Every Michael Myers Halloween mask tells a story

For over 40 years, the Halloween franchise has been associated with one character and one mask: Michael Myers and his blank, white face. (He even appears in the standalone Halloween III: Season of the Witch courtesy of a “Heh heh. Got it?” advert running on a TV.) This mask is famous for taking a William Shatner Star Trek mask and retooling it to feature even more mindless evil. This mask is right there with Jason Voorhee’s infamous hockey mask, when it comes to embodying the slasher genre as a whole.

However, not all masks are created equal. Throughout the Halloween series, various redesigns led to a sort of rise and fall and rise, and if you’re the kind of person who cares deeply (the right kind of person), you’ll find that every single Michael has a distinctly gives a different mood.

Halloween (1978): The classic

The romantic ideal of the Michael Myers mask, the original, works so well mainly because the film’s director, John Carpenter, is so adept at knowing where shadows are supposed to be. The cheekbones add a little underlining in dark closeups so it doesn’t look like Myers is carrying a container of mayonnaise on his head, and Michael’s real eyes are very rarely seen, giving him that inhuman quality of The Shape. Combine that with the slight crawling in his hair and you have a grade A mask of insanity, one that completely alienates the audience from any kind of human connection or empathy.

Halloween II (1981): The Dyeing Job

Image: Universal Pictures

The mask inside Halloween II is not too dissimilar to the first, but there is one key difference: the hair has a brownish touch and can appear redder or even blonder depending on the light. It’s also slicked back a lot here, making Michael look like he’s already wearing a toupee to relive his glory days from three years ago. It’s not a bad mask, but just as much of it Halloween II is the franchise working overtime to keep up with the slasher wave that inspired it, it feels like a rushed product.

Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers (1988): The Bland One

Image: Trancas International Films

Story-wise, the fact that 10 years later Myers would snap a mask that looks hardly like his original in a sequel makes sense. At this point, the company that makes them probably changed hands a few times in the Reagan 80’s. The mask has had all the cool details removed and now has the “bought from CVS Pharmacy at 6:04pm on October 31st panicking about trick or treating” look. Too bad it looks so cheap and cheesy on every shot, because otherwise To return is a pretty awesome Halloween movie with a lot of atmosphere.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989): The Bottom of the Barrel

Image: Magnum Pictures

It’s a debate that has been going on for centuries, or at least since the 1990s. Which mask is worse: 1988 or 1989? To return‘s is stripped of any menacing traits to an ironic degree Revenge has features, but all the wrong ones. The neck is way too big, which means the rubber just sort of flaps around the stuntman’s throat. Meanwhile, the nose is way too thin, which when mixed with the messy hair gives it a real Timothée Chalamet vibe.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995): The Fool

Image: Miramax

After a six-year hiatus, the Halloween franchise would return with a mask that’s slightly better than the ones in the previous two installments. This one has shaggy hair and a blank expression, but that expression does not radiate unreasonable malice; Instead, it’s doggie innocence that makes it seem like Michael Myers has trouble with a trivia question at all times. The confusion makes sense, though—at this point in the franchise, the Halloween lore had spiraled out of control, losing its original intent of faceless, inexplicable evil and instead turning Myers into an incestuous bull stud for a Celtic-themed doomsday cult.

Halloween H20 (1998): The Mixed Bag

Image: Dimension Films

Bringing the franchise back to its roots, ignoring the final four sequels, and reintroducing Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode character to the series definitely made for a sleeker experience. If only the mask could keep up. Multiple masks are used throughout H20, including CGI files. But if we had to grade it on Myers’ main mask, which appears during the iconic scene in which a horrified Laurie confronts Michael through a tiny window, the results are pretty inconsistent. The mask detail is there, but without Carpenter’s shadow (being able to see his big eyes so clearly all the time doesn’t do Michael’s mystique any favours) and with a tuft of onion hair, there’s little to get in the way of the results.

Halloween Resurrection (2002): The EVIL

Image: Dimension Films

Perhaps the most notorious film of the series, Halloween resurrection would kill Laurie Strode in its opening sequence and introduce Busta Rhymes as a reality TV producer doing roundhouse kicks. In short, it’s an odd watch. That said, the mask used isn’t too bad, as long as you want your Michael to look very visibly evil. Extremely raised eyebrows, painted shadows, and unhappy cheeks make Michael look downright dour, an old man who, now in his seventh installment, must contend with bland, horny teenagers trying to find fame in his childhood home.

Halloween (2007): The Scarred Model

Image: Dimension Films

In reinventing Michael Myers during the horror remake arms race of the mid-’80s, director Rob Zombie covers his Myers mask with dirt and blemishes. It’s the result of being left under some floorboards for 15 years, and it doesn’t look too bad – at least it appears to be the product of a real artist and not a frantic rush for some ghost Halloween. In the first act of the film, we also see an exact recreation of the original – a brief nod to fans of the series before Zombie goes and does whatever he wants with it.

Halloween II (2009): The Beard

Image: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

With even more scars and actor Tyler Mane’s large beard poking out from the back of his neck, the mask from Rob Zombie’s second stint with the series is either a travesty or a testament to an artist’s ability to detract from the source material. Zombie takes even more liberties when he has one of Myers’ victims scrape off a rough third of the mask, leaving Myers with one eye visible and one under the mask. Visually, it looks pretty stark, especially when the masked eye is bathed in darkness, and is a nice counterbalance to all those times Zombie decides to just let Michael run around without a mask and enjoy the fall breeze.

Halloween (2018): The Old Man

Image: Universal Pictures

Like zombies weathered approach, the mask in the direct sequel to the first Halloween is old too. But this time we’re offered a few more wrinkles and a lot of dust – meaning that, like Michael, this mask has been locked away to be forgotten. Of course, that doesn’t happen, and Michael is strolling through Haddonfield again like in the good old days. For the most part, the mask works, and unlike Michael’s final (now non-canon) family reunion with Laurie Strode, it keeps the eyes hidden and the expression impenetrable.

Halloween Kills (2021) and Halloween Ends (2022): The Two-Face

Image: Universal Pictures

Thanks to a fire at the end of the 2018 film, Michael’s mask is in Halloween kills (and the upcoming Halloween ends) has a Harvey Dent-like burn on one side. It looks pretty cool in the dark – the little bits of charred rubber sticking out on the side add some nice touches to what is now the eleventh design in the series. In the meantime, in front of everyone, it’s still recognizable Michael. And as the series has proven over the years, that’s all you could really ask for.