Halloween - Unrated Director's Cut (2007)

I wanted to murder Laurie Strode myself

This is not Rob Zombie's best film. That honor goes to The Devil's Rejects (Unrated Widescreen Edition), Zombie's visceral, shocking and funny tribute to B-movie gorefests. Halloween is an extremely weak re-make of John Carpenter's masterpiece, Halloween (Divimax 25th Anniversary Edition). The most innovative and creative part of Zombie's film is the first hour where he explores the birth of a serial killer. Zombie's extraordinary depiction of Michael's life in a hellish home where domestic violence is the norm and sexually explicit language abounds is so well done. The young actor who portrays Michael is perfect. Sherri Moon Zombie plays Michael's mother quite well and even throws in a pole dance for good measure. Michael's life in a mental institution is also extremely well done, culminating in a bloody murder spree as he escapes. One wishes Zombie had stopped there and called the film: "Halloween: The Beginning". Unfortunately,the last 45 minutes of the film consists of an extremely weak and hurried remake of Carpenter's original film. Laurie Stode, Michael's sister, is so annoying that you will want to kill her yourself. She wines and screams all the time and it's merciful when Michael kills her equally annoying friends. The last 20 mintues of this bloody mess are pure agony -- a confusing mishmash of mayhem as Michael knocks holes in an attic, trying to pry Laurie out. So dumb. I must, however, compliment Malcom McDowell on his performance as Dr. Loomis. He brings dignity to a role that was owned by Donald Pleasance. An odd and annoying thing about this film is the confusion about the time in which it is set. The musical soundtrack is late 70's, but people are using cell phones. Guys have long hair, but girls are wearing clothes that appear to be at least 90's stuff. Just makes your head want to explode. Runtime is about 1 hour and 45 minutes. Way too long and absolutely exhausting. Trust me, the original and most of its sequels are better ways to spend your time. August 3, 2008

On Rob Zombie, Michael Meyers, Scout Taylor-Compton, and Danielle Harris

In order to make this a more brief and positive review, I will disregard the entire first half of the film. Rob Zombie should have kept Michael's personality and motives more of a mystery, because I think this aspect of John Carpenter's "Halloween" is what has helped to make it a timeless genre masterpiece.
That said, I believe that the last hour of the film is quite faithful to the original film, and even takes it to highs that John Carpenter, Debra Hill, and Jamie Lee Curtis would never have imagined.
The actor playing adult Michael in this film is much larger than Nick Castle was in 1978's "Halloween", and this immediately makes him more frightening. The pace of the last hour is swift and flawless, and Zombie wisely pays homage to many scenes and set-pieces of the original movie. The Doyle house is particularly cinematic and creepy, even more so than the Meyer's house. There are odes to the original, which Zombie was wise to include, and Carpenter's original score is used generously and respectfully.
Malcolm McDowell is a good doctor Loomis, very different from Donald Pleasence's performance, and necessarily so. Scout Taylor-Compton is a terrific Laurie Strode, in the final scenes especially, but she squints too much, and it was like watching a performance from one of those apple-face dolls. The real revelation of this film is Danielle Harris. She wipes away her Jamie Lloyd persona (her character from "Halloween" 4&5) completely, and emerges as a new form of scream queen. Her Annie Brackett is more believable than the other actresses' performances, and Annie's anguished attempts to warn Laurie out of the Wallace house were the most blood-curdling screams I've ever heard in a movie. I don't know where Danielle Harris got those unearthly cries, but they are anguished and unforgettable. I believe that this is the best acting that she's done.
There's also a particularly great bonus feature on the second disc - Adrienne Barbeau's deleted scene! She looks incredible, quite like she did in "The Fog", and her scene just crackles with tension. Too bad it didn't make it into the final cuts of Rob Zombie's "Halloween". July 14, 2008

A MASTERPIECE!

