John Carpenter
286 connections found
Filmography
Halloween 1978 
The Thing 1982 
Dark Star 1974 
Big Trouble in Little China 1986 
Prince of Darkness 1987 
They Live 1988 
Starman 1984 
Ghosts of Mars 2001 
Assault on Precinct 13 1976 
The Fog 1980 
Escape from New York 1981 
In the Mouth of Madness 1995 
Elvis 1979 
Christine 1983 
Vampires 1998 
Village of the Damned 1995 
The Ward 2010 
Memoirs of an Invisible Man 1992 
Escape from L.A. 1996 
Someone's Watching Me! 1978 View:
Connections, in both directions
Rio Bravo (1959)
Directed by Howard Hawks
influenced Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Ghosts of Mars (2001), Halloween (1978), Vampires (1998), Big Trouble in Little China (1986), The Thing (1982), The Fog (1980)
Plot
It's no secret that Carpenter has spent most of his career in the shadow of Howard Hawks, cryptically re-making or pointedly reversing that director's Rio Bravo in, like, half of his movies.
For Carpenter's early feature Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), he loosely updated Hawks' Rio Bravo to an urban setting.
For all its firepower and mayhem, his second feature, Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), is Hawks's classic John Wayne feature, Rio Bravo (1959), transposed to an urban setting.
(The plot is lifted from Rio Bravo and the editing is credited to one "John T. Chance"—the name of John Wayne's character in the same film.)
Often described as a melding of Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo" and George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead", this is one of the ultimate siege movies.
John Carpenter is a master of action, science fiction, horror, and molds his own version of a “Rio Bravo” in “Assault on Precinct 13,” an exceptional, exciting, and sometimes creepy tale about a relentless gang out for blood on a small group of officers and secretaries in an abandoned precinct.
Midnight Special (2016)
Directed by Jeff Nichols
influenced by Starman (1984)
Themes Plot Music Visuals
Thematically, Arkansas-born writer-director Jeff Nichols’ fourth feature draws capably from the models of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.” and “Starman,” as well as Nichols’ own affinity for spare widescreen compositions akin to Clint Eastwood movies of that filmmaking era.
Nichols taps into movie history, with touches of “Sugarland Express,” “Close Encounters,””E.T.” and most pointedly, “Starman,” for this pursuit picture.
It shares a fair bit of uncanny road-movie DNA with John Carpenter’s Starman, as well as the quiet mystery seen in M. Night Shyamalan’s early films.
There's an explicit nod, in particular, to John Carpenter's Starman, echoed even in the enveloping mood of David Wingo's driving electronic score.
It's also, in its own way, a wonderful melding of two different, but influential popular '70s filmmakers, drawing its blue-collar heroes and "Starman" otherworldliness from John Carpenter, its government agents and questing characters from "Close Encounters" and "E.T."
Echoes of Spielberg ("E.T.," "The Sugarland Express," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind") and John Carpenter ("Starman") can be heard in the film, but Nichols is his own plain-spoken artist.
This is Sidney Prescott in the mode of Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode in Halloween (2018). Unlike Curtis’ character, however, Sidney is not portrayed as emotionally damaged or obsessive.
…this film is, as mentioned, committed straightforwardly to functioning as an uninspired riff on the Halloween reboot.
…una dinámica muy similar a la que Jamie Lee Curtis interpretó en las recientes secuelas de Halloween…
Sidney Prescott as a mother is a compelling character, even if it feels like a bit of a retread of Halloween 2018.
She's rehashing the generational trauma theme we've seen in recent horror reboots, especially in Halloween (2018), which is name-checked here to really hammer home the similarity.
For Scream 7, the unenterprising screenwriters Kevin Williamson and Guy Busick lifted the premise from the rebooted Halloween (2018), which involved the killer Michael Myers setting his sights on the next generation and attempting to slaughter a mother-daughter combo of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her estranged daughter, Karen (Judy Greer).
