Why Did Michael Myers Start Killing? His Halloween Origin Explained

"Halloween" consistently ranks among lists of the best slasher movies of all time. And it should — it essentially pioneered the slasher genre. Originally a low-budget film conceptualized by John Carpenter, the 1978 film focused on Michael Myers, an escaped patient at a psychiatric hospital, and his murder spree through the quiet fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois. With its many sequels and splintering timelines, the original reason that Myers began killing can be forgotten. Faithfuls of the franchise, however, may recall that the impetus for the series was quite simple: There was no reason that Michael started killing.

Carpenter's intent with Myers was to create the embodiment of evil. The concept of evil has no reason — it simply is. To further his vision, the adult Myers is actually referred to as "The Shape" in the end credits of the first film. The horror of "Halloween" is the reality that evil can strike even "good" people unexpectedly for no reason.

If John Carpenter had his way, "Halloween" and its message would have been left uncomfortably open-ended as a single film. In an interview with Deadline, Carpenter explained how he didn't feel the film needed a sequel, but the success of the first film led him to reluctantly agree to one. "Michael Myers was an absence of character. And yet all the sequels are trying to explain that. That's silliness — it just misses the whole point of the first movie, to me. He's part person, part supernatural force. The sequels rooted around in motivation. I thought that was a mistake," he said.

The "motivation" he referred to was the revelation in "Halloween II" that Myers and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) were siblings. Most subsequent entries in the franchise played on this familial relation. Whether it was Laurie, her daughter Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris), or Jamie's newborn child, Myers' quest to vanquish his remaining family members was the reason he kept killing anyone who got in his way.