(Written in 2007 on my Myspace page. Moved here.)When it was announced that Rob was doing "HALLOWEEN," most horror fans went into Defcon-Six. I wasn't one of them. (I saved that for the remake of "APRIL FOOL'S DAY.")
Sure, the original "HALLOWEEN," along with the original "THE EXORCIST" and the original "THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE" make up the Holy Trinity of 70's American horror, but this isn't a studio hired gun or a video/commercial hack dashing off a pale replica of the original just to cash in on opening weekend. (See the new versions of "THE OMEN" and "THE HITCHER.")
This is Rob Zombie.
"HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES" was a solid debut. "THE DEVIL'S REJECTS" is one of the best films and best directed films in the past few years.
Let's face it, "HALLOWEEN," along with "FRIDAY THE 13TH" has taken a sharp turn into Huh?-ville. Jason vs. Carrie? Jason in space? Jason vs. Freddy Krueger? He even took Manhattan. (I'm just glad The Muppets got out in time.)
The last good "HALLOWEEN" film was "4." Director Dwight Little did an admirable job of trying to capture the original movie without imitating it. Then, came part five and six. Even the most hardcore "HALLOWEEN" fans have to bend into pretzels defending these. Truly terrible movies. Even the famed "producer's cut" of part six. It's not better, it's just longer.
Then came "HALLOWEEN" Water. Sorry, "H20." Not a bad slasher flick, but it's not a "HALLOWEEN" movie. Take out Laurie Strode and Michael Myers and put in Amy Steel and Jason Vorhees and you have "FRIDAY THE 13TH 10: JASON GOES TO COLLEGE."
"HALLOWEEN RESSURECTION" doesn't even deserve to be spoken about. Moving on.
Now comes Zombie's "HALLOWEEN." The initial outrage was, "he's going to trying to explain evil! He can't explain evil! Michael Myers is just evil to the core!" That he is. And that he still is. Just because you show the early years of a serial killer (I guess Mike is more a mass murderer) doesn't mean you're explaining anything.
Instead of the 'burbs in the Carpenter's original movie, Zombie places Michael in White Trash America. His mother, in a very fine performance by the director's wife, Sherri Moon Zombie, is a stripper who also loves her kids. Especially Michael who wears homemade masks most of the time. Michael is abused by his mother's drunken lout of a boyfriend, terrorized at school, and his sister is a 'ho.
What is interesting, while all of this had probably been taking place long before we entered the movie, our first encounter with Michael killing a pet mouse with a scalpel.
This scene says it all - a point missed by everyone who hates this movie. The drunken lout of a stepfather, the bullies at school, the promiscuous sister only seem, on the surface, like the usual trappings for a kid to grow up to be a serial killer or mass murderer, but we don't see that first. We see Michael killing a rat.
He has been a monster from square one. He wasn't a product of his environment. It only served as spring training.
Young Michael is sent to a sanitarium and is more talkative with Dr. Loomis than he was at home. You get the sense this is the only father figure Michael has had since his real father died, if he's had any father figure at all. When Michael finally realizes Dr. Loomis is just doing his job, getting paid either way, and goes home at the end of the day while Michael is going to be there for the rest of his life, Michael shuts down.
And does a lot of push-ups in his room.
Eventually, gloryhound Dr. Loomis leaves to write his tell-all book and hit the publicity circuit. Obviously, he planned on cutting Michael out of his percentage of the royalties and told him, because Michael breaks out after killing forty-five people with his bare hands.
The last hour is the Cliff Notes of the original "HALLOWEEN", and this is where Rob goes wrong. By referencing moments in the original, even if to add a twist, just brings John Carpenter to mind. If Rob had stayed the course, completely reinventing Laurie Strode and Haddonfield from the ground up, like he did for the first ninety minutes of the movie, he would've had a very good horror film.
What Rob does right he does very right. Michael Myers, in the original, was The Shape - evil incarnate. Like John Ryder in the original "THE HITCHER," is he a man or a phantom? The Boogeyman. The "inhuman" killing machine.
Zombie's Michael Myers is a human inhuman killing machine.
This isn't your part 5-8 Michael Myers. He's not killing for the camera. He's going through drywall, tearing through wooden railing, killing brutally- strangulations, stabbings - because that is what he is. "You keep referring to him as 'it," someone tells Dr. Loomis in the original. "This is not a man," Loomis responds. In the original, Myers was a spectre, not a man. In this one, Michael is a not a man; he's a deranged animal.
This also isn't Michael Myers "HALLOWEEN," "2," and "4." There were complaints that Michael Myers is supposed to be stealthy, like a phantom; not a brutalizing battering ram. My response, you have three movies where he's like a ghost. Can we have one where he's something else?
All in all, a flawed effort, stopping short when it should've went all the way with the re-imagining, but it's the best "HALLOWEEN" since "4."
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