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spectrumscribe · 7 years

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Day by day.

It’s okay to slow down and just take things day by day, but sometimes Donnie forgets that.

Luckily, Mikey doesn’t.

(have some short b-team hurtcomfort fic, because i don’t write nearly enough comfort or bonding for these two.)

Donnie stares at the messy, somewhat delirious notes in front of him; his own writing getting increasingly incoherent with each page, until the very final one, which reads only BUILD/HIJACK BIGGEST RADIO TOWER, CALL OTHER ME???

He groans softly, and lets his head sink to the disaster of a lab table. Putting his hands on top of his skull, he feels his elbow bump something hard and cool, and his gut jerks as he realizes it’s probably one of his multiple empty mugs about to meet a unmerciful death.

A quiet “whoop!” is heard, but no shattering porcelain.

Donnie raises his head, wondering if he’s finally tired enough he’s started hallucinating.

Mikey is standing beside the table, seemingly having materialized out of thin air like he sometimes does- holding the mug and giving Donnie an exasperated look.

“You know, we have exactly ten mugs in total,” Mikey says, setting the mug on the table. “and I’m pretty sure you’ve got eight of them in here. Which is probably not the best sign for your caffeine intake levels.”

Donnie blinks sluggishly. His brain is awake, sure, but only on the inside. Outside input isn’t going in, and it takes him a full moment to comprehend what his brother has just said to him.

“...I thought I only had five?” He says, glancing around at his work station. There’s a... few more cups than he thought.

Mikey laughs, not unkindly, and drags a stool around the corner of the table to sit down. “I think you only got five brain cells right now, Dee. When’s the last time you slept? Or... ate, or drank something that wasn’t coffee?”

Donnie tries to remember, marginally successful.

“Around.... six?”

“Is that six tonight- which was hours ago- or six yesterday morning?”

Donnie’s head hurts. “...what time is it?”

Mikey gives him a grimace. “Woo, you’re really out of it tonight. What’s got you all tangled up like this?”

Donnie’s eyes drift back down to his infuriatingly useless notes.

“There’s still mutants running around New York,” Donnie says, feeling even tireder talking about it. “and I’ve got...” He thinks about the frozen figure up against the wall, and how badly he’s neglected Timothy the past months. Years. “They all still need a retromutagen, and there’s... not enough to go around anymore. I have to figure out how to make it stretch, what little I’ve managed to get my hands on, but...”

Mikey’s hands enter his vision, gently moving the papers so the newer, messier ones are easier to see.

“Not going to well?” Mikey observes, brushing a thumb over Donnie’s throwaway idea of contacting their space clone selves.

Donnie nods miserably. He’s unsure of the time, and doubly unsure of when he last made any real progress with the problem. He’s been keeping rough track of every new mutant that pops up somewhere in New York, and while the numbers are a mere fraction of the full population of the city, it’s still a lot of mutants. The Shredder drained so many of the caches of mutagen through the city, and since they lost contact with Bishop and the Utrom, Donnie’s been stuck with hoarding what little he’s still in possession of.

It’s not enough. It has to be but it’s not. There’s just too many mutants to reverse and not enough mutagen for effective retromutagen batches. And even with all those nameless people out there in need of his help- incorrect, he could name them all if he wanted to, its just that it’s terrifying to put faces and lives to all those mutants- he’s still got his family to look out for. Mutagen has medical uses for them, it’s brought his brothers back from the brink of death or worse before, and if he gives it all up for people they don’t even know, just before someone suffers another life-threatening injury...

That will be his fault, for not making the scant stock of mutagen he has last long enough to fix everything and everyone.

“I can see you burning through those five brain cells, Donnie, like right this second.”

Donnie sighs, and rubs at his aching temples. Headaches are his true weakness, even if he usually powers through them regardless. “What do you want, Mikey? I’m... very busy.”

“You’re half dead, that’s what you are,” Mikey says, gently elbowing Donnie’s side. When Donnie just grumbles, Mikey throws an arm around his shell and says, “Come on, take a break. Eat a snack. Take a nap. You can’t save the whole world in a night, gotta get a little R&R first.”

Donnie snorts. “We’ve literally saved the world in a night before, sometimes less. Look, you might not get it, but I can’t stop, okay? This isn’t something I can just walk away from and not feel like a...”

“Do not say failure,” Mikey says, very suddenly serious. His arm is tight on Donnie’s shell, and Donnie can feel the intense scrutinizing he’s being given. “We had a bazillion talks about that- no quitter talk!”

“Then why are you telling me to quit?” Donnie asks.

“I’m not! I’m just saying you need to take it easy for a bit, before you bust something important because you didn’t take care of it right.”

