Dave: The Unsung Hero of Halloween 2018
Miles Robbins manages to make his token stoner character stand out, despite limited screen time.
“Cool if I explode this pumpkinhead?” — Dave
Seriously. Who calls a jack-o-lantern a pumpkinhead? Dave does, that’s who. You may think its stupid, idiotic even, to write an essay about a horror movie character who isn’t even given a last name. However, Dave, played by the relatively unknown Miles Robbins, stood out among a group of teenage characters largely without any defining qualities. But I am, so buckle up. Spoilers ahead!
In Halloween, the audience first meets Dave walking to school with Vicky (Virginia Gardner), his girlfriend, and Allyson (Andi Matichak), the granddaughter of final girl Laurie Strode (once again played by scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis). His sense of style immediately begs to be noticed, and Miles Robbins infuses him with a charisma that immediately makes him a fan favorite.
When Allyson brings up her grandmother’s trauma and phobic nature, Dave doesn’t see the big deal about a few babysitters being murdered by a knife. He rightly claims that there is “way worse shit” now, a viewpoint one can assume is largely shared by this generation of teenagers. As his girlfriend urges him to stop talking, Dave’s attention turns to a jack-o-lantern on display near them.
“Cool if I blow up this pumpkinhead?” he asks. (Yes, I quoted him on that twice.) The girls give him their blessing, and he pulls a firecracker out of his pocket (because all teenage boys have explosives on hand). He lights it, drops it in the hollow pumpkin, and runs away with his friends, snickering as the jack-o-lantern gets blown to pieces.
Then? Dave disappears for a good chunk of time. He’s not in any scenes of the school day, as director David Gordon Green spends time developing two other male characters with a fraction of the charisma and nowhere near the fashion sense. One of these characters, Allyson’s cardboard boyfriend, doesn’t even end up on the end of Michael’s kitchen knife, leaving one to wonder why he was in the movie in the first place.
Dave doesn’t appear until the titular holiday, Halloween night of 2018. He arrives in costume to hang out with Vicky, who is spending her night babysitting Julian, another scene-stealer played by nine-year-old Jibrail Nantambu. Julian, who has already provided plenty of comic relief, has been put to bed, though he’s wise to Vicky and Dave’s plans to smoke weed. This writer would also like to note that Dave remains stylin’, even in a farmer costume. Seriously, he pulls it off.
This scene is where Dave goes from charismatic goofball to downright lovable. In an early version of the script that leaked online, it is revealed that Dave is a virgin (implied in the film, but not explicitly stated), and that Vicky and Dave had plans to lose their virginities. Dave decided to commemorate this by getting a tattoo of the date inked onto his shoulder. The fact that Dave is a virgin, and the fact that his first time means enough to him to get the date inked on his body sets him apart from most male teenagers in horror films. He is not your typical slasher film douchebag, only interested in scoring. I mean, he carves a pumpkin for Vicky with heart shaped eyes. No meathead jockstrap would do that. Sure, Dave is looking forward to the deed, but the deed means something to him and Vicky.
Alas, Dave’s time is running out by the time he shows up in flannel with a jack-o-lantern in hand. Midway through their heavy make-out session, Vicky hears something, and talks Dave into investigating. Upon investigating, Dave is startled by Julian, who claims someone was upstairs watching him. Dave brushes it off, but Vicky, being the responsible babysitter, goes upstairs with Julian to put his mind at ease.
What does Dave do? Dave decides to go smoke a joint out on the back porch, by slasher logic, signing his death warrant. While his beloved is getting butchered inside the house, Dave goes out to the garage, distracted by a motorcycle. In his clumsiness, Dave tips the bike over, hears the screams, and investigates.
He runs into Julian running out of the house. Julian warns him that if he goes upstairs, he will die. Dave, now worried, goes into badass machismo mode. He grabs a knife, says “fuck this,” and…oh, wait. That’s it?!
Yes, David Gordon Green doesn’t even give Dave the onscreen death he deserved. The next time we see Dave is when the sheriff arrives on the scene. Dave is graphically shown pinned to the wall by way of knife in the neck, clearly in homage to Bob’s death in the 1978 film. What happened in this time? We, as an audience, are bafflingly left in the dark. Sure, Dave’s hero complex might be misplaced. His chivalry is an act of futility, but showing his death onscreen would have further driven that point home.
Not only is Dave given a disappointing offscreen death, but so is Vicky. After using the closet moment as one of the marketing hallmarks, Green and company fail to follow up with anything memorable, giving the two most interesting teenagers in the film the least interesting deaths.
For a film that marketed the hell out of that babysitter scene, I found myself disappointed in where it ended. The build-up was fantastic. The money shot of Michael being behind the closet door was effective, even after seeing it countless times in ads. Beyond that, the scene went nowhere. Three of the best characters in the film didn’t get a worthy comeuppance.
Overall, I enjoyed Halloween. It was a worthy and fun follow-up to one of my all time favorite films, though it did have its flaws. Upon first seeing the film, I thought they had surely cut the scene down for time, and that an extended cut would include more, or deleted scenes would be added to the home media release. Unfortunately, after reading the screenplay, it appears this is just how the film was written.
I would urge the filmmakers to shoot some extra footage to fill out the Vicky and Dave storyline more. Maybe a short film involving the Vicky, Dave, and Julian could be considered. Hell, Vicky and Dave could even be resurrected, much like Dr. Loomis in Halloween 4, and get their very own Halloween sequel with the scene-stealing Julian!
I’m aware that all of these ideas would cost money that Blumhouse and company probably doesn’t want to spend. I’m also aware that I’m selfish, and in need of more Dave. As far as slasher film stoners go, he is one of my favorites, but frustratingly underutilized. If Dave is truly dead and gone, never to return in the Halloween franchise, could Miles Robbins at least be cast in more films, please?
