Hello everybody and welcome back to a movie review. Well sort of…

Recently in PLP we started on a unit focusing on horror in various different forms. We are studying the book Frankenstein and watching multiple horror films. All of this will lead to a class wide production of a short horror film. This post is my reflection and analysis of the original Halloween directed by John Carpenter in 1978.

The first thing I want to talk about is the horror of the film. What actually makes it scary? Well in the case of Halloween, it’s the unknown. There is so much unexplained in the movie that it makes Michael Myers that much scarier. There is no apparent reason for his obsession with Laurie or other babysitters. Not only was his interest in them unnerving, he was also good at stalking his prey. He was able to hide well and always gave a good scare to both his target and us the audience. He was able to read these humans very well even though he’d hardly seen a human for 15 years. Michael was also more interested in giving his target a good scare rather then going for the easiest or most efficient kill. This is apparent multiple times in the movie where he rigs up a giant trap just to scare Laurie when she comes exploring, or when he put on a white sheet to disguise himself as Bob rather than just going up and killing Lynda. The scariest part about Halloween and Michael Myers is the fact that once he’s chosen you as his target, there is no escape. He will kill you. It’s this thought that has you checking every dark corner in your room, or making sure your feet are under the covers at night.

The cinematography in Halloween is perfect. John Carpenter used what is known as the POV shot multiple times in the movie. The POV shot is where the shot we are seeing is a representation of what a character is seeing. We see this used right at the start of the movie where we are in the shoes of a 6 year old Michael Myers who puts on a mask before going upstairs and killing his sister. Other times this shot is used effectively is when Laurie is walking up the street with her friends and sees Michael behind a hedge, and when she looked back there he was gone. We get this instant feeling of dread or nervousness as we just saw him there and someone else is walking up to go look at him. However the camera work is not the only part that’s great in the production of the movie. The music and sound effects are the strongest part of the whole movie. The theme that plays every time Michael is in the shot or close by still puts me on edge a week after watching the movie. Carpenter also adds to this classic with the sound of heavy breathing that we associate with Michael. When everything is put together this is one truly horrifying movie.

As I’ve mentioned a few times so far in this post, the movie was made in 1978. In this brief era, there was a real fear of serial killers in America. The names Ted Bundy and Charles Manson ring a bell? The thought of someone coming to your neighbourhood and killing a handful of people for no real reason was a real one. People were afraid when someone new came to town. Michael Myers reflects this perfectly. Really all Michael is, is a serial killer. The only thought in his head is murder, and it doesn’t really matter what gets thrown in front of him, he will go through it. The way John Carpenter used these real world fears to create his monster is not unique to him. It is very common for horror films to be based on a topic that is current. If the movie didn’t reflect a current fear it just wouldn’t be nearly as scary.

This wouldn’t be a PLP blog post on analysis if I didn’t compare Halloween to something else would it? Well here it is: Even though Halloween is one of the firsts of it’s type and a true trend setter in the horror genre, there were influencers who came before and had some similarities. For example Frankenstein is a very different style of horror and was written eons before Halloween came out, both ask some similar questions. The biggest one in my opinion is asking what a human is. Both stories do, but in almost entirely the opposite way. Frankenstein is a story about a creature who was created and mostly just wants to fit in and be a human, however he’s much too ugly to be a human. So the book asks why can’t he be a human. He can talk, he can read, he can understand emotion, he really is a human in the body made up of other bodies. Where as in Halloween the question is targeted a Michael and is asking if he still is a human. Where the creature in Frankenstein could talk, we never hear Michael say anything in the entire movie. There is really only one thing in his head and that is killing. So this begs the question, is he still a human?

However even with these similarities between the two, there are obviously a lot of differences as you would expect when they were written almost 150 years apart. The biggest one being the gore and overall disgustingness of it. Same thing applies to Halloween and something written more recently. As a society our fears have numbed, what used to be scary back in the 1800s usually doesn’t cut it anymore. There was no need for blood or really gory deaths in Frankenstein because just the thought of a creature coming and killing people was haunting enough. Halloween makes us gulp when Michael stabs someone with his knife into a door and just leaves him hanging there. Michael does things with the dead bodies he’s made that I would never want to encounter in person. However Halloween lacks the amount of blood or the really crazy killing scenes today’s horror features. As I said above times change and in that time we all became a little bit more psycho

In conclusion, Halloween is a great movie and definitely not something I would want to watch again. Which in my opinion is what makes it a great movie. Even when I know what’s going to happen, I would still be terrified. Whether it be the music, the angles, or the lack of a reason for murder, Halloween does everything horror is supposed to do. John Carpenter’s movie will and already has gone down in history as an all-time classic horror film.

 

References:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/movies/halloween-1978-review.html
https://consequenceofsound.net/2018/10/the-making-of-john-carpenters-halloween/