“You’re talking like I’m a car.”

“Raph called himself a ‘finely tuned fight engine’ or something one time. Turtle bodies are close enough that they gotta be cleaned and fed and left to pass out somewhere quiet sometimes.”

Donnie stubbornly doesn’t answer. He has work to do, important work, and walking away from it even just to get food feels wrong. He has to do this, he needs to be doing something to fix the world. The retromutagen is something he can make, can use to fix other peoples’ lives. If he’s not working on that, or something else...

He doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Mikey’s arm squeezes him, drawing Donnie sideways for a hug.

“Hey, you know it’s okay to slow down, right?” Mikey says in a soft voice. “Just until you stop lookin’ so cross-eyed.”

“Can’t,” Donnie says belligerently. Mikey doesn’t get it. He can’t get it. “I can’t.”

“...I know you got your way of copin’ with stuff, Dee, but sometimes you have to just take it day by day, alright? Some stuff takes a little extra time, and you have to make sure you don’t burn yourself out before that time is up.”

“And how would you know that?” Donnie says, because far as he’s ever really known, Mikey has hardly a patient bone in his body.

His brother hums.

“Dimension-X, bro.”

Donnie lifts his head, giving a mildly startled look to Mikey, who gives a wane smile in return.

Mikey is still smiling, even as he talks about something that draws a stress-line in that smile. “You guys got there in a few seconds your time, but I was there for like, months or shit. D-X has all sorts of stuff to do pretty much twenty-four seven, but... I didn’t know when you guys were gonna show up. First while rolled by and I had to figure out how to budget my energy, or I would’ve ended up turtlechow for somethin’. So-” He says, and Donnie can visibly see Mikey putting brighter emotions back into his expression. “-if I can figure out how to be patient for an undefined pickup date, then you can be patient until your brain is all recharged. Okay? Come eat leftovers. We had curry and burnt toast, since it was me an’ Leo’s turn to cook tonight.”

Donnie wants to refuse on automatic, because walking away from one of the last relatively normal and straight forward parts of his life is hard. But...

Curry sounds nice, even with burnt toast as a side.

His stomach, Donnie realizes, has been in such a tight knot of hunger for so long, he hadn’t noticed it until Mikey mentioned food.

Donnie finally relents, slumping into the sideways hug that’s actually right out holding him up at this point. “Okay, curry sounds good. Thank you.”

Mikey beams, smug and pleased. “And then you’re taking a shower, and then sleeping. At least seven hours, no less. I think you went twenty-four without bein’ horizontal even once. Again.”

“I have important work.”

“Yeah and your self-pampering is part of that, which has been super neglected, you workaholic. Put some energy into restoring your energies, ‘kay?”

Donnie huffs, smiles, and nods.

“Atta boy!” Mikey crows. He gives Donnie one last squeeze and then stands up from his stool. “And now we go follow through with that stuff, and then we set an alarm for when your government mandated vacation time is up.”

“I wasn’t aware we had a government,” Donnie says bemusedly, standing with twin cracks to his cramping knees. Ow. “Or... vacation hours, for that matter.”

“It’s the dictator government of ‘take better care of yourself, idiot’,” Mikey says imperiously, reaching out and tugging on Donnie’s arm. “I’m the dictator and I’m dictating you go take a fuckin’ shower while I reheat food.”

“I thought Leo was the resident dictator,” Donnie says. “Or Raph, possibly.”

“They like to think they’re the dictators, but Leo’s actually just a tator and Raph’s just a dick. Two halves but not whole! Me though? I’m the whole package.”

“And what does that make me in this hypothetical government equation?”

“The judge or jury or someone who needs to take a shower and eat real food.”

“That’s court, Mikey, not the ruling figures of a country.”

“Blah blah blah- less smart talk more taking care of yourself, go go go.”

“I’m going,” Donnie grouses, but his lips are curling on the ends as his brother drags him from his lab by the hand, and he doesn’t glance back at his temporarily halted work.

A shower, two servings of curry and one of slightly charred toast later, with the addition of bean bags and a G-rated oldie-but-goodie movie turned on, Donnie’s frayed nerves settle down as he does.

Mikey takes up the bean bag beside him as Donnie does, and Donnie has barely enough energy left to shoot a grateful smile at his brother before his eyes slide shut.

As Donnie falls asleep completely, Mikey stealthily takes the t-phone out of his brother’s belt, and adds an extra two hours to the alarm setting. Seven hours isn’t going to cut it for those deep bags under his bro’s eyes, and Mikey knows the small sabotage will be forgiven.

If he’d let Donnie go to his room, his genius brother would have found a little gadget somewhere in there to tinker with instead of actually sleeping. So, movie marathon it is, while Donnie heads into a good, well deserved sleep.

