It’s a curious celebration, Halloween: a night ostensibly dedicated to death and haunting that has somehow become an occasion for all things autumnally cosy. (Growing up in a country where Halloween fell in the bright blush of spring, it made even less sense.)
Halloween night itself may have served as the baleful setting for many a blood-freezing horror film – most obviously, and effectively, in John Carpenter’s original Halloween, which locates a sense of tingly, dangerous desolation in the banal Halloween festivities of American suburbia. But just as often the day serves as a movie backdrop for comedy, joy and romance, all rendered in warm russet tones.
