Halloween

A few years later, I have to add that fifth star, because Halloween is a unique film. The unsettling atmosphere escalates to a heart attack ending, John Carpenter does not take it easy on the characters or the viewer, uses edgy long shots from Myers's point of view and shows him as sheer evil, which you have no problem believing. That there is strength in simplicity is 100% true here. And Jamie Lee Curtis is amazing. (22/11/2020)

The cornerstone of the slasher genre and its best representative to this day. At times I had trouble with the plodding pace, but otherwise this is a masterpiece; Carpenter revels in point-of-view shots, unpredictably placing the masked gorilla in a carefully staged and photographed environment, and impressively delaying the climax in favour of a moment of surprise and a crescendo at the end. And there is no need to add anything about the music, no one will ever compose a better horror main theme. (02/08/2018)

John Carpenter's most important and successful film, which strongly influenced the 80s wave of slasher movies with masked killers. But while subsequent slashers focused primarily on gory effects, Halloween dispenses with almost all the gore and instead revels in the moments that precede the killing. Carpenter deliberately delays the attacks of psychopath Michael Myers as much as possible. He has the characters take long walks through various locations and keeps the audience guessing as to when and where the expected attack will occur. In doing so, he makes brilliant use of his typical wide-angle compositions, which force the audience to keep a close eye on the spaces around the characters, noting every place where Myers might be hiding (whether behind a bush or a fence in broad daylight, or in dark corners at night). As the film progresses, the scenes take place in smaller and smaller spaces, where the possibilities of escape from Myers diminish. Halloween also makes memorable use of long, voyeuristic steadicam shots. Most notably in the famous opening scene, shot from Myers' point of view, which has gone down in horror film history and has been imitated many times. Myers is completely devoid of personality and character, unlike the subsequent installments which robbed him of mystery by needlessly revealing his motivations. Here he is purely the embodiment of inexplicable evil. There are no close-ups of his reactions, and most often we see him only in outline, blending in with his surroundings (either from behind in a blurred foreground at the edge of the picture, or in the distance in the background). As a result, we cannot empathise with him for a moment. This is also what makes Halloween different from most slasher films that followed, whose central killers gradually became the main stars that audiences cheered for more than their victims. (27/05/2013)

It's admirable the simple means John Carpenter employs to create a convincingly eerie and suspenseful atmosphere. The first pillar is his own soundtrack and the second is the seemingly unremarkable shots of empty sidewalks with falling leaves. In Carpenter's hands, however, this is an immensely impressive spectacle that is pure mastery from a creative standpoint. One of John Carpenter's most accomplished (and commercially successful) films ever, it floats right in the middle of the A- and B-grade waters. This is perhaps its greatest strength, since it can seem too simple and cheap at first glance, while the opposite is the case. (12/07/2020)

Great horror movie. It's not as scary as it once was, but it still leaves most of its followers biting the dust thanks to its atmosphere. They say that you are most afraid of what you can't see, but when you see a killer whose emotions are unrecognizable due to his masked face, it may have an even greater effect. And you'll be whistling the musical theme long after you've finished the film... (23/08/2002)