Not a bad arrangement. Mikey doesn’t mind watching movies, or stepping up to give his brother a little extra push towards functionality.

He knows Donnie’s work is important, and that he can’t really do anything to help- but Mikey also knows that Donnie will run himself into the ground if he keeps going at things like this, and knows what it feels like when you can’t stop going full-tilt at a problem until its solved.

Warm food and a good sleep can fix that, though. Or at least give you a fresh perspective whenever you wake up again. Dimension-X taught him that, and he figures that this time around, he can be the one to pass knowledge onto someone.

Mikey slumps a little further into his bean bag, comfy as can be; listening to Donnie start whistling through his little tooth gap as he breathes, and smiling to himself as the movie hits the first major plot point.

#tmnt #tmnt 2012 #michelangelo #Donatello #b-team babes #and yeah this is a fair while after season four/splinter's death #they're all just trying to figure out what to do with themselves now that the war is over #i feel this would be especially hard for donnie #since for the past three+ yrs he's been nonstop with a hundred and one problems at any given time #mikey's sort of 'let it happen and let it go' mentality is a good counterpart to that #so they once again #have my favorite characterization balance #My writing

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brightlotusmoon · 7 years

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Sneak Peek: More CFR Crossfire Chapter Fifteen

So I had already posted something quick and rough, but I’m still not at the good parts and there is still angst and sad and fluff and I may need help transitioning into comedic fluff once they get the portal working so they can cross from 2003 World to 2012 World. I swear, I’ve had more people helping me with this single chapter than any work I’ve written. I just neeeed to get the two Splinters right! And that can’t happen until the Angst Hurt Comfort is out of the way. I’m making myself sad and impatient, you guys. Buuut I am also offering valuable treatment of seizures, so there is that?

Anyway. More scenes. This is already a long chapter. Probably not the last. Second to last. 2003 Leo needs to fanboy over the 2012 dojo tree. 2003 Rat Splinter needs to be in awe of 2012 Yoshi Splinter. So many things need to happen. Also, 2003 Mikey may or may not have had telepathic comfort sex with 2012 Mikey’s polyamorous girlfriend. I’m not telling. PS, in this universe, there is no Apriltello, although they are very best friends forever and maybe one day if April talks enough to Gaia, who is poly and has Donnie as a secondary, who knows.

“Good! Yeah!” Mike glanced around, still nervous for no reason he could place. Also, tired. And foggy. “Um. What’s…what’s going on? Is something wrong?”

Splinter touched his face, tilting his head. “Your eyes are strange. Are you feeling well, Michelangelo?”

Mike blinked. “Um. Just tired. Little Mikey said we could be tired when we came out of…”

“You had a seizure, Mikey,” Don’s voice drifted out from the lab. “Both of you. Didn’t you tell?”

Mike frowned. “No? Why? What’s it feel like?”

Donnie hurried out to him and grabbed his head, “Look me in the eye, okay? Follow my finger. Now I need you to--”

Confused, Mike played Don’s odd game of tests, and felt his hands begin to shake as Don pressed on them.

“Yup,” Donnie confirmed. “Lie down. Are you very tired? Foggy? Is it getting hard to form words?”

As Mike was gently pressed down to a couch by Leo, he found his sight blurring? “Yes, all of that. Don, what’s up with that?”

April moved to sit by his head. “Here’s the thing about epilepsy. Sometimes you won’t know a seizure has happened until after. So let’s say you stay still until you start feeling better.”

“When did you figure all that out?”

“I’m a researcher, Mikey, it’s what I do. Casey, get him some juice, please? And a cool damp washcloth.

Mike couldn’t understand the fuss, but his hands were still shaking and he wanted to sleep forever, so he let his family worry over him, and decided to mentally search for his counterpart after juice.

And then he remembered the other thing.

“Wait! Wait, I need to see--” And again, hands on his shoulders and “Don’t make me sit on you,” Leo warned gently. And there was a cup held to his mouth, and he drank slowly but his mind was racing through the fog and he wanted to burst into tears.

“Mikey,” and Leo ran his fingers along his cheek, “Mikey, hey, shh, it’s okay. You’re shaking, try to breathe. Deep breaths, little brother.”

And he couldn’t quit trembling but he needed to know because that thing was—

There was some sort of commotion.

“Wait, no, don’t let him hurt himself!”

“What do you think I’m trying to do? He keeps getting out of the bed!”

“Mikey, stop that, stop, Mikey, what, what is it? Why…Damn it, someone…”

“Fuuuck. I got this. C’mere, little brat…”

And while Leo and April were distracted, Mikey sat up a little, peering over Leo’s shoulder.

