Director John Carpenter's film, Halloween, is a cult classic horror movie with a lasting impact that still lingers within the horror genre, even today. With 13 installment films, the franchise is a classic within horror movie critics.

This movie follows the story of Michael Myers (Nick Castle), a young boy, who lives within the town of Haddonfield, Illinois. The movie begins with an introduction to young Michael Myers and his family, giving us a background of who exactly this notorious slasher is. 

On Halloween night, in the year 1963, Myers brutally murders his older sister, Judith Myers and is sent to a sanitarium after being deemed mentally disordered. He is treated by Dr. Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence) and kept in the ward. Fifteen years later, Myers is to be escorted to a court hearing by a nurse from the institution but kills the nurse and escapes. Making his way toward the place he used to call home, Meyers begins to terrorize Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and wreaks havoc on the town as he embarks on a murderous spree. 

Throughout the night. Michael continues to kill, and Laurie grows more frantic with terror as she discovers more of friends’ dead bodies. Lindsey Wallace and Tommy Doyle, two of the children Laurie was babysitting for the night, are also subjected to this terror alongside her. Later, when Laurie is being strangled by Myers, Loomis finds her and shoots Myers after Laurie manages to unmask him, leaving Meyers dead–presumably. However, when Loomis later goes back to Myers’s body, it has mysteriously vanished.

This film first appeared in 1978, produced by Debra Hill and directed by John Carpenter, with the latest installation to the franchise being “Halloween Ends,” released in 2022. The title and plot of the 2022 film appeared to indicate the end to Myers’s terrorizing; however, there has not been a direct statement saying that the franchise has ended, so there is a chance Myers will appear on our screens once more in the near future. 

This film franchise, overall, gives a cinematic representation of the battle between good and evil as well as examining mental disorders from a darker perspective. The way the film is executed provides not only the “good” side’s perspective, but the “bad” side as well, giving us viewers a broader perspective on what mental illness can, and sometimes does do, to people. The constant resurrection of the evil that is Michael Myers plays into the idea that evil is never truly purged from this world: no matter how hard we try to get rid of it.