REVIEW: Rob Zombie’s Halloween

Like Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and leftover meatloaf, Hollywood remakes will never die. A lot of people hate them, mostly for what they stand for. First, they represent a lack of creativity, the choice to retread previous ground rather than forge ahead into uncharted territory. Second, remakes suck when they’re of other movies; they’re heresy when they’re of your favorite movie. Now, I’ve reached that second level, since they’ve remade Halloween.

John Carpenter’s classic movie is like a perfect storm of low-budget filmmaking that just worked on every level, and subsequently phoned in 7 sequels. I had mixed feelings when I heard that the ninth Halloween movie would be a re-imagining of the first film in the style of Batman Begins or the upcoming Star Trek film. But the decision to bring Rob Zombie on as writer/director eased many of my suspicions. Zombie has long been an outspoken fan of the horror genre, naming his first band White Zombie after a Bela Lugosi film of the same name, and has even railed against the Halloween sequels, calling it “one great movie that has spawned a thousand terrible movies.” I thought that if one person besides John Carpenter could get the Halloween series back on track, it’d be Rob Zombie.

And after months of speculation, the resulting film ain’t that bad.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween tracks the development of psycho killer Michael Myers , from animal-torturing loser to people-torturing boogeyman. As a result, the film loses a lot of the mysticism and supernatural qualities of Carpenter’s original. The question was always “Is Michael Myers some supernatural force, or just a really strong mo-fo?” You knew Myers existed just to kill, but you didn’t know if there was any way he could be killed himself. This version makes it abundantly clear that Michael Myers was a very disturbed boy who grew into a serial killer, much closer to John Wayne Gacy than an Angel of Death. However, Zombie doesn’t tell us everything going on inside the troubled boy’s head. There is still a hint of some deep psychological trauma that we’ll never be able to get at. We also get a closer look at Myers’ relationship with masks, something which was shortly touched upon in the Carpenter original (during the final moments of that film, Laurie Strode rips Michael’s mask off, and he stops attacking her just to put it back on.) In this film, Myers is so obsessed with masks that he creates them as his method of expression, and hides behind them during therapy. And the iconic Michael Myers mask is given more significance. It’s an interesting new look at the character, and really, it amounts for much of the interest in the film to begin with. Without it, it just becomes Carpenter’s Halloween with a new coat of grit on it. But purists will probably be pissed off that The Shape was given the same treatment that Lucas gave Darth Vader, but they always have their original to fall back on (and with the movie recently re-mastered for Blu Ray, they can fall back on it in HD).

Other characters get make-overs as well. Dr. Sam Loomis, previously played by Donald Plesance and now helmed by Malcolm MacDowell, is no longer just the creepy old man. Many of the subtle nuances of Plesance’s performance (i.e. being obsessed with Michael Myers) are now fully spotlit in the plot. Loomis is now so obsessed with Myers that he destroys his homelife and dedicates his career to cracking Myers’ psychological nut. Apart from this, he also writes a book about his experience with the boy, and becomes wracked with guilt that he profits from the misery of one child and the town he destroyed. His relationship with Myers turns into a Frankenstein-and-his-Monster play the further into the film you go. And Laurie Strode, the innocent teenager who was the protagonist of the previous film, becomes kind of an anomaly in this one. she’s not the focus of the plot, and she becomes a factor into the plot at about the second act. And Zombie has even done the unthinkable and stripped Laurie (hehe) of some of her innocence, which many latched onto in the original. She’s now just one of the girls.

Now, letting go any connection to John Carpenter’s film, how does Rob Zombie’s Halloween stand up on its own? I found his vision to be interesting, unique, and way watchable. He combines old monster-movie aesthetics and camera angles with a modern sensibility. You can tell this is a person who has done his homework and knows what he’s talking about. Even though I was sitting in the fucking front row, having to crane to a 90 degree angle in order to see anything, I could still appreciate the camera-work and color palette. Zombie’s interpretation also contained many more sexual references than most films, which will probably lose a lot of people. I saw the reason for it in the earlier half of the film: to embarrass and antagonize Michael. The rest of it seemed like the sort of talk guys wish girls would say in their deepest self-abuse fantasies. It didn’t gel with me totally, but I was able to get through it in order to see someone else get killed.

As for the horror, most of it wasn’t scary since I knew the original well enough to recreate it shot-for-shot in my mind. There were some surprising moments, especially in the new material Zombie added, but that was my biggest complaint. After Michael escapes from the asylum – come on, don’t call “spolier” on me. You knew it’d happen – the film becomes so similar to previously treaded ground that I almost punched out. A neophyte may get a kick out it, but to be honest, this is not a film for the horror newbie. It does pick up, so I was soon back in the action, but the second act was, pardon my pun, killer. And while I enjoyed the new take on the ending, which was very suspenseful and the perfect scenario to end Zombie’s film on, I couldn’t grasp the final moments, and thought them too abrupt. Before I knew the movie was over, I heard the famous theme song pumping through the theater’s subwoofers. It put a sour taste in my mouth while walking out, but it didn’t sour my overall opinion of the film.

Final Verdict: 3 1/2 Mickey Dolenz cameos (you’ll get that one later) out of 5.

The best thing I can say for Zombie’s interpretation of Halloween is that it’s solid, which is more than I can say for many Halloween sequels. It’ll never eclipse the original (and to be honest, nothing will) and it may not have even been necessary, but there is something there between the frames of this movie, and that is the mark of a great filmmaker. The revelations about the characters and they way they connect will give film critics and horror fans something to talk about for a while, but it may be too much for a popcorn movie. This one will definitely be a part of my DVD collection, and if you’re a horror fan, this one should be in yours, too.