"The night he came to us".

Rating: 10/10 (12 June 2012)

"Warning". May contain spoilers. "Halloween", the one and only, in which John Carpenter had directed, was and is the ultimate in slasher/horror storytelling. I myself am a big fan of John Carpenter's films e.g. The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing and the list goes on. This director doesn't make movies to add pointless and unnecessary scenes that can drag on and confuse most moviegoers. He goes straight to the point and meaning by the written script. Halloween is probably the only slasher flick that surpasses all other imitators and sequels due to being the original idea.
The movie has the perfect setting to make a classic slasher. The autumnal leaves, the blue hues used in the night shots that set the creepiness and murky darkness and overshadowing Michael Myers. He especially is one evil, foreboding force of nature. For one moment appears behind his unsuspecting victims and next minute when the camera moves towards a different position then back again to where he was standing, he disappears. He also blends in with the pitch blackness and reveals only his pale bluish-white mask, just like a phantom. Orange jack-o-lanterns grinning and glowing, especially one serving as the fulcrum when the camera move in towards its left eye and until then the camera closes in and the light dims and goes out in the opening credits. That's a great way of delivering the message of the consequences we choose that often attend our usual manner of perception.
What makes the movie another big highlight is leaving aside the minimal gore and graphic violence. I don't mind it, but while many low-budget horror/slasher films thought gore was essential to startle audiences, Halloween had the guts to play out as the jack-in-the-box, where the killer lunges into our field of vision or moving slowly towards the victims' backs to trick or scare its viewers. Also, the first person camera viewing which represents the killer's point-of-view and heavy breathing is intensely creepy and claustrophobic. I wonder what his intentions are when walking around in such shadowy and murky areas. Who is his next victim? And, of course you can't forget the moody music that John Carpenter had composed for the introduction and then used to represent the killer's presence. It literally delves us into a dark corner.
The fear meters aren't as high as they used to be when Halloween and horror films before and mostly 80's horror films arrived. Although gore was introduced around the 80's, they still used the method of having something burst into our image. And because gore has been introduced, the jack-in-the-box technique has degraded. Gore and graphic violence has now stepped onto the line of horror films and is commonly used as a new way of shocking audiences by thrusting them into becoming squeamish and not coming to see it again. It's nothing new and is a bummer. It's not original and it's mainly carbon copies of one's previously used idea to eventually reach profitable box office results.
Jamie Lee Curtis is great as playing the helpless victim and finally to becoming a sole survivor, especially her screams are classic and high- pitched. Donald Pleasance as Michael's doctor was given the perfect script to behave scared witless and desperate when on the hunt for his patient (the killer). His narration on Michael's psyche is also suspiciously quoted. It eludes us into a very, very dark world where the secret lies at the heart of one's inside. Welcome to the world where true terror lies. 9.5/10