Sinners (2025)
Directed by Ryan Coogler
influenced by The Thing (1982), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Vampires (1998), Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980)
Visuals Themes
Without giving the game away, as the film melds more with the horror and the viscera of Carpenter-esque genre pieces (Coogler has repeatedly cited The Thing and Salem’s Lot in the lead up to the release) it begins to shift to something more playful and fluid.
Sinners does feature elements that harken back to Salem’s Lot, Night of the Living Dead, The Thing, and From Dusk Till Dawn.
Coogler draws influences from vampiric folklore, John Carpenter’s The Thing, a bit of Tarantino, and his own personal filmmaking gravitas to create a magical experience.
Coogler’s patient pacing and smooth camera movement harken back to John Carpenter’s best work in Halloween, The Fog, and The Thing (but not Vampires, thank God).
Coogler has repeatedly cited The Thing and Salem’s Lot in the lead up to the release…
The film draws major inspiration from two earlier works. The first is John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece The Thing. That creature assimilates every living organism it touches, overwriting its genetic code. In Sinners, vampires represent Europeans who migrated to America and assimilated not only the enslaved Africans but everyone. The high point of the Thing reference is the garlic test — used to determine who has turned into a vampire. Garlic burns them, smoke rises from them when they try to chew it. This parallels the blood test in The Thing.
It Follows (2015)
Directed by David Robert Mitchell
influenced by Halloween (1978), In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
Visuals Music
His opening shot, with its placid suburban street, reminds you of Haddonfield, Illinois, where Jamie Lee Curtis was pursued in “Halloween,” and the director of that movie, John Carpenter, supplied a throbbing electronic score that is constantly echoed here.
Alongside knowing visual echoes of Halloween , there’s a deep vein of John Carpenter in the simple but unnervingly effective electronic score by Disasterpeace, which runs from almost subliminal background booms to crunching, sometime strident dissonance (I’ve just listened to some on my laptop, and even heard this way they’re still deeply troubling).
But there are also times when the camera itself turns threatening, prowling the quiet suburban streets in eerily smooth tracking shots that hark back to John Carpenter's slasher classic, Halloween.
The teenage cast gives subtle, sympathetic performances, grounding this wild terror in reality, while the cinematography and assaultive score openly recall the cinemascope suburbia and savage synths of John Carpenter’s Halloween while building on the influence and deepening it.
The inspiration from John Carpenter’s “Halloween” (1978), extending to the eerie, electronic musical score, is unmistakable and used to great effect.
By echoing John Carpenter's Halloween (not in terms of narrative but it nearly every other way that matters), director David Robert Mitchell has announced that he won't be bound by the limits of modern multiplex horror tropes.
The Thing (2011)
Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
influenced by The Thing (1982)
Visuals Themes
The problem with this weekend's take on The Thing, though, is that it sprinkles in the requisite nods to the 1982 original but never figures out how to build a compelling narrative around it.
Whenever director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. isn't blurring the line between referencing and replicating John Carpenter's 1982 version of The Thing (itself a remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 film The Thing from Another World), he's borrowing liberally from Ridley Scott's claustrophobic Alien.
Almost thirty years since the release of John Carpenter's superb 1982 sci-fi thriller "The Thing," it remains one of the great so-called "monster movies" in cinema history, comparable in sheer mastery and creepiness to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic "Alien" with one key location change (Antarctica rather than outer space).
I seriously doubt it was on screenwriter Bill Lancaster’s mind, but he wrote the perfect set-up for a prequel-cum-remake when he penned the script for John Carpenter’s The Thing, a chilly, fantastically grotesque, and nerve-rattling adaptation of John W. Campbell’s 1938 novella “Who Goes There?” (which had previously served as the source material for Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks’s 1951 classic The Thing From Another World).
They somewhat boldly invite comparisons by invoking John Carpenter's The Thing , and what it ultimately borrows from that snowbound horror classic (more its quiet final tone than anything like gore and jump scares) might indicate how much The Lodge will or won't appeal to the tastes of the viewer.
