10 Best "What's Around The Corner" Horror Movie Moments
4. The Shape Emerges From Darkness - Halloween (1978)
Although he earned that title after creating several seminal genre classics, it wouldn't have been unfair at all if John Carpenter had been called "The Master of Horror" after just Halloween. Co-written with Debra Hill, Halloween reiterated the fierce nature of Carpenter's talent following the riotous Assault on Precinct 13, with the director this time confronting the idea of ultimate evil: a masked killer with the blackest eyes - the devil's eyes.
With Halloween, Carpenter and Hill created the definitive horror movie villain - a character grounded in real-world terror but with enough supernatural connotations that they would embody the very idea of evil itself. There was no explaining Michael Myers; evil exists in the world and therefore The Shape does too. He moves in and out of shadows like a ghost, but like evil itself, he is fundamentally human - and so too is the terror he exacts.
No scene better exemplifies this than when Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) investigates the Wallaces' house and discovers Annie, Lynda and Bob's corpses. With Laurie backed into a corner, the ghostly face of death emerges slowly from inky nothingness, embodying all the earthly and spiritual terror of The Shape in one lingering moment.
It's one of many masterstroke moments for Carpenter, shot beautifully by Dean Cundey.