Defender of the remake, defender of all things Rob Zombie and one of the only people I know who would rather see HALLOWEEN remade than dragged deeper into crappy sequel territory – that’s me. Ever since the announcement last summer I’ve been glued to the screen soaking in everything Michael Myers related. Excited? I guess you can say so. Even with that terrible script review on AICN I relished in Rob Zombie’s promises that the screenplay was dated and not being used. I hung on every word Rob has said from start to finish, which lead me down a path of sheer excitement, only as it turns out, semantics is the only things I was fed. HALLOWEEN is a sub-par re-imagining of the classic John Carpenter movie lacking not only terror, but an immense amount of suspense.
In this remake/re-imagining of the legendary slasher Michael Myers we basically get two movies, the first about young Michael Myers (played by Daeg Faerch) before he snaps; the second about adult Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) who breaks free from Smith’s Grove Sanitarium to hunt down and kill his sister Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton).
To be 100% clear I am not reviewing this in comparison to the original, let’s just pretend this was the first of it’s kind. What we get is just another serial killer movie; only in this one the killer rocks a sweet mask and likes to punch walls. Michael Myers as a horror icon is at the top of his game - the mask is astounding, creepy and chilling; and Tyler Mane is fierce as the new boogeyman. Although this modern vision is a visually terrifying one, there’s nothing really going on behind the mask. The main problem that occurs in his Myers’ past - who the real Michael Myers is. As most of you probably have already read online, young Michael (Daeg Faerch) is a tormented child, verbally abused by his step-father (William Forsythe), neglected by his stripper mom (Sheri Moon) and ignored by his older sister (Hana Hall). Kids at school pick on him and his sister is too busy flirting with her step-father than giving Michael attention. In today’s standards all of this just makes me want to scream “wahhhhhh, why don’t you go cry about it?” Who isn’t sick of this pathetic excuse to become a murderer? Zombie attempts to give reason to the rhyme and it doesn’t do anything to help the latter of the film. We don’t see Michael as a soulless killing machine, we see him as a freak of nature, a boy who somehow became 7 foot tall and 300 pounds of muscle with mommy issues. Cry me a f’n river.
Still, young Myers is awesome and the beginning of the film is quite entertaining; it just doesn’t justify the means. And as much as I liked the early years, and young Michael Myers, his development is choppy at best. To me there’s nothing that helps transcend him into madness, only a little comment by the janitor at Smith’s Grove (Danny Trejo) who tells Michael to pretend the walls (of the sanitarium) don’t exist and to live in his own mind, which could be the cause of his sudden lapse into silence. But the most shocking revelation to me is that all of this build carries no meaning… sure we see that Michael’s family is f-cked up, and that his life sucks, but before we even learn this about his character Myers is already gutting animals - in the opening scene no less! What does this say about him? It says that h’s a natural born killer… so the fact that Zombie would spend so much time trying to explain to us WHY Michael’s a killer makes absolutely no sense. There’s literally no transition into Myers’ madness; first he kills animals, then he kills people. Done. And then on Halloween he decides it’s time to kill his family, except his baby sister “boo.” The fact he leaves her alive could have been a great plot device but is wasted in the finale of the film when Laurie (Boo) is trying to survive vicious attacks from her brother. If he loves her so much why the hell is he trying to kill her?
Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) is also another character wasted as he’s the first to realize there’s something abnormal about young Myers. When Michael murders his family and ends up in Smith’s Grove, Loomis repeatedly attempts to break down Myers’ walls to no avail and at some point Myers decides he’s finished talking. There’s no reason given why this actually happens and what role Loomis played in it happening. Does Michael hate Dr. Loomis or look at him as family? We don’t know. I hate to dwell on the bad, but it heavily outweighs the positive. Dr. Loomis should have been Michael’s opposite, representational of GOOD vs EVIL. The entire film is based on the moment when these two iconic characters go head-to-head, and instead of an epic confrontation, we are treated to an (extremely long-winded) anticlimactic finale that left me scratching my head.
The direction of the script is puzzling and annoyed me throughout the entire film; it literally shows that Zombie had no idea what he was getting himself into. Half the time it was as if Zombie was saying “We need to give Myers a motive,” then is was as if he was thinking, ”Now we need to have tons of kills, loads of blood and violence,” and finally, “We need to have an homage to the original here.” The screenplay is erratic and all over the place, which leaves this viewer bored and dizzy. Even with these problems I feel that SOME of the movie could have been salvaged had it been edited tighter and shorter.
Poor character development was another major flaw in the film. The first half of HALLOWEEN is a half-way decent story of the birth of a serial killer, while the second half is nothing more than a montage of random killings. Meet Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton), Annie Brackett (Danielle Harris) and Lynda van der Klok (Kristina Klebe) - three young girls who were the centerpiece of the original - in this remake they are nothing more than meat for the bun. We see the three girls together TWICE; they have a short conversation in the library and then walking down the street before they head off to their deaths. Literally the rest of the movie goes… here’s a couple, watch them have sex, watch them die – watch as Loomis find them and repeat.
Furthermore, there is NOTHING and I mean NOTHING scary or suspenseful about the film. It’s literally just loads of extreme violence with a shaky camera and loud noises. When Michael Myers is chasing Laurie through the house and bashing in the walls and ceiling I was falling asleep. It’s the big finale and I’m falling asleep (this has now officially happened twice)!!! There was no sense of dread, nothing that would make you think you’re watching THE boogeyman. What happened to long drawn-out creepy shots of Haddonfield with Myers in the background as a shadow? It’s insane to me how much HALLOWEEN lacks suspense; it was as if Zombie intentionally was trying to make a movie along the lines of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE or THE HILLS HAVE EYES. You can still make a slow-moving scary movie violent.
On a positive note most of the killings feel hyper-realistic and never transcend into ‘cartoon violence’ with over-the-top deaths. In addition, most of the acting was top notch, giving hi praises to Ken Foree, Danielle Harris and Malcolm McDowell. And as much as I hate to admit it, I believe all of the cameos did in fact hinder my experience. The cameos took me out of the film as I was constantly going “oh look it’s Udo Kier!” And on another odd note, what the hell was with Sheri Moon’s character dating an uber-old, disgusting and crippled douche bag? Oh crap, sorry, I quickly drifted right back to the negative…
Ok, ok, I’ve had enough negativity for one afternoon as I’ve already just written two pages bitching without breaking a sweat, was there ANYTHING else good? Sure! Daeg Faerch rocks as a young Michael Myers and the way Zombie uses him at times kick ass. One of my favorite scenes is when Michael goes into his house to kill his sister and he puts on the Myers mask for the very first time; the mask is about ten times the size of his head, which leads to some truly creepy imagery. Another positive note is that even though there’s nothing behind the violence, horror fans will be happy to know the film is insanely bloody and off-the-wall violent. The set and costume designs were fantastic and Rob Zombie’s camera work was really well done. If Zombie has proven anything after three films is that he can direct an action movie no problem, but still has yet to learn how to create tension and terror. But after creating such amazing films as THE DEVIL'S REJECTS and HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, Zombie has already proven himself - it's just a shame that something of this magnitude is where the ball was dropped...
Given that I wanted nothing more than to love this movie, I can’t say that I did. Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN is nothing more than just mediocre – hell, I even enjoyed H20 more than this! It’s really frustrating writing this review, especially since this remake blows away RESURRECTION, but in the end it really isn’t anything special. There’s nothing here that’s new, original, clever, fun, exciting, scary, suspenseful… or enjoyable for that matter. I think the film should be re-titled to LABOR DAY, where nothing exciting happens.
Print Story
Send to a Friend
