Textual Analysis

When researching story ideas for our sequence, I began to see similarities between our character the male antagonist and the serial killer character Michael Myers from "Halloween".

We do not intent for our character to be seen hence cementing the element of the "fear of the unknown" in our audience (other examples of this include Steven Spielberg's "Duel" (1971) - although this is a thriller we intend to incorproate the fear of the unknown into our horror production as this convention is part of the horror genre also) and a more modern "Roadkill" (2001) directed by Bruce McDonald) like Michael Myers throughout most of the Halloween film. The killer gets gradually closer to into view throughout the entire movie building up increasing and tormenting suspense for the audience.

With regard to our antagonist character never being seen in the sequence, I investigated Steven Spielberg's reasoning for never revealing the character that terrorizes an innocent motorist in "Duel". Speilberg asserts that the fear of the unknown is perhaps the greatest fear of all and that "Duel" plays to that fear. We intend to adopt to this convention as the killer in our sequence is not seen, but heard on the telephone.

We only see the adult Michael Myers in Halloween very briefly when his mask is removed in a scuffle between one of the "good" characters. This build up left the audience in suspense as to what kind of monster is hiding behind the mask - which is also even kept at a distance in the beginning. We have decided to make the killer unseen to adopt this convention of horror movies - exploiting the viewer's fear of the unknown. I know that audiences certainly found Halloween frightening - it was voted the fifth scariest film of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

Like Michael Myers, the trucker from "Duel" and the murderer from "Roadkill" our central antagonist murders innocent suburban youths who have done little or absolutely nothing to deserve their gruesome demise.

A common characterization is that Michael Myers is evil. John Carpenter, director of "Halloween" has described the character as "almost a supernatural force - a force of nature. An evil force that's loose," a force that is "unkillable" - we intend to make our main antagonist somewhat mysterious as to how he knows exactly when the woman gets home, exactly how he knows her sister is dead and why he is doing such evil things to an apparent stranger.