The archetype and model of all modern horror films

Rating: 9/10 (15 January 2007)

This film is the founding father of the new modern generation of horror films. No poetry, no mysticism, no ideology, in one word postmodern to the core. The only objective is both to horrify and to terrify the audience and nothing else. John Carpenter uses the technology at his disposal in each film to create the atmosphere and to bring up the elements that are going to do what he wants to do : make the audience shake in convulsions of fear. In this early film he uses the new steady-cam to make long travelling sequences that can be more natural because the camera is carried by a person walking the way it is supposed to travel. We then really have the impression of looking at the scene through the eyes of a living person. We are then inside the characters and their fear, whereas the criminal is a lot more steady, immobile, even still. Then the theme is supposed to bring up all our deep dark fears : a child of six kills his own sister who has just had sex, hence sex as the disrupting element that makes people crazy, insanity as the utmost strangeness that turns someone into something that is no longer human, a little touch of satanic evil, knives and Halloween of course. And it works particularly well when we can see the face of this criminal who is wearing a mask, a mask that is expressionless and absolutely colourless. We have it all and we know we would be frightened ****less if we had to meet him in the dark around some lonely street corner.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne