The Template For The Modern Slasher Film

Rating: 8/10 (28 August 2001)

John Carpenter's "Halloween" still stands out today as the best horror slasher film of all time, and it's certainly still the standard that all other slasher films copy shamelessly. To be fair, "Halloween" isn't exactly a paragon of originality -- it borrows heavily from Hitchcock's "Psycho", Romero's "Night of the Living Dead", and a number of the later Universal "Frankenstein" flicks, where the Frankenstein monster wandered aimlessly through castle corridors trying to kill people -- but it's the first film to distill all the elements of the slasher genre into a lean, mean core. Other slasher films since "Halloween" have tinkered around with the elements of this core, trying to improve upon it . . . but so far, none of these other contenders and pretenders have come close to succeeding. Despite its distinct low-budget look, "Halloween", by far, is still the most chilling, scary slasher film ever made.

"Halloween" features a very simple but well-done story: Years ago, on a fateful Halloween night, a young boy named Michael Myers puts on a rubber mask and savagely kills his sister with a butcher's knife. Michael is shipped off to a psychiatric facility, where is diagnosed as a sociopath -- an emotionless killer with no concept of right or wrong. For fifteen years, he's held and studied there . . . until again, on a Halloween night, he manages to escape from captivity. He heads back to his hometown with a new mask and a new knife, ready to begin a brand-new killing spree back in his unsuspecting hometown . . .
Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill, "Halloween" works so well mainly because it keeps all details to a minimum. No motivation is provided for WHY Michael Myers is a bloodthirsty knife-wielding maniac, but then again, one isn't needed. The film works just fine with the basic fact that Michael Myers is an evil killing machine. The same goes for the teenage characters/victims in "Halloween", particularly the character of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) -- these characters are developed just enough for the audience to get to know them, and more importantly, get to sympathize with them. Once the audience starts thinking of the characters as genuine, likable people -- BAM. Michael Myers shows up in full-on death mode, making the audience care about what actually happens to these terrorized characters. It's a great technique for building fear and suspense, one that John Carpenter pulls off perfectly . . . . and one that's been lost with more recent slasher films. Nobody cares if the Killer Du Jour of "Generic Slasher Film" starts butchering the unlikable characters, because the audience doesn't care if the unlikable characters die. With "Halloween", the audience cares, which is one of the reasons why it's such a good film.

Another technique used by Carpenter that gets overlooked today is how the story moves along at such a rapid-fire pace. "Halloween" takes place in a single night, with Michael Myers moving and killing at a relentless pace. Sure, the other characters do dumb things -- sometimes, they make it almost entirely too convenient for Michael Myers to slit their throats -- but at least the stupidity is plausible, simply because neither they nor the audience is given time to think about what's happening. The characters don't have time for logic; they're running instead on pure animal instinct, and that instinct is often wrong. Compare that to later drivel like "I Know What You Did Last Summer", where the characters essentially wait around their hometown for weeks, waiting to be picked off by a knife-wielding maniac . . . stupid. Those characters had time to think and to properly assess their situation. The characters in "Halloween" aren't given the luxury of time, making their panic and irrational behavior all the more believable -- and making the film all the more terrifying.
There's other items as well that set "Halloween" apart from all other slasher movies, or at least mark it as an original -- Carpenter's claustrophobic use of Steadicam to give the film a nervous, uneasy edge; the fact that "Halloween" lacks a sense of humor and treats its story with deadly seriousness, unlike the smug, smarmy, slasher films of recent years; or the creepy way that Carpenter has Michael Myers moving through the background of otherwise innocuous scenes. The bottom line, though, is that "Halloween" pulls all the right elements together -- and then assembles them together flawlessly -- to form the perfect slasher film. I'll be honest -- if you don't like the slasher genre, then you probably won't like "Halloween". However, if you do like the slasher genre -- or have never seen a slasher film -- then I highly recommend "Halloween". Without a doubt, it's simply the best film of its kind. Grade: A-