The Movie Room

Halloween 1978, directed by John Carpenter

Rating: 10/10

The question of where slashers started is up for debate, whether it was Black Christmas in 1974, Peeping Tom in 1960, or earlier (I feel like Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel And Then There Were None qualifies as a slasher…), but Halloweenremains as the peak of the format and what really drove the craze, and for good reason.

First off, this movie is just scary. It immerses us in Michael Myers’s point of view from the very beginning when we only see through eye holes as he is a child in a costume. This POV is not consistently used throughout the film, but the lack of consistency serves to make it more frightening. When we are watching the teenagers walking around the town, it is not always clear if we are watching them as Michael Myers or watching them as just the audience, and this confusion blurs the line between the two in a way that implies audience culpability in very unsettling ways. Beyond John Carpenter’s voyeuristic directorial intentions, he also made a fantastic horror score that amps up the frights. The music is so haunting but also deceptively simple. This, again, puts us in the mind of Michael Myers as he has these disturbing thoughts but also is still seemingly trapped in his childhood. There is no need for a full orchestra to make this feel like a grand tragedy—the simple piano makes it clear that this is a small town local horror and it is just as engrossing as anything on a larger scale. 

What also sets Halloween apart from many of its imitators is that there isn’t that much blood in it. We see Michael kill a few people, but the violence and gore is for the most part just implied. This movie is often remembered as filled with blood and death, which just shows how much it works upon the imagination. There is a place for the glorious blood baths in A Nightmare on Elm Street or The Evil Dead, but the implications here work more insidiously and stay with you longer. Instead of being told what Michael is doing, we imagine it for ourselves. The bloodier we think this movie is, the more effective all those techniques (like the POV shots and simple score) demonstrate themselves to be, as our visions of blood are just proof of John Carpenter turning us into our own Michael Myerses. 

This movie is a classic for a reason and deserves to be watched every year in October. Slasher is one of my favorite horror genres, and this one feels pretty high above most others as it makes you think about the murders more than most which get part of their artistry out of in-the-moment shocks.