Some healthy chunks of scenery from John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) adds to the sense of menace, paralleling the dread of chaos unfolding in an uninhabitable wintry climate (though the real purpose of these clips seems to be for a line goading the direction of the film suggesting the dangers of cabin fever).
Sergio Casci's script, written with the filmmakers, teases out uncertainties as to whether the children, Grace herself or some dreadful unseen force is responsible for the unnerving developments, throwing in playful hints of lurking evil at one point by having them watch another cabin-fever chiller, John Carpenter's The Thing , on TV, switching channels to Jack Frost just to keep us guessing.
(An argument can even be made for 1982’s The Thing, had the filmmakers not already spoon-fed the allusion for us).
Using a harsh and unforgiving landscape as the backdrop to an isolated dwelling to great effect (think: The Shining or The Thing ), directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala have made an effective follow-up to their 2014 cult hit, Goodnight Mommy .
Here the pair does not shy away from the body of “white death” horror that came before The Lodge , with eerie and sometimes humorous nods to The Thing and The Shining , among others, haunting the piece.
Color Out of Space (2020)
Directed by Richard Stanley
influenced by The Thing (1982), In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
Visuals Themes
The visual effects are often beautiful; the nods to Poltergeist and The Thing less inspiring.
Ward appears brandishing a Miskatonic University t-shirt as the Lovecraft mythos starts namedropping, but when creatures worthy of John Carpenter’s The Thing begin crawling out of dark places, nothing and no one is safe.
As the effects of the asteroid begin to warp lifeforms, the gross-out FX really rise to the occasion, with Stanley displaying a clear adoration for Robin Bottin’s work in projects like The Thing and Total Recall and leaning into the benefits of layers of makeup over humdrum computer animation.
What seems like an exciting discovery soon liquefies into a bloody cocktail with splashes of John Carpenter’s The Thing and Alex Garland’s Annihilation (works that were likely inspired by Lovecraft).
Creatures here resemble a cross between Cronenberg’s eXistenZ and Carpenter’s The Thing, the latter almost shockingly so during a scene involving alpacas.
As a director reborn, Stanley still has the eye for everything from spectrum to slaughter, and although the pacing drops here and there, Color Out of Space should delight anybody who wore out the videos of Prophecy (ironically directed by Frankenheimer) and The Thing way back when.
As one of the now grownup Losers Club puts it (in a droll homage to John Carpenter’s The Thing), “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”
(All this despite an unfurling of horror references onscreen, including a sequence that takes a page from The Thing .)
Muschietti once again gets excellent performances from his young cast, and his visual touches often recall John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982).
From giant, drooling clowns to grotesque insect apparitions and spiderlike shape-shifters, It Chapter Two doesn’t skimp on the funhouse theatrics, even riffing on a quotable moment from John Carpenter’s The Thing , which remains a monstrous benchmark for mind-bending 80s horror.
Muschietti also adds amusing cameos by King and legendary director Peter Bogdanovich — as himself, apparently — amid cool visual references to Ridley Scott’s Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing , among other famous flicks.
The films “The Thing,” “Carrie,” “The Shining” and the “Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise all get shoutouts as well — and those are just the references I caught during a single viewing.
Green Room (2016)
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier
influenced by Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
Plot Themes
The resourceful Ain’t Rights fend off the onslaughts of a terrifying, determined enemy, echoing other classic versions of defend-the-castle films such as Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs” and John Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13.” It’s almost like one of those “escape room” venues where you actually die if you can’t figure out the puzzle in time.
When John Carpenter made Assault on Precinct 13 in 1976, he readily acknowledged the influence he drew from George A. Romero in crafting the homogeneous zombie-like horde of gang members laying siege to an L.A. police station.
