Narrative theory in relation to the movie Halloween and The Crazies

Halloween doesn't follow Todorov's theory of the classical Hollywood narrative, as it does not start with an equilibrium, instead it starts with the murder of mike's sister, by mike. after this point however, there is a kind of equilibrium, with the mike murder story just being a kind of horror story that people just joke about in the town they live in. after this point, the movie does follow the CHN, a disequilibrium starting when mike escapes from the mental asylum and appears back in the town where his sister was killed. this disequilibrium continues until the end of the movie, where several attempts of death are made on mike, however none of them are successful, and mike vanishes into the night. So it could be said that there was not even a new equilibrium, as the killer is still out there.

The movie does follow some of Propp’s character types, with Laurie being the hero, and Michael being the villain. Also, Loomis could be counted as many of the character types, the dispatcher, the helper and the donor, because he is basically the only one that helps Laurie thwart the killer in any way. However, the other character types are not covered; there is no reward for Laurie at the end when the killer is ‘defeated’. And therefore, there is no false hero either, as no reward can be taken from Laurie, just her friends’ lives.

Halloween does in some ways follow with binary opposition, Laurie being the exact definition of good, with her being very sensible, virginal, concentrating more on her school work than anything else, whereas Michael is purely and simply evil, as described by Loomis. Also, something else is that the killer always wears dark clothes, and only does bad things during the night time; however Laurie is always seen wearing light clothes, usually white or beige. The hero and villain contrast though, with Laurie making Michael look more evil, and Michael making Laurie look better.

There is a lot of cause and effect with the Halloween film, with the murder that Michael committed leading to him being locked up in a mental asylum, to him escaping and terrorizing the town, however you see none of this, so things like the fact Michael ad actually escaped in the first place, and the fact that he was able to drive a car with no lessons, are things that make us wonder, as we aren't shown any of these things, we don’t know how some of these things are possible. 

in the movie, "The Crazies" the CHN is not followed, as the first thing we see is the town on fire, and everything in complete disarray. However, after this point, the film does in a way follow the CHN, because after the burning town, equilibrium is there because the burning town is set in he future, and you see the before part where there is just a baseball match happening, until the equilibrium is disrupted by the crazy man with the gun. there never is really a new equilibrium, apart from at the end for the couple of minutes where the sheriff and his wife think they're safe, until you see the end screen, saying that the area they're heading to is about to get nuked too.
you can identify some of Propp's character types within this movie, withe the sheriff being the hero, the "crazies" and the military is some way too being the villains, the deputy being the false hero, because he holds the sheriff and his wife at gunpoint to get his way, wastes ammo and kills a man that they were trying to get information out of, however, he also helps the sheriff, saving his life three times, and also it can be argued that the sheriff's wife could be the princess.
five binary oppositions in this movie are: the idealistic village against the burning village, safe and unsafe, dark/light, violent/calm, and infected/non infected. most of these are basically just the difference between people dying and people not dying, or equilibrium and disequilibrium, usually the equilibrium being just a normal thing, but corrupted in some way, e.g. the infected were normal people to start off with.
The three durations of this film are:92 minutes for screen time, probably many years for the plot time, and around a few days for story time.
Two examples of events that cause later in the film but happen before the film has started are the pregnancy, which causes the woman and man to be split up, and so the woman is tied up and almost killed by the zombie with the pitchfork, and then the man has to go back and save her, otherwise they both wouldn't have had to do more running away from the zombies as they would already be far enough away.

two events from the film that happen in a different time and space of what we see are: the people in the town all being killed, we dont see this but we know it has happened because of them seeing all of the burned bodies in the back of the truck, and another event is the nuclear bomb being shot, we see it go off but we're not really told about it being fired until we hear the countdown over the walkie talkie.