HALLOWEEN is the pure, distilled American horror film. It is so simple and yet it is my favorite horror movie of all time because there are so many subtleties, possibilities, ideas at work within its structure. There are so many ways to read it. This is for many the quintessential slasher movie, yet at its core it’s a ghost story. Michael Myers is a spectre that has been looming over the town of Haddonfield, Illinois for fifteen years. His is the house kids dare each other to enter on Halloween night, he’s the thing they taunt each other with to get a scare out of one another. The boogeyman.
HALLOWEEN is a melting pot of oral folklore, it is every quintessential urban legend at once. It's "The Hook," the story of the escaped madman who has returned to stalk unwary teenagers. It is the story of the harassed babysitter who has to ensure the safety of the children in her care. It is the story of the man hiding in the backseat. It's such a simple, archetypal story and yet there's so much to be read in it. It is also a movie about being young, but aging out of childhood and into adulthood, looking down the barrel of adult responsibilities for the first time, realizing in a concrete way for the first time that you are not going to live forever, with the shadow of death following you, just out of sight, but getting closer and closer all the time.
At the heart of all this is Dr. Loomis as our Greek chorus, reciting and warning of the dangers of Michael Myers, of The Shape, and horror of which it is capable. Loomis is the modern Cassandra, he warned everyone, he knew exactly what would happen, he pleaded for years for any kind of precautions to be taken and none were. She saw the fall of Troy, and he saw blood on the streets of Haddonfield, and could do nothing to stop it from happening.
The film is in a lot of ways just like its theme song: a simple and concise melody, but played to perfection. It's about being a teenager and coming to terms with the spectre of death over your shoulder. And it's scary because it's unknowable. Michael Myers is unapproachable. I've always considered Michael to basically be a haunted house in a human body. Something supernatural, as much a mystery as the Overlook Hotel, but wearing a human shape.