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Every now and then a movie advertises itself as scary or frightening, though they usually aren't. Most modern horror movies fit into this category.
Then there are those movies that don't simply cause the tension and adrenaline to pump through your veins harder than usual. They actually frighten you to a level that you've never experienced.
"Halloween" is such a film. It takes so many risks that would make most movie producers cringe. But nearly all of them work. "Halloween" is awe-inspiring in its simplicity, and terrifying as a whole.
The story is simple. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is babysitting some kids on Halloween night, while a madman is on the loose after escaping from a mental institution after brutally murdering his older sister 15 years ago. Of course, the madman, later known as Michael Myers, begins killing the local teenage population, and eventually he comes after Laurie.
Sounds familiar, right? Just another brainless slasher filled with dumb teenagers and gobs of gore. Not a chance.
I think James Berardinelli puts it perfectly in his review of "Halloween:" "Because of its title, Halloween has frequently been grouped together with all the other splatter films that populated theaters throughout the late-1970s and early-1980s. However, while Halloween is rightfully considered the father of the modern slasher genre, it is not a member..."
He has a point, and for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it's downright terrifying, whereas most entries into the teen slasher genre are dumb gore-fests (one could argue that many recent ones are tongue-in-cheek, but most of those fail as well). Second, there is almost no violence (very little of which is bloody). John Carpenter knows that violence does not equal scary, and he relies very little on it (actually, the body count is pretty low). In fact, one can argue that this isn't really a horror movie, at least not by todays standards of having the most deaths that can be crammed into a single movie, each gorier and more sadistic than the last. He relies on ideas for scares, and also skill. Third, while some of the characters may do stupid things (that sometimes seal their fate), they don't do them because they're dumb. The characters are real people, so instead of thinking that the characters die because they're idiots, we're frightened because they're making a mistake.
One of the main reasons why "Halloween" is so scary is because it is so easy to believe that it's real. Nothing is hard to swallow in this film. There's no supernatural, there's no ridiculously creative plot elements, or "inventive" murders, or whatnot. Instead, all the set pieces and camera work (save the opening sequence) are simple. Carpenter just sets the camera in place and says action. What we get is the feeling that we're actually seeing a murder take place right in front of us.
Horror movies are probably the most difficult films to make because in order for something to be scary, everything has to be perfect, and ideas never work twice. It's a hit or miss game, which is why if I were to tell you all the good ideas that Carpenter has (which I'm not), they'd seem primitive (particularly since they have been repeated with lesser effect over and over again through the years).
Acting here is not a plus point because it doesn't need to be. This is a movie about scary ideas, not a movie about dramatic, conflicted characters. The actors act like real people, not characters from a story. Nothing more. The exception to this is whoever plays The Shape, or later known as Michael Myers. It can be scary to have a person say nothing and simply kill, but it's hard to pull off (and even harder to keep people from asking why). But the guy pulls it off, and the result is terrifying.
This is Carpenter's movie through and through. He directed it, co-wrote it, co-produced it, and wrote the chilling score of it. This is a man of brilliance, and his later movie "The Thing" supports this statement, though The Thing is not as scary as "Halloween." Unfortunately his success has dramatically diminished, as it happens when the lure of big money for less freedom is taken advantage of once big time producers "recognize your potential." As good as this film is, it's not without flaws. The famous opening scene is disturbing, but not very scary. And not many of the scares work for the first part of the movie. It's not that it's bad, it's just that there's no good reason to fear "The Shape." Luckily, Carpenter mostly uses this time to set up a relationship between the characters and the audience. While there's no intimacy in this relationship, it fits the purpose. We grow to know the characters, but not so much that it's disheartening when they die. But once the film gets to Halloween night, that's when Carpenter kicks things into high gear and it NEVER stops until you get to the end.
While "Halloween" may be flawed, it is only slightly so. It is an immensely terrifying film, and a must see for anyone who loves scary movies. Be warned though, this movie will scare the living hell out of you!


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