Halloween (1978) reviews

The Fuzzy Mushroom take on Halloween

By Fuzzy Mushroom · Updated 10 November 2026 · The Pros 96 · The Punters 86 · Spore Score 94 · How we write our takes

Why The Pros rate it higher than The Punters

Halloween is one of the few horror films that critics now treat as a stone-cold classic. The Pros give it 96, The Punters 86, and the Spore Score is 94. Both sides rate it highly, so this is a gap rather than a split. The Pros admire how much John Carpenter achieves with so little. Some Punters, especially those who came to it after decades of louder, gorier slashers, find it slower and gentler than its reputation suggests.

What it does well

The opening is still a masterclass. In one long, gliding first-person shot, we walk up to a house in Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween night in 1963, pick up a kitchen knife and climb the stairs, and only at the end do we see whose eyes we have been looking through. Fifteen years later, that boy, Michael Myers, escapes from a psychiatric hospital and comes home. His psychiatrist, Dr Loomis (Donald Pleasence), follows him. Babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, in her first film) has no idea she is being watched.

Carpenter, who co-wrote and produced the film with Debra Hill, understood that what you do not see is scarier than what you do. Michael hovers at the edge of the frame, behind hedges, across the street, in the dark corner of a room. There is far less blood than people remember. Carpenter also wrote the score himself, and that simple, jabbing piano theme in an unusual 5/4 time signature does half the work. Even the mask has a story: it was a cheap William Shatner mask, painted white.

Where The Punters have a point

The middle stretch, where Laurie's friends chatter about boys while Michael lurks, is slow for modern tastes, and some of the acting is stiff. The suburban streets, shot in California in spring, do not look much like autumn in the Midwest. And because the film has been copied so many times, by Friday the 13th and countless others, first-time viewers can feel they have seen it all before, even though this is where much of it came from.

Who it is for

Anyone who wants to understand horror cinema. Fans of slow-burn suspense rather than gore. It also makes a perfect first proper horror film for older teenagers who think they are too tough to be scared.

Context

Halloween was made for around $300,000 and became one of the most profitable independent films of its time, launching the slasher boom and a franchise that, after many sequels and reboots, brought Curtis back as Laurie in 2018. Carpenter went on to make The Thing and Escape from New York. Curtis became horror's definitive final girl and, decades later, an Oscar winner.

The Fuzzy Mushroom verdict

Must-see, with a Spore Score of 94. Lean, eerie and endlessly imitated. The Pros are right to put it near the top. If it feels slow, turn the lights off and let the piano do its job.