Halloween (remake)

While it is not considered a classic in the same sense that Gone with the wind or Casablanca are, Halloween is a classic horror film. In 1978 it ushered in a wave of movies featuring teenagers being hacked to death by crazy killers and while it sounds like a bad thing, it was not. Halloween rates as the scariest movie I have ever seen. There was something horrifying about these murders taking place in a suburb and that Michael Myers was in fact, just a man. When I found out it was being remade I was hesitant about it because while I don't believe all remakes are inherently bad-Cape fear, Ocean's 11, The thing and Dawn of the Dead- just to name a few of the good ones, slasher flicks weren't really good anymore. Then I heard Rob Zombie would be behind the camera and I was both worried and incredibly intrigued. While his first movie, House of 1,000 corpses had been a tragically bad movie, his second movie, The Devil's rejects, showed someone who understood and loved horror. So, which Zombie was going to show up for this movie.


Michael Myers is a twisted youth from a redneck trashy family. His mother is a stripper, his step dad a crippled drunk and his older sister is a whore. Michael does have a nice connection to his little sister whom he calls "boo." Michael enjoys killing small animals and when his school teachers find a dead cat in his locker and find pictures of other animals Myers has killed, they think Michael should see a shrink, Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell). After a run in with a bully, Michael takes matters into his own hands and we get our first human death. This is all happening on Halloween night and when he returns home, Michael goes on a massacre, a brutal, bloody and disgusting massacre. He is found guilty of first degree murder and sent to the care of Dr. Loomis. We spend some time with him as a youth inside the hospital where they never really discuss why he is always wearing a mask (my first real annoyance). Eventually we cut to fifteen years later and Michael is a giant, mammoth of a man who has been silent for a number of years. Dr. Loomis is washing his hands of the situation (after selling millions of copies of a book about Myers) and Myers is about to be transferred to a real prison. He breaks out of the hospital and heads home to find his little sister. Laurie Strode ( Scout Taylor- Compton) is all grown up and has a nice family and some really hot and slutty friends. She unaware of her past and seems perfectly happy with her life. That all changes when Michael figures out who she is. The rest of the movie is a grisly study in how having sex will end your life.


If you are a fan of slasher movies, this is a very good one. If you just happen to really enjoy the original Halloween movie, this may not be for you. Most of the suspense has been eradicated in favor of all out gore and typical tactics for scaring people. A lot of naked girls get stabbed to death and a lot of people scream, which is kind of what you want in a movie like this, these days. Rob Zombie is obviously talented with a camera and he has some really good shots and some pretty good ideas about where he wants his movie to go. The movie is played without a single sense of humor or irony, which makes it even darker and surreal. It is a bit of a freak show movie, but compared to Zombie's other films, this one is a very coherent movie. Tyler Mane's portrayal of Michael Myers is a deeply scary and disturbing character and the Michael Myers mask being masked by the long hair actually makes the whole thing look scarier. The final 30 minutes of the movie are incredibly exciting, scary and thrilling and it basically makes up for a wavering middle section. Also, Zombie being a musician helps with the music because so much of it is perfectly placed, other than an over-reliance on the super creepy theme.


However, this film breaks down if you compare it to the original. First off, you almost have to simultaneously acknowledge and disregard the original in this movie. If you have not seen the original you won't get why some of the shots are so cool and why hearing the theme for the first time sends chills through my body, but Zombie wants you to forget it as he re-writes the entire history of Myers. By giving Michael a bad childhood, we are meant to somewhat understand why he became a killer, but that was not what made the original so good. Also, Zombie spends so much time hammering away to us how much of a monster Myers is that it gets old. Inf act, he gives us a sympathetic character just so when Myers kills him we will think Myers truly is a monster, but at the point we are already convinced of such! AT times the overwhelming gore gets a bit redundant but we have all come to expect things like that in a slasher movie. While the climax is different from the original there are homages so it and most of it actually works pretty well.


In the end this movie will go down as just another slasher flick, which is maybe understating it just a bit because I believe Zombie's vision raised it above that although it misses its mark in trying to recapture the magic of a classic horror movie. Some of it is because of the times we live in where we want to see the knives penetrate skin and not just hear the screams as the camera focuses on something unimportant. I know I am guilty of enjoying the sensationalizing of torture and the brutal gore existing in today's horror movies. However, as something different from the pg-13 Asian-ghost-story-horror-movie-remakes we are being bombarded with, this works and it will scare people, gross people out and make them think twice about having sex in an abandoned house.