It’s a simple, pulpy set-up—reminiscent of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), which were themselves derived from various westerns involving characters trapped inside forts and farmhouses—and Saulnier, who both wrote and directed, revels in the primal nastiness of what the will to live looks like in the most dire of circumstances while also infusing the film with a level of visual artistry and black humor that suggests he is capable of much more.
What ensues is very much reminiscent of Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13.”
In an opening shot that may as well be a direct quotation from John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” a meteor originating from deep space streaks past the camera, striking a lighthouse along the United States coastline.
Annihilation, which Garland adapted from the first novel in Jeff VanderMeer’s “Southern Reach” trilogy, is a riveting and often unnerving combination of head trip sci-fi on the order of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Stalker and high-end, Ten Little Indians-style creature feature like Alien and The Thing.
At an eerily deserted army base in the Shimmer, the women find traces of the group Kane had been with earlier, including scary footage and a dead body that has come apart and bloomed like a fungus, an image reminiscent of Rob Bottin’s designs for John Carpenter’s “The Thing.”
Combining bits of “The Thing” (the Carpenter version) and the “Aliens” franchise with themes reminiscent of “2001” and his own “Ex Machina,” writer-director Alex Garland offers an adaptation of the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy that’s consistently tantalizing but also deliberately obscure.
Annihilation is a ferocious, feral, female-centric update of fearsome monster classics like The Thing and Alien.
A journey into an alien heart of darkness, Annihilation feels like it’s been fashioned from gene-splicing Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now with John Carpenter’s The Thing (especially in a pool-set scene of blooming monstrousness) and, also, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, the latter’s spiritual influence coming to the fore during a finale of such prolonged, mesmerizing surrealism that it made my eyes burn—mainly because I didn’t want to blink, lest I miss a moment of its insanity.
On the basis of his work on the low-budget quasi-student film "Dark Star," future "Alien" writer Dan O'Bannon was hired to create the special effects, after Jodorowksy failed to detect any sympathetic vibes in a meeting with the industry's reigning FX master at the time, Douglas Trumbull ("2001: A Space Odyssey"), whom the filmmaker dismisses as more a "technician" than a fellow truth-seeker.
After a meeting with “2001: A Space Odyssey” effects king Douglas Trumbull that did not go well (he was a technician, not an artist, Jodorowsky recalls) he seeks refuge in a Hollywood movie theater showing John Carpenter’s “Dark Star.”
He relates how he wanted 2001: A Space Odyssey wizard Douglas Trumbull to create his film's effects, changing his mind once he decided that Trumbull was a technician and not an artist; instead, he tapped Dark Star's Dan O'Bannon.
He rejected Douglas Trumbull of “2001” fame as his special effects coordinator because the man’s distant, mechanical attitude would make him impossible to work with, and opted for the more amenable Dan O’Bannon (of John Carpenter’s “Dark Star”) instead.
So he turned to Dan O'Bannon, who had worked on the inventive, low-budget SF movie Dark Star.
Overlord (2018)
Directed by Julius Avery
influenced by The Thing (1982), Escape from New York (1981)
Themes Visuals
Magaro and Ollivier are also quite good in their limited stints, but Russell, filling a role akin to his father Kurt’s badass John Carpenter roles in “The Thing” and “Escape from New York,” doesn’t quite seal the deal.
Russell dials down the aw-shucks charm he’s shown in previous roles, instead echoing the world-weariness his father demonstrated in John Carpenter’s The Thing (a clear spiritual cousin to Overlord ).
Director Julius Avery’s reference points don’t end there, reversing iconic imagery from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and staging a ghastly transformation sequence that conjures sensations of The Thing, a comparison aided by situating Kurt Russell’s son front and center amidst the chaos.
The characters fit certain “types” — Jovan Adepo as Boyce, the soldier too tender-hearted to even kill a mouse; Wyatt Russell as tough guy Ford, making a strong case for stepping into his father Kurt’s shoes should Hollywood ever attempt a second remake of The Thing ; Mathilde Ollivier as Chloe, the sole female presence; and Game of Thrones’ Pilou Asbæk as Wafner, the cartoonishly menacing Nazi officer — and they’re knocked down in the order you expect them to be.
