There are things that happen that don’t need to have an actor point at and go “did you see that!” To draw your attention to it. It treats the audience as smart enough to figure out that the smiths grove sanitarium car driving by in the background of some of the frames is Michael stalking people, without either zooming in on the car or having the sheriff say “hey that looks like that Meyers guy right there!!”. A lot of movies ruin shit by basically narrating everything you’re seeing to you.
It does a great job of using shadow and lighting. Multiple times Michael seemingly comes out of nowhere by apparating out of a dark corner. It makes the whole movie tense because it feels like he could be anywhere. The scene after the closet where the camera is focused on Laurie and Michael sits up in the background is very well lit, and you’d never get that scene now. They’d zoom in on Michael’s eyes and have them suddenly open with a jumpscare screech noise.
At the end after Michael disappears and the film does all of the quick shots of the shadowy areas of the house, combined with his heavy breathing, it feels threatening. Like you know that the characters that you have come to care about (Laurie in particular, and yeah, you’re supposed to care about her) still aren’t safe.
They don’t waste time ruining the movie with an elaborate backstory. I don’t want to see how Michael had childhood trauma and grew up in a hillbilly broken home. I don’t want the director to take Hare’s psychopathy checklist and go down it checking things off. “Hmm yeah, to sell how scary this guy is let’s have him kill a small animal while he is a kid, that’s what psychos do!”…. To butcher a quote by Billy Loomis “it’s scarier when there is no motive”. Yeah, people are scared of psychopaths, but people are even more scared of the dark. Let there be some mystery. Jaws wouldn’t have been the masterpiece it is if the robot shark had been working and was in every single attack scene.
As far as having themes…. I think a lot of that is more movie critics trying to make sense of it. The whole “only the good girl virgin survives” thing that was made into a trope, it’s complete bs. John Carpenter himself said they didn’t have any sort of agenda or theme about that, they just wanted to make a scary movie and thought about when people are vulnerable. Usually while they’re banging and drinking.
Also, the sound is amazing. Carpenter said he went into a theater and kids had their hands over their ears instead of their eyes, because the sound was so intense.
The movie was made on a $325k budget, almost instantly earned 70 million dollars, and kicked off the slasher genre. There are other movies that came before it that can possibly be considered slashers (Texas chainsaw massacre, Black Christmas, The Town That Dreaded Sundown), but Halloween was the one all the 80s slashers tried to copy. And it’s for a good reason.
I was born the year after this movie came out, so I lived through the first zeitgeist. Its simplicity is its strength. There's a guy in a mask that never speaks, breathes heavily in the mask, and stalks a group of girls. It doesn't get much more simple than that, but the movie never insults our intelligence either. Halloween is a kind of movie that comes around only every once in a while. I love Friday the 13th, but it's a pretty bad movie that was made for product; Halloween was made from a genuine idea and is so perfectly paced.
Halloween also had a killer original soundtrack that was made by the films director, who knew the world, and made it fun and scary at the same time. It's a perfect mainstream to hard-core balance. Yes, a few of the characters are archetypes, but those archetypes were new back in '78. I know this movie has been heralded for 46 years, but it really does deserve it.
Who says you aren't supposed to be invested in the characters though? I think its specifically BECAUSE we care about the cast that makes it enjoyable. Lynda and Annie, in another movie would just be 1 dimensional cannon fodder, and yet they're both portrayed realistically, maybe they aren't as complicated as Laurie but they still seem like actual people thrown into extraordinary circumstances.
I've never heard anyone say that we're not supposed to be invested in the characters. All the characters in the film are given scenes where their motivations and personality are fleshed out to make them more believable, which makes us care about what happens to them much more. Its like in Black Christmas how so many of the characters are making jokes and being silly in the first half of the movie, it gets you to care about them to see them as people and not just victims.
It's the build-up and a sense of relatability. People doing something mundane (babysitting & partying) on a well-loved holiday (Halloween), and there's a guy stalking a girl and her friends without any real motive, which is eerily easily believable, especially today. The premise isn't as far-fetched as some others- it's a guy who escapes from a mental hospital and "goes home," and it's a realistic premise. The characters (with the exception of Annie-sorry, not sorry) are likable. I personally love the whole franchise because of the lore & history of the movies, and that makes it better to me.
I always found Loomis to be such a compelling character, both Donald Pleasance and Malcolm McDowell's performances. Their lines were always so profound and well-delivered.
Loomis always did what he believed to be right. He tried reaching a little boy whose mind had gone, and when he was unreachable, he saw danger. His actions were always to protect innocent people.
Granted, McDowell's version made him a rather greedy person, he still ran to face Michael and begged him to stop in the end, which is also what Pleasance's version did.
The cinematography and other technical filmmaking aspects in Halloween are much more competent than what is usually found in most of the slashers that tried copying the blueprint. Carpenter’s amazing score helped a lot, too.
