The Shape Gazes Back (Chapter 2- Say Something)
The Suburbs… How is it defined? The suburbs are smaller communities, outlying part of a city or town. What does it mean? Comfort, familiarity, exclusivity. Haddonfield used to be a place of comfort and exclusion. A typical quiet, suburban neighborhood theoretically located in the city of Illinois but, with the glamorous look of Pasadena and Sierra Madre. Like most suburban areas, Haddonfield was known for being boring and family oriented. Localized enough that everyone knows each other's names, and their personal business, nothing out of the ordinary or particularly special. Ideally, this is what the American Dream used to be for a great number of citizens (particularly common in White America). The suburbs used to seem like the perfect place to live, safe and secure, that is until a wave of serial killers trending in the 80s and 90s shook up the nation forever.
I am certain that at the time I write this review, there are likely to be 6 dozen movie scripts in production fetishizing serial killers from a plethora of era’s that predated the cell phone or even basic forms of security. (Looking at you! Dahmer Docuseries) In the past, the media would drum up controversy and loved to spread the idea of the “Genius” of angry white male murderers. “Maybe these killers were Sevants!” “Maybe they were hell spawns!” (demonic entities sent straight from hell), they were sold to the public as “Handsome” and “Charming”, they could “date your daughter”. The perception was that all of these killers were not just normal, but exceptional people worthy of admiration and 2nd or 8th chances. There was supposedly nothing you could point to as a tell for what was going to occur later. This of course has been emphatically disproved by Bio-psycho-and sociological research that all clearly traces aggression, antisocial and criminal behaviors back to a host of issues early in childhood summarized as abusive parenting, drug usage, Low intelligence, and on rare occasions even brain damage. Still, the phenomenon remains, this ironic desire to obsess over and “understand” (really fetishize) the most simple-minded people in our society. Bundy notoriously even blamed his crimes on pornography… but failed to mention being beaten as a child by his grandfather. This example of narcissism and manipulation from psychopaths feeds into the hysteria we perpetuate as a society. It wasn’t until the day of his execution that he finally admitted that the reason he killed was simply because he wanted to and couldn’t control his own wrathful urges. I guess this is what you would call an occam's razor. So how is this Shape different? What makes it “The Evil” as Loomis would say? Why has “He” come home once again?
It is not Bundy, or Gacy, nor Dahmer, or Sam. It isn’t even similar to Krueger, Voorhees, or the rest of the slashers. Most horror villains are monsters acting off of instincts, or men playing out their cowardly trauma filled lives. But this is no man, it is only a Shape, a twisted machination of Evil. A mockery of American ideals and the demons that are hidden behind the white picket fences and nationalistic dogmatism. Myers is the second child to a loving family in Haddonfield, there are zero signs of parental abuse (in fact the second child is usually comforted More upon conception), mental illness, environmental neglect or hazards. There is no concrete evidence that he cannot speak (as this contradicts statements from Loomis and the prying of his parents in the first movie). Myers in Halloween Kills was described as being quiet and prone to isolation, but not due to depression, anxiety, illness, or any other situational factor. Myers would simply stare into his sister's window, almost in a trance-like state. No-Not looking at Haddonfield, but instead staring into something haunting, Something that the unfortunate have seen through The Shape’s very eyes.
The Shape is a Tautological creature, circular in his reason for existing. So, what came first? The chicken or the egg? Was Myers possessed by something in this window that turned him into a murderer? Is his Mask (that he arbitrarily found at a hardware store as a grown ass man) POSSESSED with the powers of evil… no. It is not the Mask, or the window, or his sister or Laurie that drives him. The answer lies in its very own body language, its primary form of communication. Myers mask is hollow, pale, blank. Devoid of expression or emotion. It has fake wavy long hair, and eyes shrouded by darkness radiating from them. This mask is described as Myers “Face” the Shapes “face”. A face that both reflects off of the window, as much as it projects outwardly. And in this projection you will find An empty husk, a bottomless well of darkness and violence. This “face” is its one and only statement. The only “words” that he will ever need to “say”. It is an inexorable declaration of violence. A declaration of war on all of humanity. A war between the weak and the strong. If Michael represents evil, the apex of aggression, the ultimate symbol of masculinity, a monster that ignores pain, feels no empathy or remorse, refuses to cry, refuses to feel, refuses to be stopped! The Shape through self-determination and savagery has evolved into an unbeatable monster. A monster who kills out of pure rage, adulation, humor, and occasionally just to survive. Although it is the Shape’s self actualization, this pathological urge to torment and destroy, that has left this animal exposed.
What the hell does this have to do with Laurie Strode? The woman at the heart of The Shape’s legacy. The accelerant that scorched Myers, a woman who’s suffering, united an entire town of regular citizens. In chapter 3 “Tyson, Jordan, Jackson… Game 6” we delve further into the Shape’s last dance. But do keep in mind… that when gazing into the eyes of the Shape, it gazes back into you.
