An absolute classic of the horror genre

Rating: 10/10 (26 March 2005)

It's really a shame that nobody working today can make a film as simple and as effective as Halloween.
It's simple: Crazed lunatic breaks out of a mental institution and starts killing random people.* His doctor follows him for the whole movie while the psychopath follows a babysitter and kills some people in the process.
In Halloween, there's no cgi special effects, no elaborate backstory*, no extensive shots of blood and gore and viscera and body dismemberment. Halloween succeeds on a purely cinematic level, using music, lighting, and the camera to scare you. Sure, there's some (as Carpenter calls them)"fun-house" scares, where something jumps out of the darkness at a certain point to make you jump, but the effect is not over-used like in today's horror films.
John Carpenter not only wrote the film and directed it, but he also wrote all the music for it, too. And if anybody knows Halloween, then know the music. Not only the main theme, but EVERY piece of music is amazing. The main theme, however, would probably still remain scary if placed in a Disney film.
Special mention is needed for the superb job with lighting and cinematography. I have never seen another film in which daytime seemed as frightful as in Halloween.
You might have noticed the two asterisks in the above paragraphs. I would like to stress the fact that all the sequel plots and backstories in the Halloween sequels were not written until AFTER the original film. In Hallwoeen (the original film), Michael is NOT related to Laurie. It was not written that way. Michael is NOT possessed by the curse of thorn. It was not written with that in mind, either. When you watch the original film, you take what you get. Michael is killing random people for no reason at all. That's how it was written. And I must say...that's a hell of a lot more believable and a lot more scary than anything in any of the extremely inferior sequels.