I don't watch many slasher movies. They just don't interest me that much. I prefer psychological horror, movies that build tension and use more than just blood and gore to scare their viewers. Despite this, I tried my best to watch Halloween with an open mind, and it turns out I really enjoyed it. It's relatively conventional in some ways, but it really is the ultimate slasher film, the one that set the standard and invented the tropes that are used in countless subsequent films. It's scary, and well acted, paced and directed.
The first in the long series of Halloween movies, this one follows the story of killer Michael Myers. At the age of six, he murdered his sister in cold blood on Halloween with a huge knife. After spending fifteen years in a mental hospital, he escapes and returns to his hometown to kill again. The plot of the movie involves him stalking and killing several teenagers, while his former psychiatrist and a reluctant, skeptical police officer search for him. It's not particularly innovative in any way, but it's still scary on several levels. Most importantly of all, it's plausible. Psychotic killers who slaughter innocent people indiscriminately actually exist. Michael Myers is a person that could very possibly be real, and that fact makes this movie much scarier. Another thing that makes Halloween scary is the design of Michael himself. He is huge, very imposing, and wears a white mask, which I found out later is actually a stretched out William Shatner mask. Myers' physical strength allows him to break through doors and windows easily, and throw around his victims like rag dolls. This makes him much more intimidating because no matter where you hide he can likely busy through to door and find you. The mask itself works to dehumanize Myers and strengthen his image as a cold, ruthless, unrepentant killer.
I also liked how this first Halloween movie abstains from excessive blood and gore. Most of the horror of the film lies in uncertainty. There are a lot of scenes where Myers is standing somewhere staring at a prospective victim, and then he just completely disappears. It's something that you see in movies like this all the time, but it's freaky because it makes you wonder where he went, and where he is now. Myers is pretty sneaky, and many of the scares in the movie involve him appearing, disappearing, and coming back after he is believed to be dead. He has a feel of immortality about him, because he takes several bullets, a knife wound and a knitting needle to the neck at the end and still survives and disappears somehow, living to kill another day. An interesting easter egg I noticed is that some of the characters watch an old version of the movie The Thing on Halloween, a movie that director John Carpenter would adapt into a hugely successful horror film a few years later.
All in all, Halloween delivers, even if you're not a fan of the genre it's very successful at what it does.
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