Excellent

Rating: 8/10 (24 July 2002)

"Scream" and "The Blair Witch Projects" are two examples of low-budget movies which enjoyed unforeseen success. "Halloween" is one of the earlier examples.
A taught, excellent thriller, one of the first real "slasher" movies, with John Carpenter directing with panache. The camera angles, the point-of-view-of-the-killer views, the darkness... all create genuinely unsettling moments of unease. Every frame is filled in the outline with something, a tree branch etc. and Michael Myers seems to be lurking everywhere.
Many nods to Hitchcock throughout, the most obvious being the casting of Jamie Lee Curtis in her debut role - her mother, Janet Leigh, appeared in Hitchcock's "Psycho" and the infamous shower scene.
"Halloween" has thus far spawned 7 sequels. Unsurprisingly, the original remains the best.
Fantastic!