Halloween is one of the greatest movies ever made. It had a budget of $15 and 12 people in total made this movie happen. In the directing chair is John Carpenter and this is my first Carpenter film and I am already ready to say he is the man. But whats interesting is I did watched this movie once before a few years ago and just laughed the whole time. I must of been stupid or something because while I still think there are some brain dead moments it hardly matters. This is one of the most beautifully crafted films I’ve seen in a while. It may been goofy at points but its one suspense ride. Carpenter constantly keeps you on edge with an almost shallow premise. A man that embodies evil comes to his old neighborhood to butcher anyone living on his old street. That’s really the only story we get, but its a film where the story matters little. And by that I mean it doesn’t need ridiculous crap like, Michael Myers is killing people to please a cult (that was for the sequels) or hes possessed by a demon that shows up at the end of the movie. Its just a guy and the creepy idea that this could be any guy who just decided to be evil one day and just go one a killing spree. Not for fun or some emotional reason he just does it. And I think that really helped having seen it before and re-watching it now. Knowing Michael kills his sister in the beginning of the movie, it made if even more creepy that there’s no shoved in mean family, there just a normal family and all the sudden Michael just kills his sister. That to me is scary as hell.

Carpenter knows how to do build up, starting the film out with you not seeing much, you just get a lot of scenes of Michael stalking Jamie Lee Curtis’s character Laurie Strode character. Carpenter knows the perfect length to hold on a shot, he knows where to put the camera to give make us uneasy, the movie makes you nervous watching it. The only thing that hurts it for me is the music.

This is a movie all about its visuals and build up. But while the film making steals the show, Jamie Lee Curtis deserves a lot of praise and while shes giving dumb decisions to make toward the end shes very likable and gets you invested to where you don’t want Michael to get her.

Now I’m not trying to knock Carpenters score the score itself is pretty good, its just overused in the movie. It felt like they had 3 tracks for the whole movie and I think they could of spared it and only used it at the most exciting moments, but instead those same tracks are played so often in the film it starts to break the immersion and atmosphere. But for the most part its still fine the score doesn’t kill the mood most of the time its just used a few to many times and I wish it was pulled back a bit.

I’m not the horror movie expert but I am a fan of good film-making and that’s what this is. Unless you can’t handle watching horror movies, if your just a snob and you think horror movies are below your standard please give this one a chance its a remarkable piece of work.

The last thing I will about the film is I watched this on an old VHS tape. And obviously I could view the film fine otherwise I wouldn’t give it this kind of praise , but there were parts where I giggled cause a sound effect would play along with Michael jump scares but the tape is so bad I couldn’t see where he was. So I’m going to watch the Blu Ray soon and I’ll do a quick write on the differences between watching it on VHS and Blu Ray.