Halloween turns the mighty 4-0 this year. That’s right, it’s been forty years since Michael Myers stalked and slashed his way through Haddonfield. To commemorate the prestigious event, Lionsgate UK have just released a 4K restoration onto new home entertainment format, the UHD.
Halloween UHD Review
The disc features the film fully rendered into glorious ultra high definition, as well as a snazzy 7.1 audio track. The result is simply stunning. The key selling point of UHD discs is that the picture resolution allows the viewer to see true black (all that other black you see isn’t quite right), and given Halloween is a film set at night with lots of darkness, it works perfectly. The clarity is so good that you just might see something that you haven’t seen before. By beefing up the audio, the disc allows the score to really shine through, it has honestly never sounded better.
Related: Halloween (1978) review
After forty years, Halloween is still just as watchable. It’s easily better than a lot of what has come after and still holds strong against recent horror films. How John Carpenter managed to pull-off such sorcery we’ll never know, but it’s not the only one of his films to hang around. What makes Halloween so good is that it doesn’t rely on all the clichés that spoil some genre films of today. Of course, it helps that Halloween is one of, if not the prototype slasher flick, the one that invented all of the rules that more modern films try to replicate. The biggest shocker is the distinct lack of excessive blood or gore. It highlights just how far boundaries have been pushed with censors in the following years. This might mean that a truly modern young audience might find it a little tame when compared to some more recent offerings, but the slow-burn, gradual build-up of unease, should win them around.
Related: Halloween (2018) review [TIFF]
Jamie Lee Curtis is perfect as the archetypal final girl and doesn’t actually take herself too seriously. She’s a bookish nerd and she happily embraces it, unfazed by the teasing of her peers. She may also be the most diligent babysitter committed to film. Having discovered all of her friends have been butchered, and the killer now has his sights set on her, she doesn’t just run blindly into the night. Instead, she races back to her wards and makes sure they are safe before taking on the boogie man herself. Donald Pleasence’s Doctor Loomis offers a nice contrast to Laurie’s stoicism, as he runs around shouting like a madman to anyone who will listen about the dangerous escaped convict on the loose.
John Carpenter’s horror institution has never looked or sounded better than in this specially crafted release. With the release of the new Halloween just around the corner, now is the perfect time to reacquaint yourself with the ultimate slasher.
Halloween is available on 4K UHD Blu-Ray now.
