Halloween (1978)

Released 25th October 1978, Halloween (1978) follows murder Michael Myers as he escapes prison and returns to his hometown on Halloween night. Being made in the 1970s, this film predominantly relies of jump scares for its horror which, whilst effective for some people, I personally find as an easy cop out which cheapens the film; and that’s saying something. This film is the most trope-ridden, lazy and disjoined film I have ever watched. There is a basic enough outline of a plot in the first act with Myers and his psychiatrist but beyond that, nada.

Nick Castle does ok as Michael Myers. Whilst he wears the iconic mask for the entirety of the runtime, his physicalisation is decent, albeit some jagged gestures at times, and his raspy breathing actually had the potential for being a creepy nuance to the character. Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode acts as the film’s protagonist as she grows more and more uneasy with the ominous figure she spots around the neighbourhood. Her performance is fine, and she hits enough beats; the same can be said for Donald Pleasence’s Samuel Loomis (Michael’s psychiatrist). The indisputable flaw with the film is that it has no endgame. To refer to Blackhat, another film I have bashed on this blog, at least you knew the protagonist had to secure the codes so he could go free from prison. From that we have a narrative endgame and a character’s motivation; in Halloween you get neither for any character.

That said, most of the other characters are either the typical children (innocents) and the hypersexualised teenagers (the 70s/80s ladies and gentlemen). The children are fine but the teenager’s ‘activities’ are gratuitous and serve absolutely no purpose to the narrative or their characters. One final point I wish to address is the fundamentally great soundtrack from John Carpenter which is repeated so much through the film it loses all effect and even renders early dialogue inaudible. Overall Halloween is a train wreck of a film which achieved nothing but kickstarting one of horror’s worst subgenres; Slasher-Flicks.