Overrated

Rating: 4/10 (30 April 2008)

This film has admittedly a great idea: the psycho killer targets his young victims in Halloween! A study of spooky atmosphere, then? Err, no, there is not wonderful Halloween atmosphere here, just lot of waiting, talking and some murders, albeit the movie is thankfully gore-free and the theme music is great. The heroine Laurie is sort of pure and innocent wall-flower type, although she was followed by the irritating parade of the sex-hating, misogynistic slashers with their tomboyish Final girls. Even Carpenter mocked these tomboy virgins as sexually frustrated pervs, who needed the sharp objects to "penetrate" the body. Such witticism aside, the script by Carpenter and Debra Hill is not too good either, with Carpenter apparently claiming that one of his inspirations was a mentally ill boy he had seen in a psychiatric hospital, a psychotic with "evil stare". Gee, Carpenter, isn't it great exploiting a person's illness because he had an Evil Eye? Um, no, it's tasteless and SLEAZY! But that's all too typical to modern horror genre: wallow in the sewer of your own head, but kill the mentally ill "psycho" in the end of your story!