Coming to the acting department, Halloween features a budget-friendly cast in Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, P.J. It's one of Carpenter's most notable musical pieces & is a major reason behind this film's success. Whenever its main theme surfaces on the screen, there's an uneasiness felt in those moments & whispers of an ominous presence dominate those sequences. But the biggest contributor, in my opinion, is John Carpenter's minimal, synthesised score for it elevates the tension to a whole different level and greatly amplifies the desired effect of its disquieting camera-work & editing. Cinematography is inventive for the camera stalks our characters at all times, benefits from some ingenious placements, and is further uplifted by clever lighting while Editing makes sure that the suspenseful ambiance is kept alive from start to finish. Setting the plot in a suburban location turns the very openness of the area into a playground of mayhem. The technical aspects are skilfully executed, and every dollar of its low budget is efficiently used in service of the story. The script is equally impressive for the character of Michael Myers is handled with extreme care, and the writers leave no stone unturned to show him as an unstoppable force of evil. Carpenter creates an uncanny mood during the title sequence only which has nothing but a jack-o-lantern on the black screen, accompanied by the now iconic score, and follows it up with an expertly shot prologue which instantly brings the audience into the story. Co-written & directed by John Carpenter, whose innate ability to churn out quality pictures from mere scraps of filmmaking elements has earned him a place amongst world cinema's most influential filmmakers, Halloween is one of the finest works of his career that presents the director in complete control of his craft, and the way he sets the pace & eerie tone from the beginning is a delight to watch. The plot then jumps 15 years in the span of which Myers remained silent in a mental hospital he was confined to, only to escape from the facility and returns to his hometown to kill some more. Set in Haddonfield, Illinois, the story of Halloween begins on the titular night in 1963 where we witness the 6-years old Michael Myers stabbing his older sister to death with a kitchen knife. Although it wasn't the first of its kind, it certainly was the game-changer for almost every other slasher flick that followed this low-budget indie horror only ended up imitating the formula that this classic originated.
Possibly the most influential of all slasher films, John Carpenter's Halloween is the reason why this particular subgenre of horror even exists in the first place.