Little Donnie was half in and half out the lab door, full of gangly confusion, his diastema prominent in clenched teeth. “He keeps asking how your Mike is…”

“Flat on the couch,” Mike yowled, “and grumpy about it!”

“Let ‘im see for himself,” came Raph’s voice. A few seconds later, Mike blinked, as his bulky brother came into sight cradling the freckled child, who was staring owlishly around at everyone.

Mike remembered the thing now, reached out a hand and a thought just as Little Mikey did the same—

--and electricity crashed between them and they both shrieked. Raph cursed, gripping Little Mikey tighter, and Leo’s arms came crashing around Mike, pulling him back and up against the cushions. Mike let himself be held there. The shaking was starting to ease. Raph sat on the couch with Little Mikey on his lap, who uncurled, murmured something, and rubbed his face with one hand. Raph merely nodded and set him on the couch. Finally, they were touching. Little Mikey limply rested his head against Mike’s bicep and grunted.

Mike just nodded at him. “You remember?”

Little Mikey grinned weakly. “Duh, yeah. Gaia and April might have to modify for the other side. Oh, and it wasn’t a memory.”

“Felt like a memory.” Mike rubbed his face with both hands, and the flashes came back behind his eyes, the sense of doubling, of everyone being everywhere at once, two Splinters laughing together, two huge trees superimposed spiraling out of a dojo toward an impossible sky.

“Future, man,” Little Mikey said, and he dropped his hands and stared. “Wait, really? We saw the future?”

And Little Mikey burst into shaky laughter, eyes feverishly bright, legs kicking, and Little Leo came to hold him in a mirror pose until both Mikes were leaned against their Leos in exhaustion.

“That’s so cute, it’s so new to you. Dude, I could get used to this. Man, can we stay longer? I need to teach this guy some things.”

Little Leo frowned. “I thought you told us you can do that across dimensions, in the white place.”

Mike and his brothers, Splinter, and April exchanged glances.

“Oh, I can. It takes more energy, but I can. It’s just…guys, this is so fun I wanna do this like forever.”

And Mike found himself gleeful, but his smile faded when he saw the sad solemnity in the eyes of the kids.

“But…?” April prodded.

“I…” Little Donnie bit his lip. “I don’t like how this trans-dimensional energy is interacting with Mikey’s psionics, it’s putting him off-kilter. I’m worried he’ll hurt himself if we stay too long.”

Little Mikey flopped with feline grace to peer at Little Donnie over the back of the couch. “Yeah, but how long, Dee? A week? A month? Come oonn, I might get…what is the word, acclimated.”

Little Leo was stroking his head. “Mikey, it’s not our world.”

And there was a sudden build-up, a burst of foggy energy, and Mike sensed the most powerful shields ever constructed crumble a little.

“I’m not our world!” Little Mikey cried out. “I’m not any world. The world that grew in my brain is gone. I’m all that’s left. I’m all by myself in here…” And he pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, “and it gets dark and hollow, and Neural is no help because he keeps maintaining, and I can’t keep talking to myself, and nobody understands and maybe I need something…something…s-s-s-some…”

“Oh gods and kami, Mikey, no, no…” and Leo was rocking him like a child, eyes wide and afraid and I don’t know what to do and his entire body was tense, and then Little Raph was there, smooshed against them on the couch, arms wrapping around older and younger, cheek pressed against Little Mikey’s cheek.

Little Donnie was crouched closely, a device in his hands, Mike recognized it as an Utrom scanner for vital signs and brain activity. He was holding Little Mikey’s free hand, tight tight tight, and an unspoken force passed between them, tears in Little Donnie’s eyes, and Little Mikey’s I’m so sorry, I’m sorry loud enough for everyone to hear.

Leo was hugging him from behind, nuzzling his jaw and breathing those very deep meditative exercises. “Mikey, bro, talk to me. I’m here.”

“I’m scared,” Mike whispered. “I don’t wanna be sick and disabled. I wanna handle myself. But if that’s the side effects of having superpowers, I’ll take it. Just…promise you’ll stay. You have to stay, all of you.”

Another hug, a soft intake of shuddering breath, and Leo’s voice was music. “You’re never alone. You are my brother, my clansman, one of my best friends in the universe.” He took a breath and Mike felt him smile. “In this life, we only have each other. If one of us goes down, we all go down.”

Mikey finally grinned. “I remember. You got me through that grudge match.”

“And I will get you through everything else, my brother.”

That was good enough.

And then there was another hand, another arm, another embrace, and Donatello was gazing at him with wide desperate eyes. “I still have nightmares,” his engineer brother gasped. “And I know that future can never be ours. So I feel all right.”

