The Truest Face of Fear

Rating: 10/10 (4 February 2019)

While the slasher movie as a genre has long been treated as the illegitimate offspring of the horror film, John Carpenter's iconic thriller is no such popcorn flick. Building suspense from scene to scene, Halloween encapsulates the fears of a world-wide cinema going audience. Hazy imagery of a daunting figure stood in the distance or a shadow moving past a door leave corny computer generated monsters in the dust, while the final battle as Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) desperately struggles to survive against a seemingly unstoppable force of evil catches breath in the chest. Not since the likes of Alfred Hitchcock has a film-maker so successfully grasped what it takes to scare an audience, where The Exorcist seeks to disturb, Halloween just wants to make you scream.