Opinion | ‘Halloween Ends’ on how to fight trauma

No wonder, then, that trauma has become the enemy in horror films. But rather than prescribing therapies or treating trauma like an identity, the genre offers a more aggressive and stoic solution. From the new Halloween movies to the surprise hit Smile, trauma is presented not as an issue to talk about but to deal with — although catharsis isn’t always guaranteed.

David Gordon Green’s “Halloween” (2018), “Halloween Kills” (2021) and “Halloween Ends” (2022) all deal very heavily with the trauma that Michael Myers (played alternately by James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) not only added to his target, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), but also capitalized on the town of Haddonfield, Illinois.

Forty years after the events of John Carpenter’s classic, Laurie has embraced a lifestyle that can only be described as a survivor. Her home is an armory that she rarely leaves. Her daughter believes she has a mental illness and needs cognitive behavioral therapy to cure her mother’s agoraphobia. Two podcasters believe she will benefit if she sits down and talks to Myers before he is transferred from a psychiatric hospital to a maximum security prison.

Words are no substitute for action, however, and the true lesson of “Halloween” isn’t that Laurie’s trauma hurt her — it’s that it is ready She. There is less evil in the world than we might think. But it exists, and when confronted with it, we must be prepared to fight back.

“Halloween Kills” and “Halloween Ends” expand the scope of Myers’ impact and consider how his presence taints Haddonfield.

“Anytime someone’s scared, the boogeyman wins,” Laurie tells a police officer. “The more he kills, the more he transcends into something else that cannot be defeated. Fear. People are scared. This is the true curse of Michael. You cannot defeat it with brute force. … It is the essence of evil, anger, that separates us. It’s the terror that grows stronger when we try to hide. … You can’t close your eyes and pretend he’s not there. Because he is.”

This speech contains two seemingly contradictory ideas. Fear is something that exists to divide us and cannot be conquered. But in this case, the source of that fear is something real and decidedly deadly that cannot be ignored.

The tension in Laurie’s speech reflects a real feeling that dwelling on some forms of trauma is more acceptable than others. We’re told not to worry about spikes in violent crime or retail theft in big cities. A genuine and vicious debate erupts as to whether it would be appropriate to seek police intervention in the case of an apparently mentally ill man who allegedly killed a dog and assaulted his owner in a posh Brooklyn neighborhood. We can’t live in fear – but sometimes there’s literally more to fear than fear itself.

“Halloween Ends” squares that circle by admitting that trauma causes two types of fear: fear of outsiders hurting the flock, and fear that leads to scapegoating friends and family when the danger disappears.

Note that I use “disappears” instead of “eliminates”. Because the city turns against itself after the events of “Halloween Kills” because Myers disappears. Not until he’s eliminated – and the whole town sees he eliminated, his body stretched out on a car and parading through town like the Midwest spin at a Roman triumph, his corpse dumped in an industrial shredder—that fear and the trauma it causes can be removed.

“Smile” takes the horror’s recent obsession with trauma and almost makes it a sport. The film is a bit like The Ring but with a ghost that spreads its curse by driving victims insane and inspiring them to commit suicide in front of an unsuspecting person. Death must be as traumatic as possible, we are told, to ensure the greatest possible horror and the spread of the curse.

Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) falls victim to the curse early in the film; As a hospital psychiatrist, she watches as an obviously disturbed patient brutally kills herself. And then Rose begins to see the people around her smile horribly, a twisted grin that’s the least happy grin of all time. Nobody believes her because nobody can see what she sees; It’s enough to drive anyone crazy.

But she confronts the evil spirit – literally inside her head – and tries to defeat it, only to be swallowed whole. Unfortunately, the cycle of trauma does not end with Rose.

The cycle of trauma films didn’t begin with “Halloween” or “Smile” — Ari Aster’s “Midsommar” and “Hereditary” handle the subject with frightening skill — and it won’t end with them any more than it did with Rose in “Smile.” The subject is just too good and the cultural role of trauma too strong to say the last word.

However, those of us in the real world should take a lesson from Laurie Strode. We should all hope to be freed from trauma rather than defined by it. But it is up to us to learn the painful lessons of the past and use them.