Halloween’s make-up designer on recreating Michael Myers’ classic mask

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Michael Myers has officially returned. David Gordan Green's HALLOWEEN is now playing in theaters and all the classic elements which make up a HALLOWEEN film are acounted for, including the classic mask. Over the course of the many sequels, Michael Myers' mask has changed from film to film, sometimes drastically, but as the new film would be following directly in the footsteps of John Carpenter's original, the mask needed to be respected.

Christopher Nelson, who received an Academy Award for his work on SUICIDE SQUAD, told Vulture that he was the one who approached the HALLOWEEN team. "I have to do it," Nelson said he told producer Ryan Turek. "You have to hire me. You have to get me in touch with whoever I have to talk to. I’ll do it for nothing. I just have to do Halloween. It’s one of my dream projects ever and my favorite film ever." Nelson obviously got the gig and began studying the design of the original mask, although he admits that he did briefly toy with the idea of changing it up. Nelson and his team had to account for how the passage of time would have taken its toll on the mask, but as a real one likely wouldn't have held up after forty years, they made the choice to give Michael Myers' mask a durability similar to its wearer.

We have to capture the essence of it, and make the shape scary again. So that’s where it all started. The essence is the Boogeyman, what we first saw in that blank, emotionless face — there’s no rhyme or reason, and there’s no motivation. There’s no anything other than evil.

Christopher Nelson made sure to include battle scars from the original film, such as a hole in the neck area due to Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) stabbing him with a knitting needle and blood around his eyes due to being stabbed with a coat hanger. "All I tried to do was bring my love of that character into it," Nelson said. "I went out of my way to make it look different in every shot, changing the padding within the mask just on my own to set it off, changing the way it’s placed on him, changing the paint stains. So it’s constantly evolving and changing like the Boogeyman. I don’t think a lot of people knew that I was doing that." HALLOWEEN is now playing in theaters, so be sure to check out reviews from our own Chris Bumbray and JimmyO and let us know what you thought of the film as well!