Halloween
Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield to kill again.
The plot for this film, which is one of the earliest in the slasher genre and helped to create it, is so basic it’s hard to say there is one. There’s some buildup in the first half of the film, where you get to know some of the characters, so you care about what happens to them later, but even that is basic – the killer has no identified motivation or justication for what he does so you can’t care about him, and most of the cast of characters are little more than one dimensional; the only exceptions are Donald Pleasance as Dr Loomis who is determined to stop Michael Myers at any cost, and Jamie Lee Curtis in an early Laurie Strode, whom you want to survive.
Although the plot is slim, the acting from Donald Pleasance and Jamie Lee Curtie, the atmosphere generated by the small town setting and the clever use of music (written by the director, John Carpenter, who has created many good films) and the implacable nature of the faceless and motiveless Michael Myers help to make this a good horror that’s great to watch late at night with the lights off, especially if you like a good scare.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the film. Halloween is easily one of my favouirte horror movies of all time and I regularly go back to watch it again for the pleasure of enjoying a classic.
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