A pure, perpetual suspense machine.

Rating: 9/10 (29 October 2018)

It's the slimness of it. The clean open shots, mostly done in wides. The fact that it has so very few locations. It's the silent, completely blank, entity that is THE SHAPE. There are a mere five kills, modest by today's standards, and very little gore.
John Carpenter's "Halloween", which he co-wrote, co-produced, directed, musically scored (legendarily so), and co-edited, is a tight thriller built on the back of a Canadian thriller from four years prior called "Black Christmas", and it's the starting gun for the slasher genre.
You can't get from "Psycho" to "Friday the 13th" without passing through "Halloween".
It's the afore mentioned economy of narrative that maximizes its tone and amplifies its horror. The movie is incredibly suspenseful.
I mentioned how influential "Black Christmas" was on this film, and "Christmas" is a great movie, but even there, the increased scope and scale of "Black Christmas" demands more drama, it mutes the scares by not being singularly focused on them. Not so "Halloween". "Halloween" is a pure, perpetual suspense machine.
It has its flaws, of course. Some of the acting is rough (though never from Jamie Lee Curtis) and a lot of the dialog rings false. You'll probably feel the need to yell at the protagonist when she, TWICE, throws a knife away from her in disgust without making sure her attempted murderer is dead. You might find Donald Pleasance a bit of a scene muncher.
But for a budget of about $300,000 John Carpenter changed genre cinema forever, and the genius of what he achieved here has never been matched, certainly not in a film that bears the name "Halloween".