Mike smiled tearfully. “Don’t disappear on us, Donnie, and everything will be awesome…”

And Don pressed his face to Mike’s neck, releasing a sob. “Never letting go.”

A thud, a familiar grunt, and a familiar hand on the top of Mike’s head. “In this together,” Raph said. “All or none.”

And Mikey finally let his sobbing laugh bubble up, and it was a good release, two sets of brothers comforting each other, and not far away, two humans and a sensei witnessing.

And Mikey recalled two Splinters laughing over cups of tea in a different kitchen, and he knew family was family.

#tmnt 2012 #tmnt 2003 #tmnt #mikey #neurodivergent mikey #psionic mikey #fanficton #myfics #my fanfic #headcanon #these brothers i swear #prepare for brotherly fluff #they love each other so much #mikey is awesome #cold fire rising #cfr crossfire

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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The tale of Halloween in Haddonfield, Illinois, has been told and retold: the night in 1963 that an angelic 6-year-old Michael Myers, dressed in a clown suit, brutally murdered his teenage sister, followed by the night 15 years later, again on Halloween, when he broke out of a mental institution in his famously mutilated William Shatner mask to terrorize the virginal babysitter Laurie Strode, a.k.a. Jamie Lee Curtis in the role that would make her the ultimate scream queen.

As Laurie, Curtis has battled the unkillable, silent but single-minded Michael Myers across five of the 11 films in John Carpenter’s Halloween franchise — including the newest entry, a sort-of sequel, sort-of remake directed by David Gordon Green that’s out this weekend.

Of all iconic horror franchises, none is quite as quirky and erratic as this one. Though the original film, Halloween (1978), is Carpenter’s signature film, it’s the only one in the series he directed. He then co-wrote and co-produced a sequel with his collaborator Debra Hill, but their subsequent attempt to keep the series from becoming formulaic would end up sending it meandering off in random, truncated directions.

As a result, where most horror franchises stick to their main story concept and expand it over time, the Halloween franchise keeps getting lost and restarting itself — hence the shaky continuity of the latest film. The only thing we can say for sure about the timeline is that the first two films are paired and occur in sequential order on the very same night. After that, the franchise goes haywire, spinning through one-offs, sequels, and remakes that perpetually overwrite each other.

Of course, this cyclical quality may also be why Halloween is so enduringly popular — you definitely don’t need to have seen every film in the franchise to understand what’s happening, or to enjoy the next one.

Of course, there’s another facet of the series’ enduring popularity that can’t be overlooked, and that’s the cat-and-mouse game between Laurie and horror’s most implacable killer. So if you’re a fan of Michael Myers, you came to the right place: Let us walk you through the movies and tell you which are indispensable for the casual Halloween fan and which are skippable (most of them).

Before we get started: With a franchise this inconsistent, it’s good to establish which parts of the films are consistent. That way, when you brush up on your Halloween movies, it won’t matter if you skip a few. Here are the main rules of the franchise — all of which, unsurprisingly, involve its iconic villain.

1) Michael Myers always wears his mask — and he never, ever speaks.

You rarely see him without his mask in any of the films. The Shatner masks have become the stuff of horror film legend. As for his voice, you only hear him speak in one film in which his childhood is explored — before he became a monster. Beyond that? Nada.

2) Michael is usually credited as “The Shape” and is always referred to at some point as the Boogeyman.

A crediting tradition begun in the first two films and intermittently revived over the years, “The Shape” is back for the 2018 sequel. The Boogeyman has remained a constant.

3) Michael is always obsessed with Laurie Strode or her nearest relations.

The reason for this is revealed in the second film, and all the following films have retained this explanation for their connection.

4) Michael never runs. He always walks slowly after his victims, and he’s never in a hurry.

Part of the terrifying thing about Michael is that he’s surely the most casual serial killer in history. He never picks up the pace beyond a leisurely stroll, and he often seems to be nearly lackadaisical in his attempts to off his prey. Of course, he nearly always gets them in the end.

5) Michael can’t be killed.

This one is obvious, but it bears stating for the record. Throughout the franchise, he will survive multiple gunshots, stabbings, explosions, car crashes, electrocution, being run over, having his skull bashed in, being set on fire multiple times, and (sorta) being decapitated.

Got all that? Great. Let’s go trick-or-treating!

The Shape having some fun.

Tagline: “The night HE came home!”

Is it a trick or a treat? Definitely a treat.

