Halloween (2007)
This past weekend I saw the Halloween remake, directed by Rob Zombie. While I wasn’t expecting much, I got just a little bit less. This isn’t a review per se, just my thoughts on the movie. For an in-depth review of this movie, go here.
First of all, I’m a fan of the original, but I’m not a HUGE fan of the original, so I was willing to give a lot of room for error in this remake. The main, most noticeable difference from the original is that the back story to Michael Myers is shown. A friend of mine commented that showing Myers’ childhood made him seem less scary. I mostly agree with that. However, I do think a little back story can be nice to make the character seem more three dimensional, especially in the case of a mute, cold-blooded killer. He can use all the dimensions he can get. In this case, they drive the point home that he had a rough childhood a bit too much. My other friend that I saw this with stated that the scenes of Myers’ home life were a bit cartoonish. I agree with that. The people in young Michael’s life are your stereotypical white trash: a stripper for a mom, a slut for a sister, a male role model that isn’t your real father, but is verbally, and possibly physically abusive, and oh yeah, a dead dad. In my humble opinion, that’s overkill. Moving on…
I liked Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Loomis, as I’ve always thought he was a cool actor. The quick-cut scenes between he and Michael are pretty decent. They hint at what could have been in Michael’s life if only he could have been reached. I actually thought those scenes were nice, but unfortunately, they don’t last very long.
As an adult, Michael eventually breaks free, gets a new outfit and kills everyone. If memory serves me correctly, he pretty much kills everyone that he kills in the original, plus a few more. During these scenes, there is tons of nudity. The funny part is, there is no nudity in the scenes that take place in the strip club. How weird is that? Unfortunately, no amount of nudity can save the overall film from generally bad acting, poor writing and/or poor direction.
Overall, there is nothing new. There didn’t seem to be a point in making this film, although I believe that if Mr. Zombie would have made the next sequel in line instead of trying to remake a well-loved classic for his third directorial outing, it would have been… better. That way, instead of comparing Zombie’s film with Carpenter’s original, critics and fans alike would have just compared Zombie’s probably decent storyline with a bunch of crappy sequels. That could have made him Halloween’s redeemer instead of some kind of competitor. In either case, this movie made a ton of cash for Labor Day weekend, despite poor reviews, so at least that’s something. I think everyone should see this movie to at least make up in their own mind whether or not it’s any good, but as a wise man who yelled at the trailers for a movie I was watching a while ago so eloquently stated, “RENTAL!”