While a big gory scene in an attic is an absolutely disturbing tribute to “The Thing,” there’s almost zero rationale for why Boyce would resort to desperate measures, in the first place.
In His Father’s (Bloody) Footsteps: Wyatt Russell has already forged a career much different than his father’s, but Overlord is notable for placing him in what ends up becoming a close-quarters horror movie a la The Thing .
Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)
Directed by Jane Schoenbrun
influenced by Halloween (1978)
Themes
Camp Miasma is an 80s slasher franchise once revered and since revived to the point of zombification. Think Friday the 13th, Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Kris Williams (Hannah Einbinder) is a hot young indie-film director tapped to remake Camp Miasma, a slasher film series in the vein of Friday the 13th or Halloween.
If, in the likes of Halloween and Friday the 13th, titillation and puritanism went hand in hand—so that sex, especially as experienced by horny teenagers, was gruesomely punished—Camp Miasma sees the slasher itself as a perverse pathway toward sexual satisfaction.
…creating a mash-up of the better-known canon — Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street (in order of appearance)…
…one that not only satirizes 1980s horror franchises such as “Halloween” and “Friday the 13th,”…
In doing so it makes one recall the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis in the Halloween franchise (including a killer joke about her lore), and the journey she and other final girls have taken in being the inspiration for generations while acknowledging the toll this fame has had on them.
Ayer’s story – the government unleashing a bunch of wily criminals on a busted up metropolis in a last ditch effort to save the world – is more than a little reminiscent of John Carpenter’s 1981 classic “Escape From New York.”
Ayer keeps the convicts in line by lifting the arterial micro-burst conceit direct from Escape from New York; failure to cooperate causes a tiny charge to detonate in their neck.
If the movie begins with a hardcore action premise along the lines of Escape From New York, it ends up resembling Ghostbusters, and that stuff falls out of Ayer’s wheelhouse.
Ayer is clearly a big fan of The Dirty Dozen, Escape From New York and Ghostbusters, which sounds like a fun mix, but once the first couple of solid action set-pieces are done and dusted, the film’s engine dies.
And even when the team members are hustled into the field, their first assignment turns out to be a small-scale Escape From New York-style extraction that involves completely ignoring the monumental, world-threatening Ghostbusters-style supernatural event going on in the background.
In its construction, Suicide Squad is an Escape From New York -style action-adventure in which our antiheroes trek through Midway City in order to reach a secret destination whose importance has been kept secret by Flag.
It’s a moment that recalls a similar scene in John Carpenter’s Halloween…
Ben smashing through a louvered closet door where Lucy and Kate hide seems direct homage to Jack Nicholson’s “Here’s Johnny!” moment from The Shining or Michael Myers destroying the flimsy closet shielding Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween.
There are plenty of visual horror franchise homages: “Alien,” “Jurassic Park” and “Halloween.” Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode would kill for these closets.
Roberts’ homage to King’s Cujo, with lots of notes of Carpenter’s Halloween…
It'd be reductive to suggest that this was King Kong by way of Halloween…
…but Primate also does itself no favors by cribbing from Halloween, Scream, A Quiet Place, and other tired horror tropes.
The teen villains are so monstrous, from a toxic female cohort dispatched in a ridiculous cryotank (think the cold version of what Michael Myers does with a hot tub in Halloween II , 1981) to a group of gang rapey boys and even Alan Ruck as an extremely rude shop teacher, there’s never a moment to pause at the violent audacity of whatever or whomever the Blissfield Butcher is or what his motivations for incessant slaughter might be.
The killer’s mask is a gruesome mix of Jason’s and Leatherface’s from the “Friday the 13th” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” franchises, and one of the butcher’s early kills (and his reaction thereto) emulates Michael Myer’s impaling of Bob Simms in the original “Halloween.”
