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Halloween 1st Person POV

by Steve Anderson

This scene from John Carpenter's Halloween offers a rare instance of extremely effective use of a first-person camera to show the brutal murder of the main character's sister. Now a cliche of Hollywood slasher films, the shaky, hand-held POV was accentuated by masking around the image that was supposed to depict the mask worn by the killer. Whereas first person POV is ordinarily thought to distance spectators from the action on screen, Halloween places its audience in the uncomfortable subject position of both voyeur and murderer.

Halloween (1977): 1st Person POV

by Brett Service

According to the terminology of CTCS 190, this opening scene from John Carpenter's 'Halloween' demonstrates the use of first person internal point-of-view. The camera stands in for the murderer and the viewer is complicit in his actions. The identity of the murderer is revealed at the end to be a young boy and the literary POV of the scene and film subsequently shifts away from first person.