Halloween Review

Unfortunately Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween wasn't as good as I imagined it to be.  You don't know how stoked I was for this film to come out.  In lieu of productivity, I surfed the random web coverage of the movie from the announcement of initial filming to actual release.  I was in London when it came out in the States and didn't quite feel like shelling out the equivalent of $24 to see it a month later.  Instead, I'd wait the painful four months to rent it from Blockbuster.

That was my first mistake.  I watched the unrated director's cut, as opposed to the theatrical version.  After surfing the IMDB boards, I learned that a lot of scenes were dramatically changed or erased in the theatrical version.  The biggest example is the scene of Michael's escape.  In the theatrical version, Michael murders the orderlies and escapes from the prison as he is being transferred to a different cell.  In the unrated version, two orderlies drag in a female mental patient from an adjacent cell to Michael's bed and proceed to brutally rape her for a good two minutes before Michael gets up and kills them.  I get that Zombie wanted to turn Halloween into his trademark blood-tinged gorefest (see the gun in panties scene from The Devil's Rejects), but scenes such as this one prove more cruel than effective.  If we are supposed to view Myers as a cold-blooded killer, why would we want to feel that the murders of the orderlies are even semi-justified? I feel that if Zombie wanted to keep this scene, he should have gone all the way with it and showed Michael killing the brutalized girl along with the orderlies.  

Similar to this scene, there were countless added bits of dialog to the director's cut that made the movie seem forced in its vulgarity.  To me, there are two kinds of horror movies- those that take themselves seriously and those that have an over-the-top, campy quality to them.  I believe that Zombie's intent was to make this movie fit into the former.  His ultimate aim extended beyond solely remaking a classic to adding his own believable back story that explains the evolution of Michael's murderous psyche.  And Zombie takes this aim very seriously in his screenwriting as demonstrated by one of Dr. Loomis' monologues:

"These eyes will deceive you, they will destroy you.  They will take from you, your innocents, your pride, and eventually your soul.  These eyes do not see what you and I see.  Behind these eyes one finds only blackness, the absence of light, these are the eyes of a psychopath." 

Such serious monologues delivered by Dr. Loomis exploring these subjects sound ridiculous when juxtaposed against the dialog of exaggeratedly horny teenagers.  I'm not suggesting that Zombie should eliminate such trademark lines as "Bitch, I will crawl over there and I will skull fuck the shit out of you!" (coming out of the mouth of a crippled man, no less), only that he shouldn't have to employ them every other sentence in the script to maintain his voice.  When producing a remake, it is crucial for a filmmaker to employ his own interpretation into the original script lest it resemble Gus Van Sant's frame-by-frame imagining of Psycho.  However, some original elements of the story must also be allowed to shine through.  Unfortunately, the vulgarity of Zombie's script eliminates from the tense, jump out of your seat moments that made the original Halloween so well-renowned.  

Before you start calling me a nun, let me move on to the parts of the movie I did enjoy.  Regardless of vulgar filler, Zombie's re-imagining of Halloween as a combined prequel and remake was particularly genius.  I especially enjoyed his use of Michael's masks as a metaphor for a catatonic retreat from the realities of an undesirable home life.  Additionally, his use of gore and violence was inspired.  The casting of former wrestler Tyler Pane as the elder Michael allowed the character an abnormal amount of strength with which to wreck his victims.  And the final, bloody scene? Classic.  

I would recommend Halloween to fans of Zombie's past two films or any exploitation fare (again, I'll warn you that this movie is pretty vulgar and that's coming from ME, Ms. Blood n' Guts herself).  You might want to refrain from watching it if you loved the original for its suspense and restraint.