Halloween is famous for lots of reasons. It singlehandedly launched the era of the slasher film. It’s John Carpenter’s debut film, a low-budget indie that made an astronomical profit and launched his career. It’s got one of the most famous film scores and horror themes in history, written by Carpenter himself. It remains an incredibly creepy film, full of lingering and now-iconic shots of its killer stalking through idyllic suburbia, biding his time or casually observing his kills. And, most crucially, it introduced us to one of horror’s most famous villains, destined to be eternally mentioned in the same breath as Freddy and Jason.

Halloween is often credited as being the first example of the slasher subgenre of horror, and for introducing the world to the concept of the Final Girl: the one girl, usually singled out for her virginal qualities, who gets to survive the cinematic massacre of all her counterparts.

Except neither of those things is true. The slash-happy Giallo genre of Italian noir thrillers predates Halloween by about a decade, and two earlier slasher movies gave us the prototypical Final Girls: Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Canadian cult classic Black Christmas, which were released a few months apart from each other in 1974.

However, Carpenter’s tale did serve to mainstream both the slasher film and the Final Girl, thanks largely to the magnetism of Jamie Lee Curtis as the canny, if mostly helpless, Laurie Strode.

Laurie typified the Final Girl trope from the start: She was “too smart” for boys and dressed like a dowdy homemaker, in contrast to the other girls with their trendy fashion and sexual exploration; in other words, she embodied the kind of chaste virtue that ensured her survival. But Curtis managed to pull off this role with a kind of fierce, gleaming shrewdness beneath the passive exterior — and two decades later, in her return to the franchise after a long hiatus, she would really throw off the helpless act once and for all.

The other main character of Halloween is an unlikely one, but nonetheless a fan favorite: Michael’s zealous therapist Dr. Loomis, played by the ever-zany Donald Pleasence, who would remain the heart of the franchise until his death.

Then there’s the specter of Michael himself, who’s played mainly by the actor (and later established director) Nick Castle. As horror villains go, Michael is ranked very high on the “too unbelievable to be effective” meter, but there’s something truly and indelibly terrifying about him, from the moment he shows up for his first killing spree as a kid, dressed in a Harlequin costume, to the time he returns to skulk silently around Laurie’s suburban neighborhood, dangling a knife and wearing a mask that’s dirty, mottled, and still creepy as hell.

It’s a little-known fact that the Halloween franchise is actually sponsored by jack-o’-lanterns. Universal/IMDB

Tagline: “More of the night HE came home.” (I guess modern horror was still working out how to really market this franchise thing, huh.)

Is it a direct sequel? Yes.

Is it a trick or a treat? For true Halloween fans, it’s a treat, albeit a plodding one.

Halloween 2, also written by Carpenter and Hill, picks up immediately after the first film, still on the same Halloween night. With Loomis leading police all over town looking for Michael, our killer naturally hightails it to the hospital where Laurie is recuperating from her injuries and proceeds to kill everyone on staff in order to get to her. The movie concludes with the shocking revelation that Laurie is Michael’s other sister, born too young to know him and sheltered from the truth all her life — until, of course, her past literally catches up with her on Halloween.

What makes this film notable among the franchise is that it establishes the central conflict of Michael versus the town of Haddonfield itself. Haddonfield is the only “character” that consistently appears throughout the Halloween series (minus the outlier that is the third film), and its relationship to Michael changes in interesting ways over the decades.

As films go, however, Halloween 2 isn’t very good. Laurie is relegated to an even more useless role than in the first film, spending the movie disabled due to her injuries. And even though we’re only on the second film, the murders already feel formulaic and perfunctory; gone are the creatively displayed bodies and carefully arranged murder tableaus, staged to increase the horror for everyone who finds them.

Perhaps because it’s the same night and he’s been on his feet all day running from the law, and, oh, yeah, at some point he apparently absorbed six bullets to the chest and head, in Halloween II Michael’s pretty “whatever” about how the bodies fall. He does get to fake out a really dumb cop by pretending to be dead, though, and he clearly enjoys that bit, so you do you, Mikey.

I’m angry that this still shot makes this film look so much cooler than it is. Universal/IMDB

Tagline: “The night no one comes home.”

Is it a direct sequel? No, it has nothing to do with any other Halloween movie.

Is it a trick or a treat? This movie is a dirty trick on all Halloween fans, but worth checking out just for the weirdness — especially for John Carpenter completists.

After Halloween 2, Carpenter and Hill had a combined vision for the future of Halloween: turn it into a series of anthology films rather than continuing the story of Michael Myers. As such, Season of the Witch, directed and written by Halloween’s production designer Tommy Lee Wallace, has nothing to do with the prior two films apart from recalling a single vague line in the second film about how Samhain, October 31, was a Druidic holiday often accompanied by ritual sacrifice.

