Halloween Kills took some time to show the audience what happened after the end of the first Halloween movie when Michael Myers was found and arrested, and these flashbacks included Dr. Samuel Loomis, repeating a big mistake from Rob Zombie’s remakes. The 1980s is widely considered as the strongest decade in horror, and it saw the development of various franchises that ended up becoming part of pop culture, among those Halloween. It all began in 1978 with John Carpenter’s Halloween, which introduced the audience to slasher Michael Myers and final girl Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), and with time, became one of the most influential horror movies ever.
Halloween tells the story of Michael Myers, who on Halloween night 1963, when he was six years old, murdered his older sister. Michael was sent to Smith’s Grove Sanitarium because of that, and there he became the subject of many studies, as well as the patient of Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence). Fifteen years later, on October 30, 1978, Michael escaped and returned to his hometown Haddonfield, Illinois, where he began to stalk Laurie Strode and her friends, with Laurie becoming the movie’s final girl. Halloween spawned a franchise with 13 movies (including Halloween Ends), and while Laurie was left aside at some point as Curtis didn’t return, one character who remained a constant in the franchise was Dr. Loomis, and he was even brought back in Halloween Kills.
Dr. Loomis made his debut in Carpenter’s Halloween, where he looked for Michael all over Haddonfield as he knew he was a very dangerous man, concluding that he was the incarnation of evil. Loomis returned in Halloween II, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, this one his final appearance as Pleasence passed away in 1995. In the timeline of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later and Halloween: Resurrection, Loomis had already passed away, and in the current reboot timeline, he died at an unspecified time between the 1978 movie and the 2018 one. However, Halloween Kills brought him back in flashbacks to that traumatic Halloween night in 1978, where he was close to shooting Michael (again) but was stopped by a young Frank Hawkins (Thomas Mann). While seeing Loomis again was a surprise, this is repeating a major problem from Rob Zombie’s Halloween remakes.
In 2007, Rob Zombie brought a remake of Carpenter’s 1978 classic and also titled it Halloween. Although Zombie kept the basic premise of the original movie, it made some major changes by showing what happened with Michael at Smith’s Grove. While this gave the audience a better understanding of Michael’s personality, backstory, and dynamic with Dr. Loomis (now played by Malcolm McDowell), it was also heavily criticized as this messed with the mystery around Michael and his past which ultimately adds a lot to the fear he radiates, made him more sympathetic, and it also affected the pace of the movie. Loomis’ inclusion in Halloween Kills was distracting given how important he is in the Halloween franchise and all the flashbacks are on the same line as the ones added by Zombie, as the details they add to the story are ultimately unnecessary and only hurt the final product, highlighting the problems of their respective stories.
It’s unknown if Halloween Ends will feature more flashbacks to Halloween night 1978 or what happened after it with Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis, but hopefully, the crew behind the Halloween reboot trilogy will learn from the mistakes made in Halloween Kills and previous movies and avoid them in order to bring the reboot timeline to a satisfying conclusion. Dr. Loomis will always be a key character in the universe of Halloween, but that doesn’t mean he always has to be included.
