The best of the series, and one of the best since Psycho.

Rating: 10/10 (16 November 2006)

Halloween is an instant classic. From the second the first sound bytes start ringing out (that being the haunting theme composed by John Carpenter) to signal the opening credits, down to the very end, Halloween has set many standards for the horror genre. A faceless killer that we hardly ever see creates a very tense and scary atmosphere for the viewer, and that is one of the things Halloween offers. The musical score, very primal, very simple, yet very deep at the same time also makes the tension level very high. By 1978, audiences were a little more sophisticated. They knew a killer was about in Halloween. They knew where he was, and that the main character, Laurie, as well as her friends were all in danger from this maniac. The filmmakers knew this would be the case so they made the scenes leading up to the climax very tense, long and drawn-out to make the audience get involved with the film. The use of the Panaglide camera also helped give the audience a feeling that they were along for the ride with Laurie Strode on that fateful Halloween night. The cast, while Carpenter went out on a limb (he had to because he only had $300,000 to spend on this film) with the cast. All were fresh, relatively young, and pretty much unknown, except for Donald Pleasence. The cast did a very good job of helping to bring the horror to the audience in this film. Halloween definitely belongs in the top 5 of horror movies. Without Michael Myers there would be no Jason Voorhees or, for that matter, Freddy Krueger. Nor would there have been a Ghostface from Scream. As stated above, Halloween really set the bar for the next generation of horror movies.