Today, we’re used to horror franchises that expand out from their original storylines and go in different directions, thanks to more recent series like Paranormal Activity and The Conjuring. But Season of the Witch lacked any connective tissue with its predecessors and strayed too far from the formula fans had come to expect. In fact, Season of the Witch actually made the original Halloween a movie that exists within its storyline, which totally destroyed any semblance of continuity.

Season of the Witch instead treads a line between Lovecraftian horror and a corporate sci-fi dystopia, planting itself in California instead of Illinois and insinuating a terrifying global Halloween night conspiracy, all originating in a tiny rural company town. Frequent Carpenter collaborator Tom Atkins stars as a middle-aged doctor drawn into the madness after a patient dies at the hands of mysterious suit-wearing shills for a corporation that sells Halloween masks. Yes, that is a real sentence I just wrote.

The film meanders between Atkins’s frequently far-fetched sleuthing and sinister happenings around the factory and its town, while the company owner, a cross between an evil Willy Wonka and Lord Summerisle, oversees all. The whole ridiculous plot comes to a head with about as much incoherence as you’d expect based on everything I’ve just written.

Predictably, Season of the Witch was a box office flop and ended Carpenter and Hill’s hopes of turning the franchise into an anthology series. But then it gradually became a cult classic among horror fans; you can see its influence on modern horror films like Cabin in the Woods, and its fans argue that if it had been a standalone film called Season of the Witch, its reception would have been much different.

Also, the soundtrack to Season of the Witch, again scored by Carpenter, contains a theme titled “Chariots of Pumpkins,” and it is fantastic.

Donald Pleasence reacts to the news that he has to keep making these films. Universal/IMDB

Taglines: “Tonight, HE’S BACK!”; “Michael lives. AND THIS TIME THEY’RE READY!”; “Terror never rests in peace.”

Are they direct sequels? Yes, very loosely.

Are they tricks or treats? TRICKS, don’t be fooled — we watched these films so you won’t have to.

I need to state for the record that Donald Pleasence is a truly great actor. His performance in the Outback horror Wake in Fright is unforgettable. He was a perfect Bond villain. He was nominated for four Tony Awards! But he also loved to chew the scenery, and the middle period of the Halloween franchise gave him plenty to sink his teeth into.

The fourth and fifth films, churned out in 1988 and ’89, attempt to carry on the saga of the Strodes and Michael Myers without Jamie Lee Curtis. A slew of new writers and directors dropped into the franchise, and the fourth film replaced Laurie Strode after killing her off in a car accident, sight unseen, by inventing her 8-year-old daughter, an annoyingly cherubic little girl named Jamie.

Nothing that happens in Halloween 4, 5, or 6 ultimately matters because they’re all generic teen slashers with Spielbergian little kids and a raving Pleasence at their centers, and because the sixth film promptly kills Jamie to make way for a new set of victims (including Clueless-era Paul Rudd) and a whole lot of wacky new plot: Michael apparently fathered a son by his niece Jamie (wtf) while she was being held hostage for, like, a decade (wtf!) in a full-on goth cult(!!!) as part of yet another vast Druidic conspiracy orchestrated by the head of Michael’s sanitarium to mystically implant Michael with superhuman sociopathy, because HALLOWEEN.

But none of that matters either, because Halloween 6 was widely hated, it flopped at the box office, and then its dumb plot was also totally ignored by every other film to follow.

However, one thing that is interesting in these films is the development of Haddonfield as a self-aware character in the tale of Michael Myers. The police force evolves into an overeager, hapless army pitting itself against Michael’s eventual return, while the townspeople, believing he’s finally gone, turn him into a proper urban legend.

The main draw of this misbegotten middle part of the Halloween saga is Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis. Armed only with a pathetic and paltry pistol, Loomis seems to be the only character capable of facing down Michael again and again and surviving to tell the tale. And Pleasence always manages to walk a line between stone-cold sanity and madness that keeps Loomis vulnerable and endearing even at his campiest.

Unfortunately, Pleasence died after filming but before the release of the sixth film, which is dedicated to his memory. And without him, there really was only one other person who could keep the Halloween flame burning.

We stan a scream queen with a kickass haircut and a survivor’s outlook on life.

Taglines: “The night SHE fought back!”; “This summer, terror won’t be taking a vacation.” (This one makes sense when you realize the film was released in August.)

Is it a direct sequel? Yes, as the title implies.

Is it a trick or a treat? Honestly, this one’s a treat.

Director Steve Miner wisely brought Jamie Lee Curtis back to the franchise for H20 by completely ignoring anything that happened in films 3 through 6 aside from the barely mentioned car accident used to kill off Laurie Strode to begin with. Here we learn she faked her own death, moved out to California, and became a prep school head under an assumed identity. Michael tracks her down anyway, just in time for her son’s 17th birthday, and the madness begins again.

