John Carpenter’s Halloween earns its scares through patient framing, ordinary houses and a score that makes waiting uncomfortable. The dialogue is less assured, but Jamie Lee Curtis gives this carefully made horror film someone worth worrying about.
John Carpenter’s Halloween is frightening because he gives us time to look, then makes us worry about where we have been looking. It is an excellent horror film, with a weakness for solemn dialogue that the pictures do not need. The suburban setting supplies places we recognise without having to learn our way around them. Across 91 minutes, the director builds from daylight towards darkness, making us increasingly suspicious of surroundings that initially seem quite unremarkable.
Dean Cundey’s widescreen cinematography makes the space around a person worth watching closely. The prolonged point-of-view tracking shots carry us through familiar surroundings without the relief of frequently cutting to somebody else’s reaction. We were frightened by the opening’s moving point of view: the camera kept taking us forward when we wanted it to stop. The shot makes us feel implicated in what we are watching, and the unease comes from the movement itself, before there is much need for explanation.
Tommy Lee Wallace’s production design helps by keeping the domestic setting ordinary. The houses do not have to announce themselves as frightening places for the camera to find something troubling in them. That restraint works well with the widescreen photography, since a recognisable room needs little introduction and leaves us free to inspect the space around its occupants. The effect depends on these places remaining believable as somewhere people live.
Jamie Lee Curtis gives Laurie enough personality to make us care about her beyond the immediate business of being frightened. Her performance has a directness that keeps the carefully arranged suspense from feeling like a demonstration. We can register what the camera is doing and still worry about the person in front of it. That is a considerable contribution to a film so dependent on the placement and timing of its scares.
Donald Pleasence brings conviction to Loomis, but the screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill is less convincing when it tries to explain the threat in grand terms. The talk of evil adds little to what the stalking has already made frightening. These passages are stiff, and they interrupt a film otherwise so good at allowing us to draw our own conclusions. We do not need a fuller account of the killer’s motives, but fewer solemn declarations would have helped.
Editors Tommy Lee Wallace and Charles Bornstein judge the long waits well, keeping the move towards night from feeling like a queue for the violent scenes. The earlier patience helps the chases frighten because there has been time to worry about the people being pursued. John Carpenter’s score supplies a repeating pulse that makes us expect trouble without requiring the camera to show it. Its spare synthesiser sound gives the images room, although much of the anticipation depends on hearing it return.
Within the slasher genre, Halloween remains unusually willing to wait for its effects. Its influence can make the basic situation feel familiar, and viewers seeking elaborate motives or constant incident will find little encouragement here. The restraint around blood still matters: so much of the running time goes into making us dread violence that the amount shown becomes secondary. Watch it when there is nobody likely to talk over the quiet stretches.
