. I felt like the camera angles give the movie even a larger feeling of suspense and spookiness. Many of the most important scenes in the film are shot from the perception of Michael Myers, and this gives the viewer a better understanding of Michael.


2) It seems that Michael takes on the role of the voyeur (person secretly watching others). How does this impact your reception of his character? Describe a scene in which this voyeurism occurs and comment on it.

Anytime a character in a movie is a voyeur I automatically think the character is creepy, and capable of bad things. It does give Michael Myers more depth as a character because you know the man isn’t just randomly killing anyone, he stalks his prey and then eventually kills. The scene where Michael is in Laurie’s backyard while Laurie is on the phone was a scene where Michael’s voyeurism is brightly shinning. I felt like when Laurie saw Michael she should have acted upon the fact that a masked man has been stalking her the entire day. Laurie’s inability to do this results in the death of three of her friends.

3) Many things that Michael does are blamed on "kids" in the film, such as stealing the gravestone, breaking into the hardware store, etc. Why do you think that is?

The main reason that many of these illegal acts are blamed on kids is simply because kids are capable of doing such things. I thought that Sheriff Brackett showed a lot of ignorance when Dr. Loomis confronted him at the hardware store. The ignorance that Sheriff Brackett showed eventually results in the demise of his own daughter. The blaming of these things on the kids of the town also provides a little bit of foreshadowing. It gives the viewer a feeling of assurance that no adults in the film are going to get killed by Michael, only the kids of the town. The assumption that the kids stole the gravestone and broke into the hardware store also provides a symbol for the things the kids are doing, that isn’t wholesome or right.

4) How would you describe Michael Myers as a child and as an adult? Who does he choose as his victims? Why do you think he chooses them? How or with what tools does Michal choose to kill his victims? Why?

Michael Myers as a child is just as unhinged, as he is when he is an adult. Michael never say’s a word throughout the entire movie, so it’s hard to say if he has any compassion or any emotion at all towards his victims. He hides behind his mask the whole movie, except for a split second when it is taken from his head. Michael always chooses teenagers as his victims, and each teenager he kills is sexually active. Even though the viewer isn’t assured his sister has sex before being killed, it is assumed that she did. He chooses sexually active teenagers because he likes to see the pain that they endure at his hand because he never got to have the life that his victims had. In my opinion Michaels killings were partly because he was jealous of the things that his victims were capable of doing. Of course, this doesn’t explain the first killing of his sister, but it can be a good explanation for the last three victims. Michael either kills his victims with a knife or strangles them to death. He uses the knife because he used one to kill his sister. He wants to carry out his murders the same way, if possible, that he did when he killed his sister. I felt like when he used the telephone wire to strangle one of his victims, he did it to show the dependency that the kids in the film have on social interactions over the telephone.