Nonetheless, Freaky is also his most skillfully directed project so far, not just in the way of gruesomely creative kills (there’s a sadistically fun woodshop murder) but also in terms of photography with moody lighting and thoughtful shots playing homage to the classics that paved the way (there’s a great Halloween nostalgia pull involving a knife going through a door that made me smile).
After we witness clueless teens get the bloody axe in the opening sequence (a nostalgic throwback that pays homage to “Friday the 13th” and “Halloween”) we meet 17 year old Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton) still coping with the loss of her father one year prior, and who hasn’t made plans to commemorate Homecoming with her pals Nyla (Celeste O’Connor) and Josh (Misha Osherovich).
I’ll leave you to discover just how all this leads to a climactic chase through a Halloween maze in a high school gym with dry-ice machines at full tilt, set to a nerve-jangling synth score that evokes John Carpenter’s Halloween (to which Wingard, whose previous features have been low-budget horror films, explicitly pays homage).
The film is a worthy heir to the horror traditions of “Halloween” auteur John Carpenter, whose work is referenced via a tense electronic score and the occasional shot of a jack-o’-lantern, and Joseph Ruben, whose 1987 “The Stepfather” provided the template for this story in which a figure who should be worthy of respect and trust insinuates his way into an all-American family under false pretenses and with deadly consequences.
The camera partakes of the gliding reframing in movies from John Carpenter’s 1970s Steadicam heyday, and while there is full-frontal homage to movies ranging from “Halloween” to “Carrie” to “The Stepfather,” “The Terminator” and “Taxi Driver,” the movie holds its own with gleeful élan.
An expertly orchestrated final battle leaves us wanting more, much like John Carpenter's Halloween.
Where “You’re Next” was a punchy love note to Wes Craven (“Scream”), “The Guest” is a full-on wet kiss to John Carpenter (“Halloween”), atmospheric in the extreme and gilded with slithering synth lines and unnerving camera work.
While 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Solaris (1972) are obvious touchstones, Jones seems more directly inspired by smaller films of the era such as Dark Star (1974) and Silent Running (1972).
Moon is an old-fashioned sci-fi movie in the best sense: far more psychological drama than space opera, dispensing with overweening CGI and loud flashy action sequences while harking back to subtler, more ideas-driven entries in the genre such as Solaris, Silent Running and Dark Star.
Sam’s dishevelled appearance and the film’s low budget aesthetic even resembles Dark Star to a degree while thematically Moon also strongly evokes Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris .
Peninsula (2020)
Directed by Yeon Sang-ho
influenced by Escape from New York (1981)
Plot Themes Visuals
With a premise reminiscent of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, Yeon and co-writer Park Joo-Suk make the ruins of a South Korean metropolis into a playground for American action-movie tropes and allusions.
With a set-up that feels inspired by John Carpenter’s Escape From New York and Neil Marshall’s Doomsday , crossed with a gritty heist flick, Peninsula already has the makings of something special.
Before that, most of the movie is devoted to lame dialogue scenes between kooky characters in cramped ruins who just want to find a way out of this story altogether; Yeon’s take on the genre might be inspired by the horde mentality of “World War Z” and its rotting waves of the undead, but “Peninsula” itself owes more to DIY post-apocalyptic visions like “Escape from New York” and “The Road Warrior.”
But in the hands of someone like Yeon, whose influences range from John Carpenter (“Escape from New York”) to George Miller (yes, “Mad Max: Fury Road”), it is the horror gift that just keeps giving.
With its bigger budget and wider scope but less gripping story, “Peninsula” is much more of a generic, CGI-reliant action movie that often feels like a video game coupled with a few pages ripped from the scripts of “Mad Max” and “Escape From New York.”
Sang-ho Yeon’s sequel, “Peninsula,” is a zombie movie riff on “The Road Warrior” with bits of “Escape from New York” splashed on top.