Two things are apparent when you watch H20. The first is how much the ’90s did to advance the treatment of women in horror films, and how markedly different adult Laurie is from her tepid, terrified younger self. Though she’s still clearly traumatized from what happened to her, she’s also built an amazing life for herself as an academic and a mother — and now she’s prepared to do battle to keep that life. H20 is the first film where any of the women targeted by Michael, or indeed any of the victims at all, really attempt to fight back instead of just running around in terror for most of the movie. And the film goes a step further by having Laurie choose to stay and confront Michael even when given the opportunity to escape.

The second is how much of an immediate impact Scream had on horror films of the late ’90s. (At one point, the film shows its group of teenagers watching Scream 2 on Halloween night.) H20 is far more character-driven than any of its predecessors, and it pivots around Laurie and her relationship with her son (Josh Hartnett). This is the moment you can see the Halloween producers finally figuring out that horror franchises can be about more than just horror.

Please, let the white dude cosplaying as Samuel L. Jackson tell you everything you need to know about this movie.

Tagline: “Evil finds its way home.”

Is it a direct sequel? Supposedly it’s a loose sequel to H20, but we reject this premise.

Is it a trick or a treat? The WORST TRICK, stay away unless you like kitschy early internet nostalgia and lots of blurry found-footage trickery.

Halloween: Resurrection is so on-trend for summer 2001 that it’s almost worth watching for the cheesy time capsule aspects: the impact of early reality television, the advent of online relationships, and, of course, the way both Scream and Blair Witch Project had led to a trend of so-meta-it-hurts horror films experimenting with found footage and shaky cams. This one sees a bunch of college students watching and cheering on a bunch of other college students — and Busta Rhymes, for some reason — as they invade the old Myers house for a live televised reality show that of course turns into a house of horrors when Michael shows up for some slice-and-dice.

Where is Laurie during all this, you ask? Gone is the assertive survivor Laurie from H20. The film strips her of her new life and plants her in an institution as a result of the ending of that previous film. Then it kills her off within the first 10 minutes, giving the series its low point when she kisses Michael on the mouth and promises to “see you in hell.”

What Resurrection misses completely is that Halloween just isn’t Halloween without Michael battling a specific set of characters. To the extent that Halloween 4-6 worked, they worked because Michael was still pursuing the Strode family and still combating Dr. Loomis. Take away that connection and you’re left with a formulaic slasher movie that no amount of clever stylization can cover.

Taglines: “Evil has a destiny”; “Family is forever.”

Are they direct sequels? No, these are spiritually faithful remakes of both.

Are they tricks or treats? Very sharp treats.

From the emotionally violent opening scene, in which we gradually realize we’re seeing a picture of Michael Myers’s deeply dysfunctional home life before he snapped and went on his childhood killing spree, Rob Zombie’s take on Halloween announces itself as something different, a cut above all the other films in the franchise, bar the first one.

By giving Michael a backstory similar to the ones that often breed real-life serial killers, the film humanizes him and belies the idyllic “terror comes to suburbia” aspect of all the previous films. The film also delves into an aspect of his story that to this point had only been described after the fact: his psychotherapy sessions with Dr. Loomis, here played by Malcolm McDowell. The second film, Halloween II, also extends this interest in psychology to Laurie Strode (played this time by Scout Taylor-Compton), plumbing the emotional and psychological connection between her and Michael.

Like all Rob Zombie films, these are steeped in violence and obscenity, but the deranged atmosphere does more to make Michael feel interesting than all the previous films — he’s both a superhuman killer and a boy plainly driven by the sociological factors that turn people into sociopaths. As horror films go, these are among the better offerings of the aughts’ crop of gritty slashers, à la Wolf Creek. And because it’s still about Michael Myers, it all feels epic and larger than life in a way few of those other films do.

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Of course, we can’t tell you too much about the new film, except to say that it will feel very familiar to Halloween fans. Curtis’s Laurie is back in full-on survivor (and survivalist) mode. And this time, her whole family has to face down Michael with her — whether they’re ready or not.

This version of Halloween pays direct homage to the original Halloween in numerous ways. It expects its viewers to know and love the original film, and to react to its echoes years later. Above all, this Halloween is fully aware of what Halloween films do best: let Michael Myers terrify viewers as he conducts his regularly scheduled eerie rampage through Haddonfield. So prepare to meet the face of pure evil — for the 10th time in four decades.

Original Source -> Halloween: a complete guide to horror’s quirkiest, most erratic franchise

via The Conservative Brief

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