A film that would be thrilling for its time but fails now.

Rating: 4/10 (16 December 2014)

Finally got a chance to watch John Carpenter's 'Halloween.' After hearing so much hype about it, I was disappointed to say the least. A film lacking a terrifying and well developed villain, Michael Myers is there to kill, but we don't have any reason to be scared of him, falling back on the only evidence that he killed his sister years ago. Compared to the horrific character of Freddy Kruger, who we immediately fear from the fact that he can kill you in your dreams, Michael Myers failed to capture my imagination and did not frighten me at all.
Now I get to the film's characters, Jamie Lee Curtis plays the good stereotypical girl who is the last man, or in this case woman, standing. But with her lack of character development, knowing only simple things such as she goes to school and is a baby sitter, I failed to grasp her as a true human being. She needed a back story, she had none and the reason why Michael Myers is going after her remains vague (of course it is revealed in the sequel that SPOILER, Michael Myers is Laurie's brother. If we had known that she was adopted from the start, throw in a couple of subtle hints of the connection between Laurie and Michael then I may have been able to connect to her character. Alas she had no impact on me as a character.
With all the scenes of the film, it was utterly filled with irrelevance and, what appeared to me, slapstick comedy. Every time Michael Myers was seen across the street, around the corner, in his car, staring at Laurie and her friends, it didn't come off as terrifying, it came off as silly. The music cued every time we see Michael standing tall just adds to the hilarity of what should be frightening scenes. Also, a lot of the first hour of the film is filled with boring and not very necessary scenes filled with pointless chatter about sex, school and babysitting when it should have been filled with back story, reasons they should be killed or reasons they shouldn't. Ultimately I think the film succeeds as a horror film for when it was released in 1978, but watching it now in 2014, as a 19 year old (and keep in mind a huge horror fan as well as film fanatic) it just utterly fails to impress me like A Nightmare in Elm Street and Fright Night did.
In the end, this is my opinion, people who were around in the 1970s will enjoy this film, but for those who only get truly frightened by horror films such as Insidious and The Conjuring (Yes I believe James Wan is the NEW horror Master) then you will only laugh at this film.
Verdict 4/10