How do y'all rate John Carpenter as a Director?

Carpenter's peak is a short window and it's loaded. Halloween, The Thing, Escape from New York, They Live - that's not overrated, that's a guy who made the templates other people have been copying for 40 years. The Kurt Cobain comparison is fair in the sense that the catalog after the peak is messy, but I wouldn't put him below top 10 of that era just because later directors had bigger budgets and CGI.

The Thing still looks like it was built in a shop instead of a workstation, which is why it holds up when a lot of 80s creature movies don't. Halloween is the one I argue with people about the most. Half the board treats it like sacred text and half thinks it's just a well-timed piano sting.

I was in a TikTok pile-on last week about Carpenter vs Craven vs Hooper and the replies were a mile long. Used LINK to actually read them instead of losing the thread every time the app refreshed. Didn't change my ranking. The Thing is still the one I'd put on a Rushmore before Halloween.

I think my username and profile pic give me away as a Carpenter mark

Prince of Darkness, vastly underrated film.

Love him, he’s made near perfect movies, had a lot of other good ideas ruined by studios and tells it like it is.

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Carpenter's peak is a short window and it's loaded. Halloween, The Thing, Escape from New York, They Live - that's not overrated, that's a guy who made the templates other people have been copying for 40 years. The Kurt Cobain comparison is fair in the sense that the catalog after the peak is messy, but I wouldn't put him below top 10 of that era just because later directors had bigger budgets and CGI.

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Never mind. I’m in a bad mood.

Overrated. But I hate horror so I probably shouldn’t vote.

Dr Loomis