No Better Than Most Slashers

Rating: 8/10 (24 September 2006)

Halloween is good because of its autumnal atmosphere, its small town setting, its fascinating killer, and its infectious and constantly cloned musical score. An autumnal atmosphere is great for a horror film because summer is not scary. Summer is a hot, sunny time when everyone's out playing soccer. A small town setting is great for a horror film because a big city has so many people in it that no matter what happens, it's not scary because the character is not alone in a claustrophobic place. Michael Myers is a fascinating character because of Donald Pleasance's intermittent monologues about him, the chilling voyeuristic shots where we see what he sees but with a slice of his silhouette on the side of the screen, and everything about this character that we slowly learn. He is truly the most interesting and well-developed slasher movie killer. The musical score is a pulsing, as I said, infectious piano that can never be imitated. Even The Exorcist's equally effective score with its similar use of the piano is much different in the moods it sets and portrays.
Halloween was the start of the slasher subgenre of horror films. It has these good qualities. However, that does not make it so much better than the others. It happens to be very very very corny, at times very implausible, and no better at directorial technique than Friday the 13th, or slashers hardly anyone's seen or even heard of anymore like Black Christmas or When A Stranger Calls.
The reason it's so well-received is because of the tremendous following that it started. People were truly scared by this new approach to horror, and it started the subgenre of slasher. Black Christmas, however, only 4 years earlier, made for a very creepy and unusual slasher-oriented approach, and flew below the radar. Halloween is a decent enough horror film, especially considering how dated it is, but it's very overrated and hogs the slasher spotlight.