What I learned from "Halloween"...

So, Halloween is one of my favourite days of the year. It’s chilly, it’s dark, kids have fun and I have an excuse (as if I need one) to watch horror films. I love horror films. One of my earliest memories is of staring through the crack in the open door to our lounge as my parents watched “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. What I saw was so fascinating, so intriguing I just had to see more. And the fact that my mother had to have a large whisky before bed in order to sleep after that film just compounded the knowledge that this was something brilliant. 

So, years on, John Carpenter’s “Halloween” remains a solid favourite of mine and I revisited this film this weekend in honour of the date. This is an amazing film that has already been decanted into the “how to survive a horror movie” rule book in the brilliant “Scream”. 

Here is what I learned from “Halloween”...

You cannot be too smart. 

Poor Laurie. Her friends are confident, sexy and don’t care about school. They always have boyfriends. Laurie is teased for her sense of responsibility, she worries about leaving her chemistry books behind and thinks that “boys don’t like me because they think I am too smart”. But it’s Laurie who is still standing at the end of the night. You can never be too smart. 

People probably aren’t having as good a time as you think they are. 

Laurie is stuck with both the kids now. She stares over at the house across the street where her friends are with their boyfriends and sighs “Everybody is having a good time tonight”. Of course, she can’t know that her friends are being horribly massacred by the nightmare figure of Michael Myers, but the lesson remains. We all look around and think, “wow, everyone is having a better time than me” and that ain’t necessarilly so! 

Knitting is cool. 

You can use the needles as weapons against crazed psychopaths and make a nice scarf. 

Listen to children, they tell the truth.

“There’s no boogeyman” says Laurie firmly to little Tommy. Oh yes there is, love. Kids are pure and without all of our awful preconceptions. We should listen to kids. They speak the truth in their simple way, and ignoring them is just plain stupid. Of course there is a Boogeyman and we should all have our knitting needles ready. 

You can’t kill the “Boogeyman”. 

The seminal rule of all horror movies. The bad guy is never dead. Never let your guard (or your knitting needles) down. 

Evil exists in the everyday. 

What strikes me most about the end of this film is that the final shots aren’t of tears, terror or a frantic search for Michael. They are of the sofa, the lamp, the everyday things that surround us. Is this showing the aftermath of evil or the fact that evil exists in the everyday things? Haddonfield is the perfect setting for this film. Suburban, quiet and unsuspecting. And the lesson is that evil doesn’t always appear in dark and dangerous places but can rear its head in your home, your town, your bedroom. Be afraid. Very afraid. 

Always leave room for a sequel.  

To be continued...