Halloween

I never claimed that all my decisions were worthwhile. For a minute there, I was legitimately excited for Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween. Looking back on it, I can’t give you a really good reason for my anticipation. The Devil’s Rejects was a good time but it didn’t exactly change my life. Well, it did show me how not to be a deranged serial killer. That was helpful. Sadly Zombie’s version of Halloween never really made it to that next level. In the end it was just another body count flick with Sabretooth running around in a mask.

The original Halloween was more psychological drama than blood-soaked slasher. I never saw the rest of the god-awful franchise but since the remake was based on the first movie everything else is irrelevant. Zombie definitely played homage to original, he just added in details that weren’t there 30 years ago. Of course everything he created was a bit more twisted than anything John Carpenter filmed. Now Michael Myers’s mother is a stripper (of course played by his wife Sheri Moon), prior to being arrested and locked up Michael adds 3 more to the body count besides his naked sister, then there was about 5 more bodies while he was in the insane asylum, and there is another murder at a truck stop, but once Michael returns to Haddonfield Zombie doesn’t alter the story all that much. My main problem with Zombie’s version is that he removed what I felt was the best part of the original Halloween. Carpenter kept Myers in the shadows until about the last third of the film. With the excessive violence that occurred with the 10 year-old Michael and then all the killings within asylum, there wasn’t the same build-up of tension once he started stalking the soon to be naked teenagers. You know what he can and will eventually do to everyone left alive. I will admit that Mr. Zombie has a flare for visualizing brutality. So even though it may have hurt the overall film, watching Michael beat the school bully to death or his stalking of all the people he hates in his house were all shot from interesting angles. In fact all of the violence looks good even though there is just too damn much of it.

I will give credit to the remake for recreating many of the scenes from the original. It is still Laurie Strode and her 2 friends being stalked at the end, Myers does show up in the many of the same places, one of the boyfriends is still stabbed through the chest and hung on the wall, Myers still dresses like a ghost before killing one of the girls, many of the famous lines are repeated, Zombie doesn't screw with music too much (well except for having Love Hurts playing in the scene when 10 year-old Michael decides to kill everyone in the house because his Halloween was ruined), and thankfully there is still tons of nudity. There were also 2 great casting choices. Malcolm McDowell takes on the role of the Dr. Loomis and goes from hippy doctor to silver haired hollow man who spent his professional career studying Myers. And I was even more excited that Doc from Deadwood was the Sheriff. I cannot think of a situation where Deadwood actors show up and not immediately improve my spirits. Still Doc’s appearance could only help so much; in the end Halloween was just another slasher flick.

Although Halloween has no chance of even cracking the top half of 2007, there will be much worse films beneath it. This was a completely acceptable body count movie. Michael Myers brutalized and mutilates a mess load of people. Zombie has a way with violence so it never gets boring. In the end Halloween is just dragged down because the original was just plain better. Still everyone loves a good stabbing so this will not hurt for an audience.

5 out of 10