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Richard Mazon's avatar

What a great review. Thank you for it. I consider John Carpenter a fantastic director, capturing the essence of things, including evil. Having seen everyone of his movies, some more than once, I think it is fair to say that most have a "Carpenteresque" ending. On some level, you know the ending before the ending because you know it will leave things hanging. Perhaps the classic examples of this are his next movies after this The Fog and The Thing.

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james murphy's avatar

A provocatively articulate piece that offers much food for thought. Many thanks.

My reservation would be that just as Halloween doesn't really pause to address the nature of evil, in your eagerness to praise the movie I'm not sure you do, either. The result is that you let Carpenter and his ilk (and clever as he is) get away murder, both literally and artistically. Subsequently, all that we, the audience, are bequeathed, as Michael Myers escapes and the movie's end credits roll, is a sense of bleak hopelessness, a moral blackness which, in our powerlessness to overturn it, discourages us from a belief in goodness, itself essential to our aspirations.

Conversely, I believe that all high art has a duty not just to present evil but to examine its causes. You might counter that evil has no cause. I would passionately demur.

Indeed, I doubt very much that evil is a primum mobile without cause. I suspect it can be traced back to some sort of fusion of vengeful anger with prolonged, unconscious humiliation (or some such). This seems to be the case when one looks at the personal history of serial killers.

This being the case, it seems to me to be highly reprehensible merely to celebrate the dynamic of murder and killing and profit from it financially and reputationally.

I don't doubt the cinematic skill involved in creating the atmosphere of Halloween - it scared the bejabbers off me when I saw it alone when it came out in '78 😂 -.... but emotional effect is not enough. A work of art must ultimately fight on the side of the angels, metaphorically speaking. It must build not destroy culture. Yes, by all means depict evil - but show us its counterpart in ultimate ascendance! Indeed, name me one real piece of high culture that doesn't do this and I'll buy you a metaphorical beer!

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