Historically significant and more...

Rating: 10/10 (2 November 2018)

The horror genre is full of significant low-budged movies, and maybe John Carpenter's "Halloween" represents the most important one of all.
The film, famous for popularizing the Slasher subgenre after defining it, might seem outdated to some viewers, but that's an unfair judgement considering the impact it had on cinema. Very few Slasher movies came close to the quality of Carpenter's classic, and that's more than admirable considering the film's original budget of only 300,000 dollars.
"Halloween" was definitely inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", but don't let yourself be fooled by this statement. "Halloween" is highly original (or was, back in 1978) and has enough to offer. The camera work is brilliant; the way it presents us the little town of Haddonfield as a peaceful place haunted by the unfortunate events of the past is more than enoguh to set the mood for the storm that's about to come. The cast is capable and delivers the terror in a realistic, believable way (something rarely met in the Slasher movies which spawned years later). We meet the beautiful Jamie Lee Curtis (the daughter of "Psycho" star Janet Leigh) , a then-unknown actress, in a role which marked one of the most important moments in horror.
Some dialogues might seem silly for modern standards, but they do not affect the final product (and they might seem pretty good compared to dialogues met in other films such as the original "The Evil Dead" and "Friday The 13th").
The music, composed by Carpenter himself, contains one of the most iconic movie themes of all time. I don't think anyone who has already watched the movie could imagine it with a different kind of soundtrack. Carpenter's compositions are brilliant through their simplicity, proving that the secret to a great movie is knowing when -not- to use music and rely on silence.
The ending of the movie is probably the main element that puts it in a different category than it's followers. The fear of evil and the awareness of it's presence in the everyday life is terrifying enough to make "Halloween" one of the greatest horror films of all time, and maybe more.