John Carpenter’s Halloween is one of the most influential horror movies ever, but when it was released back in 1978, it wasn’t well-received. John Carpenter’s career as a filmmaker began in 1969 with the short-film Captain Voyeur, and his first major film arrived in 1974 in the shape of the sci-fi comedy Dark Star. Two years later, he wrote and directed Assault on Precinct 13, a low-budget thriller in which he worked with Debra Hill, who went on to play a key role in the making of some of Carpenter’s biggest and most important works.
However, the movie that made him a widely-known name was Halloween, which introduced the audience to serial killer Michael Myers and final girl Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). Halloween follows the story of Michael Myers, who after killing his sister when he was six-years-old was sent to Smith’s Grove sanitarium. Fifteen years later, Michael escaped and returned to his hometown Haddonfield, Illinois, where he began to stalk Laurie and her friends on Halloween night. Halloween was the beginning of a movie franchise comprising a total of 13 movies, including two remakes by Rob Zombie and a standalone movie (Halloween III: Season of the Witch), but that almost didn’t happen as the movie wasn’t well-received by critics when it was released.
Although Halloween was a commercial success, especially when taking into account that it had very little advertising and relied mostly on word-of-mouth, critics weren’t enthusiastic about it. Some critics found it to be unoriginal, mostly because of Carpenter’s influences of directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma, while others described it as well-made but “empty and morbid”. Other critics found it to be terrifying enough but pointed out that it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, as it was different from what had been done before (a big example of that is that Halloween contains very little blood and graphic violence, especially when compared to other slasher movies), and some others felt that the only notable element from the movie was Jamie Lee Curtis’ performance. With that type of criticism, the future wasn’t bright for Carpenter and Halloween, but as years have passed, the critics’ opinions have changed a lot.
As it happens to many other movies not only in the horror genre but in general, Halloween has been revisited over the years, which has made critics see the movie in a different light. While the movie was initially criticized for its Hitchcock influence, this was praised years later and is now credited as one of the movies that helped popularize and develop the slasher genre in the 1980s, something many critics blamed it for back in that decade. Surprisingly, when Halloween was released, many criticized it for being “violent and gory”, when in fact it’s one of the most retrained horror movies, which earned it the praise of critics and viewers, as Carpenter built a scary story without having to show gallons of blood. Halloween is now considered one of the best horror movies ever made, and the early criticism it got has been left in the past.
Halloween has served as inspiration for many filmmakers and other characters from the slasher genre, and Michael Myers has now become part of pop culture thanks to his many, many killing sprees since 1978. The Halloween franchise has gone through retcons, remakes, and reboots, but the impact and importance of the original film remain untouchable.