I'll concede right off that it's very hard to be objective in reviewing this movie. The truth is I've never seen it until today, but it's spawned so many sequels and become such a part of popular culture (for better or worse) that it's stamped into your mind whether you've seen it or not. Trying to be objective I'd say - it's not bad. It's not as good as what I would consider to be the classic of the slasher movies (1978's Halloween) but it has some moments of pretty good suspense and somewhat surprisingly to me I found that it wasn't a "gore-fest." There's violence and blood but the murders, while they're portrayed, tend to be shown quickly and the movie moves on fairly quickly. The setting is used pretty well to create atmosphere - the movie is set in a remote camp about to be re-opened after being closed for over 20 years following the murders of two counsellors in 1958. Those murders kick off the movie. There's some decent camera-work, as the camera serves as the eyes of the killer, and at times that effect is used when the camera isn't being used as the eyes of the killer, so there's a bit of uncertainty for the viewer. It is a bit of a chuckle that this movie uses as its setting the classically bad opening of terrible novels ("it was a dark and stormy night.")
The performances were OK, if a little bit forced and artificial at times. Adrienne King did a good job near the end of the movie as the terrified Alice. Kevin Bacon had a role in this as Jack, but it wasn't the lead role, and aside from him no one from the movie rose to any significant stature in Hollywood and there was certainly no Jamie Lee Curtis (see Halloween) among the female leads, although there were many shots of young and cute women in various stages of undress!
Strange to say, but in some ways knowing the basic outline of how the series progresses adds to the suspense at the end of the movie as to the identity of the killer, and does get you wondering how the heck this is going to lead to sequels - or at least to the sequels it led to, although Alice's last line ("then he's still out there") clearly establishes that those responsible for the movie were already looking ahead to the sequels. Not having been really interested in the series before this, I will confess that, having seen the first instalment, I now have a certain curiosity to see how the second instalment is constructed. 7/10
