Halloween: 8 Reasons Why Michael Myers Is The Ultimate Horror Villain

Some instalments in the Halloween franchise have attempted to explain Michael’s behaviour, such as Rob Zombie’s remake pushing the idea he’s a product of a broken home, or the reviled Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers insisting his murderous rampage was all caused by a curse laid by a Druid cult.

But let’s discount those not-so-popular entries and their feeble excuses for a moment, and concentrate on Dr Loomis’ initial diagnosis after meeting a six-year-old Michael at the Smith’s Grove Sanitarium.

Even at such a young age, Loomis identifies him as having the hallmarks of a bona fide psychopath – he has “no reason, no conscience, no understanding in even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong.” There is, in other words, no rhyme or reason to Michael’s murderous ways from his first kill through all his subsequent kills. He’s just a madman who slays for the sake of it.

Plenty of other horror villains have plenty of motive. Candyman and Freddy Krueger, for example, were out to avenge their own deaths, while Jason Voorhees and John Kramer aka Jigsaw were avenging the deaths of loved ones. Norman Bates had his mommy issues to sort through and Pinhead was just really into BDSM.

This humanises villains and lures us into sympathising with them, but not that’s not the case with Michael Myers. He has no motivation. He is, as Dr Loomis says, “purely and simply evil”.