Everyones entitled to one good scare

Rating: 10/10 (21 January 2011)

Halloween is a brilliantly, creepy thriller that is one of the best horror pictures and one of my favorite movies ever made.
The film starts in 1963. A 6 year old boy named Michael Myers brutally kills his sister on Halloween night. He gets put away into a mental institution and 15 years later he brakes out and goes back to his home town. There he stalks a baby sitter (Jamie Lee Curtis) and murders her two friends. While that happens his psychiatric Dr. Sam Loomis (the great Donald Pleasence) tries to track him down.
The plot is simple but works and is played out in a believable way. A lot of the credit goes to the cast. Donald Pleasence is great as Dr. Loomis. Jamie Lee Curtis (in her first movie) is the main teenager while her friends are played by P.J. Soles and Nancy Loomis. Now these people aren't looking for Academy Awards, they just play there parts like normal people would do.
Now this plays out the deaths perfectly. They're not over the top or extremely gory. They're quick and bloodless. There's builds up that are very suspenseful. The suspense is what keeps this movie going not the kills. John Carpenter does this very well. There's shots of the killer that has him coming out of the darkness and we see him standing behind trees watching the people. They're very creepy moments that are well done.
John Carpenter does a great job of directing, but he also did the score. And that is probably the most memorable element of the movie. It plays during the opening credits while a Jack-O'-Lantern looms closer and closer to the camera. And right there you know that it's going to be good. Throughout the climax the music builds and builds and it' just scary.
Halloween is a horror movie. It's not a slasher movie but a thriller that keeps you interested the whole time and has you at the edge of your seat. It's just a great movie period.
4 stars (out of 4)