See plots don’t need to be amazing to work. Halloween does what it attempts to do very well being a creepy and is a meditation on the nature on evil. Themes are actually very important for its quality too. Sure it’s not the level of something like Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but it’s still great
There are things that happen that don’t need to have an actor point at and go “did you see that!” To draw your attention to it. It treats the audience as smart enough to figure out that the smiths grove sanitarium car driving by in the background of some of the frames is Michael stalking people, without either zooming in on the car or having the sheriff say “hey that looks like that Meyers guy right there!!”. A lot of movies ruin shit by basically narrating everything you’re seeing to you. It does a great job of using shadow and lighting. Multiple times Michael seemingly comes out of nowhere by apparating out of a dark corner. It makes the whole movie tense because it feels like he could be anywhere. The scene after the closet where the camera is focused on Laurie and Michael sits up in the background is very well lit, and you’d never get that scene now. They’d zoom in on Michael’s eyes and have them suddenly open with a jumpscare screech noise. At the end after Michael disappears and the film does all of the quick shots of the shadowy areas of the house, combined with his heavy breathing, it feels threatening. Like you know that the characters that you have come to care about (Laurie in particular, and yeah, you’re supposed to care about her) still aren’t safe. They don’t waste time ruining the movie with an elaborate backstory. I don’t want to see how Michael had childhood trauma and grew up in a hillbilly broken home. I don’t want the director to take Hare’s psychopathy checklist and go down it checking things off. “Hmm yeah, to sell how scary this guy is let’s have him kill a small animal while he is a kid, that’s what psychos do!”…. To butcher a quote by Billy Loomis “it’s scarier when there is no motive”. Yeah, people are scared of psychopaths, but people are even more scared of the dark. Let there be some mystery. Jaws wouldn’t have been the masterpiece it is if the robot shark had been working and was in every single attack scene. As far as having themes…. I think a lot of that is more movie critics trying to make sense of it. The whole “only the good girl virgin survives” thing that was made into a trope, it’s complete bs. John Carpenter himself said they didn’t have any sort of agenda or theme about that, they just wanted to make a scary movie and thought about when people are vulnerable. Usually while they’re banging and drinking. Also, the sound is amazing. Carpenter said he went into a theater and kids had their hands over their ears instead of their eyes, because the sound was so intense. The movie was made on a $325k budget, almost instantly earned 70 million dollars, and kicked off the slasher genre. There are other movies that came before it that can possibly be considered slashers (Texas chainsaw massacre, Black Christmas, The Town That Dreaded Sundown), but Halloween was the one all the 80s slashers tried to copy. And it’s for a good reason.
Yep simplicity and subtlety is key. Although I would say 80s slashers tried to copy Friday the 13th more than Halloween.
I was born the year after this movie came out, so I lived through the first zeitgeist. Its simplicity is its strength. There's a guy in a mask that never speaks, breathes heavily in the mask, and stalks a group of girls. It doesn't get much more simple than that, but the movie never insults our intelligence either. Halloween is a kind of movie that comes around only every once in a while. I love Friday the 13th, but it's a pretty bad movie that was made for product; Halloween was made from a genuine idea and is so perfectly paced. Halloween also had a killer original soundtrack that was made by the films director, who knew the world, and made it fun and scary at the same time. It's a perfect mainstream to hard-core balance. Yes, a few of the characters are archetypes, but those archetypes were new back in '78. I know this movie has been heralded for 46 years, but it really does deserve it.
It's very well shot for a horror film, especially that era of horror films.
Who says you aren't supposed to be invested in the characters though? I think its specifically BECAUSE we care about the cast that makes it enjoyable. Lynda and Annie, in another movie would just be 1 dimensional cannon fodder, and yet they're both portrayed realistically, maybe they aren't as complicated as Laurie but they still seem like actual people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. I've never heard anyone say that we're not supposed to be invested in the characters. All the characters in the film are given scenes where their motivations and personality are fleshed out to make them more believable, which makes us care about what happens to them much more. Its like in Black Christmas how so many of the characters are making jokes and being silly in the first half of the movie, it gets you to care about them to see them as people and not just victims.
It's the build-up and a sense of relatability. People doing something mundane (babysitting & partying) on a well-loved holiday (Halloween), and there's a guy stalking a girl and her friends without any real motive, which is eerily easily believable, especially today. The premise isn't as far-fetched as some others- it's a guy who escapes from a mental hospital and "goes home," and it's a realistic premise. The characters (with the exception of Annie-sorry, not sorry) are likable. I personally love the whole franchise because of the lore & history of the movies, and that makes it better to me.
I always found Loomis to be such a compelling character, both Donald Pleasance and Malcolm McDowell's performances. Their lines were always so profound and well-delivered. Loomis always did what he believed to be right. He tried reaching a little boy whose mind had gone, and when he was unreachable, he saw danger. His actions were always to protect innocent people. Granted, McDowell's version made him a rather greedy person, he still ran to face Michael and begged him to stop in the end, which is also what Pleasance's version did.
The cinematography and other technical filmmaking aspects in Halloween are much more competent than what is usually found in most of the slashers that tried copying the blueprint. Carpenter’s amazing score helped a lot, too.
See plots don’t need to be amazing to work. Halloween does what it attempts to do very well being a creepy and is a meditation on the nature on evil. Themes are actually very important for its quality too. Sure it’s not the level of something like Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but it’s still great