Posted on: September 20th, 2007 REVIEW: Rob Zombie’s Halloween
“I met him, fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes… the devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply… evil.”
- Dr. Samuel Loomis, John Carpenter’s Halloween
“B*tch, I will crawl over there and I will skull f*ck the sh*t out of you!”
- William Forsythe, Rob Zombie’s Halloween
To me, celebrating Halloween is like celebrating Christmas. Although horror movies are a year-round staple in my life, it gives me extra pleasure to pop in a dark and dingy DVD on a cold October night. John Carpenter’s masterpiece, Halloween, is the pinnacle of my All Hallow’s Eve serial-watching spree. It is one of the greatest horror movies of all time, one of the scariest films of all time, and for that extra praise, has one of the greatest original soundtracks of all time (thanks to John Carpenter himself). There’s no doubt that I adore this film. Now that I’ve assured you that I am completely without bias…
Let’s talk Rob Zombie for a second, before I tear into the meat of my review. I’m a casual fan of Rob Zombie. His music is nothing special, to be honest, I could take it or leave it, but I dig most things he does; his artwork/animation, live shows (one of which I will be in attendance, this November), and his previous films. I stand by my proclamation that The Devil’s Rejects is one of the best movies of last year, and might even be in my top 20 of all time. It was perfect. It was gritty. It was well written. It was well acted. It was scary. It was exciting. It was funny. I could watch it over and over again.
In other words, it is everything that his ‘re-imagining’ of Halloween is not.
If you’ve seen Halloween (John Carpenter’s), then there’s nothing to spoil, but if you haven’t, then take this as a spoiler warning. From the first minute mark I was disappointed with Rob Zombie’s Halloween. The film was given the title of a ‘re imagining‘ rather than a ‘remake’ because Zombie wanted to expand the Michael Meyer mythos and show us how he came to be the real life bogeyman. No longer is Meyers a mysterious, evil force akin to that of the shark in Jaws. He’s been reduced to the product of a dysfunctional family and a self-esteem riddled with more holes than swiss-cheese in a drive-by. Don’t get me wrong, these issues are terrible and should not be taken lightly…in real life. In the film I don’t want that. I don’t want the fraction of a chance that I might sympathize with him. I don’t want to know why Meyers is evil, I just want to watch the story unfold.
The brilliance of John Carpenter’s film was the unanswered questions and the fact that we couldn’t understand Meyers. We just knew he was evil and had to get the hell out of there or we would be dead. Not only is that a huge problem for Zombie’s film, on premise alone, but the deliverance of it all is equally as wince-inducing.
His family lives in a messy, shit-hole house, right in the middle of what seems to be an upper-middle class community in typically suburban Illinois town. Mama Meyers is a stripper (played by Zombie’s nichely talented wife, Sherri Moon Zombie), who seems to be the only one who shows any form of kindness and thought towards young Michael (or the Meyers baby). Papa Meyers (the usually awesome William Forsythe) is the real monster of the family so far, as a wheelchair-bound, cursing, drinking, spitting, perverse old man, somewhat mismatched against Sherri Moon’s dulled down beauty. I have the mouth of a sailor, everyone knows it, but do we really need to hear that many ‘f-bombs’ in the first twenty minutes? Oh yeah, and there was a sister in there too who does nothing but disobey her parents and screw her stoner boyfriend.
Then we have young Michael. Chubby little long-haired, awkward Michael. Daeg Faerch, the child actor that plays our main attraction, is nothing special, and honestly…very hard to look at. Very foreign looking, this kid. Hes also one of the worst looking eaters ever captured on film. Tobey Maguire holds the title of ‘Film’s Ugliest Crier’, and this kid has ‘Film’s Ugliest Eater’ under his belt. I digress. The first act of the film is typical after-school special schlock. Michael is teased and unloved, and in turn wears masks and tortures small, helpless animals. He must be pure evil though, because one day, on Halloween of all days, he snaps and kills his family. If I were him I would’ve done it too. So far we have zero shock value, a bland back-story, and the chance for sympathy for our villain.
From here on out it’s business as usual with Michael imprisoned in a maximum-security psych ward (complete with the under appreciated Danny Trejo) until he breaks out some fifteen years later to return to finish the job he started in Haddonfield. All the while being chased by my favorite character of the Halloween story, Dr. Sam Loomis. Donald Pleasance was engrossing in Carpenter’s Halloween. I was convinced that Michael was pure evil and that the good doctor was going to try to stop him with every ounce of his soul. What we get however, is a half-hearted translation of the Loomis character. Malcom McDowell as Loomis is fantastic casting on Zombie’s part, and I love the work he’s done, but McDowell phoned this performance in big-time. It felt like a parody of the original Loomis character. Over-the-top and unconvincing. It only solidified my theory that no one other than Donald Pleasance can be Dr. Loomis.
