The Night He Came Home

Rating: 10/10 (27 December 2012)

It's that time of year again, when candy clatters around the inside of plastic pumpkins and horror movies descend on cable television like zombies assaulting an isolated farmhouse in the hopes of scoring some freshly scooped brains for dinner. In honor of the shifting season and my favorite month of the year, I've determined that there's no better way to honor All Hallow's Eve than by review each and every Halloween movie. There are 8 if you discount the Rob Zombie debacles—which I do— so, over the course of the next several weeks, reviews of each will follow in steady succession.
So, without further ado, let's dig into entry #1: Halloween.
If you're new to the Michael Myers universe, allow me to let you in on a little secret—this is the movie that started it all. Many credit the original Halloween as being the father of the modern slasher flick, but, as I've stated in previous reviews, it is my contention that said honor falls squarely in the lap of Hitchcock's Psycho. Nevertheless, Halloween helped usher in the contemporary horror film, which is defined by cheap scares, brutal violence, and, for lack of a better term, a "robotic" killer.
Here, the killer's name is Michael. At the beginning of the movie, director John Carpenter introduces us to our antagonist by smartly utilizing a first-person perspective. We don't know that the killer is only a boy until after we're allowed to see him murder his teenage sister (who's prone to fornication and late night hair brushing, something that we'll later learn is a staple of the modern horror flick) with an over-sized kitchen knife. Fast forward a decade or so. Michael has spent his time since committing his crime in a maximum security mental institution under the watchful eye of Dr. Sam Loomis, a brooding psychiatrist who believes to be the now full-grown adult to be the full embodiment of true evil. Late one night, Michael manages to escape his confines, secure an awesomely wood-paneled station wagon, and return to his hometown to finish what he started; specifically, to "off" Laurie Strode, his baby sister and the last surviving member of his family.
What follows is a slow burn that ultimately leads to Michael slaughtering a smattering of unruly teens up and down the street he once inhabited. More important than "what" happens, though, is "how" it happens. As previously indicated, everything about Halloween has come to define "horror" as we know it, and the mechanical pursuit of his sister—played by a young Jamie Lee Curtis—helped vault the actress into stardom. The final thirty minutes are especially nerve-racking, and everything that plays out is a little too realistic to be written off as sheer scary-movie-fancy. This, among a myriad of other elements, helps give Halloween the staying power that it's enjoyed for thirty-plus years.
If you consider yourself a student of horror and have never seen Halloween you're doing yourself a grave (hardy har har) disservice. In other words, go buy it. Immediately. And revel in one of the great slasher flicks of our time.