As I've said elsewhere, after fond memories of "The Yellow Brick Horse," I was certainly not expecting this level of seriousness. That being said, it's a testament to your skills that you can pull this off to the same high mark of quality.
It's incredibly well made on a technical level. No doubt about that. The cinematography, scoring, animation, set, and so on are all top-notch. I loved the dolly zoom at 0:32; in fact, all the camera movements were wonderful. The movement at 0:26 does look rough initially, but after realizing that it's a POV kind of shot, it fits in well. The only slip in quality is the knife at 0:40, but that's easily forgivable.
As well as this film works on it's own, I think it'll be far better as the opening to a larger film. In fact, watching it in that light, it makes for a perfect pretitles sequence.
As I hinted before, up until the actual knife shot, I figured a swift twist would turn things into a funny, lighthearted film where this was all a mistake, or joke or something. Because of that preconception, the film was jarring the first time through. (Perhaps the release date, nearly a month after Halloween didn't help.) However, after watching it again, a little more aware this time, I do appreciate what you've done here.
While I somewhat recognized Mr. Myers from different ads (I've never seen the films) I guess I didn't realize you meant that to actually be him in a larger film. If this is anything to go by, you'll do a great job on the final film. With your still working on Time Cruisers: Origins, will this project come after that, or are you trying to get this one done quickly?