HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Well folks, we made it. It is October 31st and the final day of Halloween Horror Days. Today I'm doing a double feature so once you finish here keep scrolling down for the next film of the day. We're going to finish up this Halloween season with one final remake, a much heated and controversial remake amongst horror aficionados. John Carpenter's Halloween is my all time favorite horror film (unless you count the original King Kong and Godzilla as horror films then they'd be my all time favorites). When I heard that Rob Zombie was remaking the one horror film closest to my heart I had mixed emotions.
The Halloween franchise had seen better days by this point. Halloween H20 is probably my most hated Halloween film in the series. And that one was followed up with Halloween Resurrection starring Busta Rhymes. It cleaned up the mess left my H20 but added another mess all on its own by the end. Needless to say I avoid any Halloween films featuring rappers as actors. So again when I heard Mr. Zombie was taking the helm I thought, "Couldn't be as bad as the last two." As for his previous films I liked House of 1,000 Corpses but didn't like Devil's Rejects (that rape scene killed it for me) so I wasn't quite sure what to think. After all, Rob Zombie's style is nothing like John Carpenter.
The film is split into two parts. Part 1 features something we were shown very little of in the original series, namely Michael Myers's childhood. He's the middle child in a white trash verbally abusive family. His mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) is a stripper at the Rabbit In Red club and his father is dead. His surrogate father, a piece of trash named Ronnie, is more a bully and antagonist. Michael has an obsession with killing small animals, rats, cats, dogs, and wearing masks while he kills them. On Halloween night the abuse at home and bullies at school push him over the edge. He kills his school bully, Ronnie, and his older sister and her boyfriend. He's sent to Smith's Grove County Sanitarium for psychiatric evaluation by one Dr. Samuel Loomis.
Part 2 we fast forward 17 years. Michael has grown up huge! And still has an obsession with masks. He escapes Smith's Grove and returns to his home town. He finds his younger sister, stalks and kills her friends, and then kidnaps her. His sister Lauri wakes in the old Myers house next to a huge man she's never met before. Loomis arrives and tries to stop him. Michael dispatches Loomis and a suspenseful game of hide and seek ensues between Lauri and Michael. The film ends with Lauri finding Loomis's gun and firing a bullet into Michael's head.
I'm not too keen on the first part of the film. First off I'm not a fan of Sheri Moon Zombie. It's not her but the characters that she plays in his films. I hate them. In fact there are very few people you don't hate in the first part aside from an infant and Loomis. And Danny Trejo. Who doesn't love Danny Trejo? I guess the thing that bothers me the most is the cliche idea that everyone from a dysfunctional family is a nut job psychopath. It's predictable. It's boring. It's not scary. It's sad. It's the easy route to go with little intrigue. At least in my opinion. Yes it's horrible that actual children grow up in environments like this everyday but I'm talking about a movie not real life.
I really like the second half. It starts to feel like a Halloween film in the second half. Rob actually gives us likable characters for a change. Tyler Bates score is largely John Carpenter's iconic music (which is a must for every Halloween film). And Tyler Mane plays Michael incredibly. He is terrifying. The first half felt like a Rob Zombie film and the second half felt like a Halloween film. Rob added his brutal touch to the violence making Michael all the more powerful and frightening. Plus Sheri Moon is out of the picture, another good thing. And then there are the cameos! Ken Foree, Dee Wallace, Sybil Danning, Udo Kier, Clint Howard, Tom Towles, Bill Moseley, and more. Malcolm McDowell and Brad Dourif are really good as well in the film, Dourif delivering a really strong performance.
It's a weird mix. It's like Zombie felt that he wanted to make Halloween feel more real thereby more frightening. He gives us a believable albeit cliche origin for a murderer and then bends his own rules by giving the grown up Michael Myers freakish strength and supernatural resilience. It's a toss up for me. Michael Myers has always been my favorite horror icon. I know the series inside and out. I'm open to change (in reality probably not) but it seems to me like his original touches to the story didn't work very well but where he stayed close to the essence of the character and original film he succeeded brilliantly.
I never get tired of the second half of this film. But I often find myself either doing something other than watching the movie when its at the beginning or skipping the first half entirely. I realize that I'm in the minority that I prefer House of 1,000 Corpses to Devil's Rejects. To me I think Rob Zombie's strength as a director lie with his grotesque spectacle rather than his rapey hateful gritty realism. Just my preference. There's a rape scene in the unrated version of Halloween that's not there in the theatrical version. Again I either watch the theatrical version or skip the rape in the unrated.
Overall Ranking: 6 out of 10 (because the second half was so good I can forgive the first half)
Nude-O-Meter: 5 out of 10
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