Ever seen WWE wrestling? That’s exactly where the new Michael Meyers belongs. The man is a herculean beast. He towers above his victims. He picks people up with one hand and tosses them like salad. He even burst through a wall. Seriously. Michael Meyers, although pure evil, is not a physical monstrosity. He’s large, yes, but he’s still in the realm of normalcy. That’s another thing that made Carpenter’s so frightening. He was, in some ways, normal. He wasn’t built of muscle with hands like a bunch of bananas. He was of average physical proportions. I expected the new Meyers to chokeslam Loomis and proceed to put Laurie Strode in a camel clutch. Maybe Zombie’s mistake was casting an ex-wrestler in the role?
The worst part of the film is by far Laurie and her friends. I was so annoyed by these characters after two minutes. They call each other ‘bitches’ and ’sluts’. They do things characteristic of ‘bitches’ and ’sluts’. My mom always says, “if it talks like a duck and walks like duck…chances are it’s a duck”. That means that these girls, are in fact, ‘bitches’ and ’sluts’. There is absolutely nothing endearing at all about Laurie or her friends. In my opinion it took too long for them to die onscreen. Jamie Lee Curtis brought something unique to Laurie. She was kinda awkward. She was femininely charming. She was completely innocent. We honestly felt for her, related to her, and became invested in her character by the time it came down to the killing. I felt nothing for Zombie’s Laurie. She was a cookie-cutter young hollywannabe. You could put Jojo, the pop-tart princess, in her place and it wouldn’t have made a difference, both in looks and performance.
Zombie’s film isn’t a total loss. It does have a great soundtrack, much like his previous films, though nothing can top The Devil’s Rejects’ musical selection. Zombie also brings with him his large cast of regulars for cameos throughout the movie. Most of the cast of Rejects shows up at some point in the film. One scene, with a room of security guards, was a little distracting, as every single person in the shot was from Rejects. Instead of paying attention to the dialogue, I was busy geeking out over seeing Bill Moseley trade witty banter with Sheriff Wydell and Mama Firefly. Ken Foree (of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead) made me fall in love with him once more with his performance of Joe Grissly, the classy trucker who serves to end up the source of Michael Meyers’ attire. Unarguably it is the funniest scene in the movie, and in my opinion its only redeeming moment.
The last act of the film plays out on par (but aesthetically, only on paper) with Carpenter’s Halloween. The kills, though much more brutal and violent, are principally the same, though appear boring in Zombie’s film; a testament that death-scenes are not everything in a ’slasher flick’.
Zombie grew a great deal, as a writer and director, in between House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects. He knows this, with the generally good feedback received for Rejects, and I think it made him a little overzealous when it came to editing his Halloween. The problem here is that Zombie couldn’t pick one style and stick with it. There are moments when the audio drops out. There are scenes were we get the MTV shaky cam effect. There are more slow-motion sequences than I could count. These are all great in their own way, when used properly, but in his Halloween there are too many. They seem thrown in for the hell of it, and far too often. I got the distinct feeling that halfway through shooting, he may have lost his conviction and in a moment of frightening clarity fell to his knees and wept, “what was I thinking? I’m not worthy!”
I really couldn’t care less about this film. I still have my Halloween that I grew up with, still loving year after year. The true crime here is the kids going to see this, that are familiar with the character but haven’t seen Carpenter’s classic, that are leaving the theater with the impression that this is what the mythos is all about, or god forbid, that this one is better. That’s the worst part.
Save it for DVD or not at all. And if you think of seeing this before my man John Carpenter’s, may the bogeyman come for you.
2 Responses to “REVIEW: Rob Zombie’s Halloween”
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Giant Killer Squid » Blog Archive » Rob Zombie’s Craptastic Halloween has a sequel! A cute shortened name! A typical Trailer! Says:
April 26th, 2009 at 10:39 am[...] I absolutely loathed Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake. You can read that vein-popping, red-faced, colon-tearing review – my grandest to date? – here. [...]
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Giant Killer Squid » Blog Archive » Final Halloween 2 Trailer Bores Even More Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:24 pm[...] I’m being overly hard on Halloween 2, or H2 or whatever the hell it’s called, since my incredibly scathing review of Rob Zombie’s first film re-imagining the horror icon. But I’m really not. That film [...]