Album Review: Halloween [Original 2018 Motion Picture Soundtrack] by John Carpenter

John Carpenter didn't direct the 2018 installment of the Halloween series (previously described by its makers as a "recalibration" rather than a reboot), but he did provide the music for the film. As the film stays true to the 1978 original, even casting Nick Castle as Michael Myers for the first time in four decades, the soundtrack is in the same spirit of the original, only performed with Carpenter's touring and recording partners (his son Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies), and with a much bigger budget. The iconic Halloween theme pops up in several iterations, and in much higher definition than in the original.

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It's difficult to guess which achievement will stand tallest within John Carpenter's impressive legacy. With 1978's Halloween, the director not only laid the foundation for the slasher film, likely the most prevalent subgenre in American horror, but served as an inspiration to low-budget independent filmmakers for generations to come. With a filmography that also includes classics such as The Thing, They Live, Escape From New York, Big Trouble in Little China, and The Fog— we could keep going— he boasts arguably the most diverse and consistent catalog of any genre filmmaker.

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This month we will witness Laurie Strode facing off with her demented brother and real-life bogeyman, Michael Myers, one final time. Throughout the not always consistent franchise (Season of the Witch easily ranks as the most bizarre of entries) we've witnessed Myers systematically brutalize anyone standing between him and Strode and now director David Gordon Greene is bringing the two back to Haddonfield to settle unfinished business. Halloween is a direct sequel to the original, taking place 40 years later, and (thankfully) disregarding the continuity of the previous sequels (although Part II wasn't exactly bad).

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As anyone who knows their horror movies knows, you can't keep a bad guy down. This Halloween, or more precisely, shortly before Halloween, the apparently superhuman, unkillable, Michael Myers returns to the big screen to once again to scare the living hell out of audiences. When he first donned his customised William Shatner mask back in 1978 for the original Halloween movie, the film unbelievably didn't have a soundtrack.

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John Carpenter's Halloween theme is so terrifying, so instantly iconic, that it makes you forget certain things about the original movie. Like the fact that Michael Myers spends at least a third of the film driving around town slowly in a tan Buick, for example. This is to say nothing of balding shrink Dr. Loomis--lurking in a trench coat and catcalling children from behind the bushes on Halloween night, he disturbed me upon rewatching nearly as much Myers.

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