Although it can be traced all the way back to the early ’60s, it was films like Mario Bava’s gruesome Bay of Blood (1971), Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and Bob Clark’s holiday classic Black Christmas (1974) that mapped the very future of the slasher. In 1978, however, it was John Carpenter’s Halloween that defined the genre—the film left a footprint on horror unlike any that came before it, nor after. Its minimal story (thanks to a shoe-string budget) kept the setting restrained and almost claustrophobic, a combination that made its killer Michael Myers so terrifying. Simply put, Halloween is as good as horror gets.

That’s why this piece by the unreal Jock is so damn perfect, too, because it’s just as minimal as Carpenter’s classic, yet so much about it is terrifying. While the image itself is enough to send the skin jumping right off of your bones, Jock brilliantly eludes to to the name Carpenter gave Myers in his script: The Shape. Hidden behind sheets, all you see is a shape staring back at you with those lifeless and hollow eyes—the last thing his victims ever see. “Death has come to your little town, Sheriff.”

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