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Originally posted by Thor
I mean I liked the overall premise of the movie. It was gripping & intense at some parts but it was just too slow paced for me. Idk, I didn't like how it took the killer like 5 hours to kill Jamie Lee Curtis's friend, like it just kept dragging on.
It wasn't that bad, but maybe I was expecting something on the level of Psycho or The Shinning. since this movie is also such a cult classic.
No, the oldest horror movie that I've seen is Psycho & it's one of my all time favorites. Also, The Shinning, which came out 2 years after Halloween, so its not because the movie is old.
And I don't agree with the "they were slow paced because they had to rely more on the story & score" because Psycho, which is a lot older than Halloween and The Shinning, which came out around the same time, are two of the BEST horror movies to have been ever made. They didn't have special effects or anything like that, either. They also relied on the story and the score, but they moved at a pace, which kept the viewer interested.
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good lord where do I even start with this one.
First of all, Psycho was MADE under the premise that Alfred Hitchcock wanted to do something completely unexpected that would shock the audience in a way that they would never see coming
(to kill off his leading lady in the first 30 minutes)
that was not done to make the film any more fast paced or to hold the audience's attention by having an important event happen early on in the film, it was done simply to shock the audience, as they never would have seen it coming. The intent of the film's pacing was shock, not entertainment.
Second of all, you call Halloween slow paced, yet you enjoyed The Shining? An extremely long, extremely slow paced film in which the majority of the action happened in the last act? You must either have some sort of bias towards The Shining, or you are simply confused, because the pacing of both Halloween and The Shining is actually very similar.
Lastly, your reaction that it took a long time for Michael to get to the killing is actually the reaction that the filmmakers intended. Halloween is all about suspense. You know what is coming, but you don't know when. That's the beauty and the horror of the original Halloween. It's slow, it drags, there is a sense of dread in that the audience is aware of Michael's presence, but the characters have no idea what's coming. And there were no unnecessary characters either. Many slasher films of today make the mistake of adding in all these unnecessary characters whose only purpose is to up the body count, because modern audiences think that if they don't see a kill at least once every 10 minutes, the film is boring. The great thing about Halloween is that every character is necessary and serves a purpose. The small cast gives you time with each member of the cast to get to know them and to care about them, which makes their ultimate fate that much more horrifying when it actually happens. It's supposed to make you feel something when the character you have gotten to know for the past hour is put in danger. These modern horror movies that have a character pop up and then die all in the matter of 10 minutes...there's no scare there. You don't give a **** about that character or what happens to them. That is precisely why Halloween is so "slow." You need time with your characters. Suspense is built with time. You need to devote yourself to the world of the film or the suspense will be lost on you. It has to build.
towards the end) is so expertly paced. Loved it.