Orson Welles reputedly said to filmmaker Henry Jaglom that “the enemy of art is the absence of limitation.” Whether Wells actually said this is up for debate, but nevertheless the statement rings true. John Carpenter, like Stanley Kubrick and Welles himself, epitomizes this maxim as a filmmaker, especially with Christine. He removes so much of the unnecessary fluff of King’s novel to get to the heart of the story, which is that an unhealthy obsession can kill us all. No object of desire, whether it be inanimate or human, makes us whole. Only our own inner life and the meaningful connections we make with others completes our humanity. Arnie represents the perennially broken soul in post-war America, placating his own limitations through an object of adoration. However, in the end, the adored object obliterates him. The world is not full of spiritual phantoms, but human ones— the refuse of unfulfilled dreams. We don’t need ghosts to make the world scary; it’s haunting enough as it is.