halloween

As previously mentioned I avoid horror where people do terrible things to each other, because that could happen, and probably does, and I don’t care for jump scares in my old age. This gets through on my sci-fi horror technicality: none of this could happen—I hope at least—so I was free to enjoy the shapeshifting gore from a more… scientific point of view. That thing has organs.

Because the effects are physically there, they hold up better than most CGI (the defibrillator scene especially). Only the odd jerky transition gives their age away. The Morricone score has dated worse than the rubber: that early-80s synth tone sounds way older than it should. The ending hangs brilliantly.

The marketing was the bait: sold to teenage boys who turned up for Megan Fox and got a feminist horror about the intensity of teenage girl friendship and what men do when they need a sacrifice. In 2026 the reading is unmissable; in 2009, a year after “I Kissed a Girl” had pitched queerness as a party trick for boys, Fox’s casting read as more of the same. She is magnetic and clearly having a great time weaponising her own image, and the script gives her some of the best line readings of the decade. Diablo Cody, Karyn Kusama and the soundtrack each earn the reputation they’ve developed since release. Seyfried almost convinces you she’s the plain one.