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Old 02-07-2008, 01:38 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Despare View Post
I don't think that helped make Michael seem "normal" at all. I think all the backstory did was show that he had a poor childhood before he snapped. It's not like multiple killings is a normal reaction to abuse. Michael went over the edge, far far beyond where any normal person would go. All the abuse did was kind of chip away at the shell that contained the evil inside the boy. If he wasn't abused then something else in his life would have let it out of him.
that's not really what I was trying to say. my point was, mainly, that the backstory makes him seem less scary, to me. "normal" is a relative term (and one that, incidentally, in my original post, I didn't refer to MM as. I was referring to my hypothetical slasher movie villain).

"normal" serial killers are routinely the products of abuse. it allows us to view the killer as something that we have seen before here in the real world.

to me, what was great about MM was that he had no reason to do it. he just did. and that makes it scary b/c it means that anyone, including us, could, at any time, become a monster. it's the old Werewolf tale, yet again.
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