It’s an unwritten (or maybe it is written somewhere?) rule of the Halloween franchise that we can never see Michael Myers without his mask. At least not directly. The movies have been teasing us with the reveal of his actual, human appearance ever since 1978, but whenever his mask comes off he’s always obscured by low lightning or teasing camera angles. Sure enough, Halloween Kills pulls the same trick.
In Kills, Michael’s mask has a particularly distinctive look as it’s melted down one side due to his being trapped in Laurie’s burning house at the end of the 2018 reboot/start of this one. Eventually, his mask is removed, giving us a fleeting glimpse of his badly scarred face, although – true to form – we don’t get to see him clearly. But these new behind-the-scenes pictures reveal the burned boogeyman in all his glory.
As shared by Zack Myers on Instagram, these BTS photos reveal performer James Jude Courtney in full make-up as the badly disfigured Michael. Myers’ images give us a closer look at the incredible detail of the prosthetics used on Courtney, as applied by the film’s make-up artist Chris Nelson. Check them out via the post below:
Kills also featured another incredible transformation made possible by top-notch make-up effects. The surprise return of Dr. Loomis in a flashback sequence made it look like the filmmakers had revitalized some old footage of Donald Pleasence or else had used CGI, but in actual fact, the character was brought back by entirely practical means, with a stand-in actor turned into a dead ringer for the late actor.
While Halloween Kills didn’t break the rule of fully showing us Michael’s face, it shocked fans in many other ways, mostly in terms of which characters made it out alive and which didn’t. The good news is we only have to wait one more year to find out where the franchise goes from here, as Halloween Ends will conclude the Blumhouse trilogy when it arrives in October 2022.
