Halloween Film Review: Halloween (1978)

Halloween

Film Review: "Halloween" (1978)

Watching John Carpenter's horror classic "Halloween" (1978) is a holiday tradition for many people on October 31st. However, upon a close viewing the film does not 'date' well. The villain, Michael Myers, in his infamous white mask, has almost no complexity as a character. The film begins by showing the young murdering his sister without any apparent reason, other than the fact that she is 'making out' with her boyfriend. Even the psychiatrist who treats Michael at the mental institution where he is imprisoned as young boy says he is a psychopath. Michael essentially functions as a killing machine in the film, a force of evil, unless the viewer considers harmless teenage petting to be a fate worthy of death.

The viewer feels no sympathy for Michael and this sense of detachment is only intensified through Michael's use of an expressionless Halloween mask. Even when Michael is shown escaping from the custody of the police as he is being transferred to an adult prison, the viewer never sees his real face. No reasons are given for the existence of evil and horror in the world, Michael simply 'exists' and the film suggests that some people are by nature evil, and totally unredeemable. The idea that people can be changed is not applicable to Michael, as the psychiatrist says that Michael cannot be helped, even though he is tried, and the viewer is meant to take the therapist at his word and dismiss those who ignore the doctor's warnings as foolish Throughout the film Michael never speaks -- he is a faceless cipher, not a human being.

Although his family is his first victim, most of the people Michael kills are individuals he has never met; he simply kills for the sake of killing. He returns to the same town where he committed his crime as a child in a Halloween costume not because he has a personal vendetta against Laurie, the main protagonist of the film, but because he is like a force of nature, a hurricane of inexplicable anger and retribution. The appeal of "Halloween" for viewers must lay its seasonal appeal -- it happens on a 'witching night' and gives the viewer a special thrill if he or she watches it on Halloween -- or when he or she is babysitting. The idea of being alone, young and vulnerable, and caring for a younger child creates part of the suspense and horror inherent in the film, as the innocent Laurie is attacked by Michael.

Halloween" is best classified as a horror film and indeed only a horror film -- it does not transcend the genre in any way or provoke philosophical questions about the responsibility of creation like "Frankenstein" or challenge our ideas about morality like "The Silence of the Lambs." Michael has no perverse charm like Hannibal Lector or the vampires of "Interview with the Vampire." There are no shades of grey in the film, except for the shadows that conceal Michael's shadowy presence as he lies in wait, watching for his victims until he can strike at the moment when they are most unaware, like a boogeyman in a closet.