296. 31 Days of Halloween 2025 - Day 31: HALLOWEEN (1978) dir. John Carpenter

How else could I end this series? Seriously, how? What spooky season is complete without a rewatch of John Carpenter's "absolute classic" HALLOWEEN? Leave it to a master to skewer the myth of suburban safety. Horror isn't relegated to the cannibal-owned homes of rural Texas nor the decaying castles of Eastern Europe. Michael Myers came from a suburban American family, raised in a community resembling many of ours. Same schools, same culture. Michael Myers is one of us. He IS us. This wasn't a bullied revenger nor a teenage Manson acolyte. He was a first-grader. And yet, he stabbed his sister to death with a kitchen knife. Why? The movie never says. And even if Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) spent the opening car ride to the sanitarium dictating a thesis to the nurse, would we really accept his clean-cut answer? When schoolchildren are gunned down, do we believe the reasons told to us by the news? I don't ask if we understand them. Do we believe them? I think evil is something primal, locked away in the recesses of our consciousness, unable to be fully understood. As much as humanity would like to have a grip on its impulses and provide explanations for every behavior, we're simply not there yet. And what Michael Myers reveals is the harrowing truth: evil is baked in. Any one of us has the capacity for terrible things. It's foolhardy and dangerous to walk around the Earth as if it isn't true. The great storytellers tell us the truth, as difficult as it may be to hear. John Carpenter and Debra Hill are two of the greats. --- Follow The Movies on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Letterboxd⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Throw a couple dollars in the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tip jar!