Halloween: An encounter with evil
John Carpenter's classic, Halloween, remains a masterful achievement about the inscrutability of evil.
Written by Bo Winegard
The slasher genre is not typically associated with elevated metaphysics or compelling analyses of evil. It is not even associated with art, but with exploitation. Low budgets and high body counts. Farcically stupid, sex-obsessed teenagers who utter the infamous phrase, “I’ll be right back” before meeting their grisly ends. Many of the genre’s most recognizable films justify these unflattering associations: Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine, The Prowler, The Maniac, Sleepaway Camp. Indeed, at the zenith of the slasher craze, virtually every obscure holiday had become a setting for the slaughter of lusty teenagers.
And yet, the genre’s seminal film, Halloween (1978), though not without some elements of exploitation, is a thoughtful, poetic, and artistically captivating exploration of evil.