I saw the original Halloween in theaters and loved it. Have seen it many times since, and Carpenter's version is great. Just about all the sequels blew one way or the other, changing Michael Myers from a lunatic into an unstoppable juggernaut. Bullets can't stop him! Fire can't stop him! Decapitation can't stop him! Who cares anymore?! This began a whole trainload of bat guano mascarading as horror/splatter flicks like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elmstreet, ad naseum, with monsters that can't be killed and teenagers who can, and are, no matter how clever they are. The fanboy geeks love it because their sophistication level isn't exactly stellar, let's face it.

This is why Rob Zombie made House of 1,000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects - to bring the horror back into horror films. The creepiness level and humor that made the early genre so great is missing during later entrees - and even more so in the whole alleged "re-invention" with crapola like Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Saw, Hostel....

Zombie's Halloween is a slightly different film than Carpenters, almost as if you are seeing the same story from another perspective. And it's brilliant. The first half (the part many horror nerds gripe about because they can't stand characterization and just want to see gore and blood and some dumb creep in a halloween mask killing people as fast as he can - "what's the body count, dude?") is riveting and far more interesting than the 2nd half, which plays out like the original movie. But even that part is great. This movie has got to be one of the best "slasher flicks" of all time. I can't wait to see what Rob comes up with next. July 8, 2008

YOU'RE NO MICHAEL MYERS

Rob Zombie has made a career of all things horror. From the musical group White Zombie to his own solo career, in comics with his monster fighting character El Superbeasto and into films. His first two forays, HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and THE DEVIL'S REJECTS tied into one another nicely with the second film being a sequel to the first. But with his third film, HALLOWEEN, Zombie falls short of offering not only scares but signs of a developmental director.

Everyone already knows the tale of Michael Myers, the psychopath from Haddonfield, IL, who murdered his sister only to be committed to an institution he would later escape from with the intent of more killings back home years later. While that is the basis for Zombie's film, it is not a remake but more of a retelling, a reinvention of the same character.

Here we are offered young Michael and the household he grows up in that forms his life. Michael's mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) is a stripper, saddled with a new husband (William Forsythe) who is disabled and a neer do well more interested in yelling at the kids than in offering any sort of role model. Michael's sister is a trashy sleep with anyone teen who dresses provocatively and does little else. All of this is not lost on Michael who spends his time killing his pets and taking photos of them. What we are being offered is a textbook glimpse as to why a youngster becomes a serial killer. The nice middle class family shown in the original is tossed aside for this new group. And in this first portion of the film, the problems Zombie has are apparent.

Zombie has filled three films now with the same characters. Sure, they may have different names and different small time characteristics, but the fact remains that he focuses on the dysfunctional family and their housecleaning inabilities. Yes, it seems that all families in Zombie's world can't clean to save themselves. Not only that but they all have the same dingy look to their living quarters as well as references to pop culture. The house Michael grows up in could be a home that the Firefly family would feel comfortable in. It all looks the same and that detracts greatly from the viewing experience, unless of course you'd never seen another Rob Zombie film.

Comparisons to the original film are inevitable and this will most likely be the downfall of the film in the long run. Michael goes overboard with his murderous rampage as a child in this film unlike the original. Where no blood was seen in that film, it flows freely now. Perhaps this is due to the changing times, but it adds nothing to the scares of the film or the character. It does make him a more brutal killer, leaving him one without a touch of sympathy. But the mindless killer from the original is replaced by someone we feel absolutely nothing for now.

Once finished with the whole back story of young Michael, his family and the kindly Dr. Loomis (Michael McDowell) who takes care of him at the institution, we move forward 15 years to when Michael escapes and heads back home. The body count increases once more as he kills everyone he comes into contact with their, including a worker who had befriended him. Once out, the story becomes more familiar, almost a duplicate of the original shot from different angles, with different actors and focusing less on the character of Laurie Strode, the central character in John Carpenter's version.

Laurie and her friends are nothing more than meat to be slaughtered by Michael in this one. There is no development of character, no reason for us to think of them as more than teens in peril that we have seen in hundreds of other slasher flicks. While we cared about the original teens, this time around they seem less human and placed in our way for two reasons: to be killed by Michael and to offer more exposed flesh than the first.

By the film's end we are offered the traditional sliced and diced teens, gratuitous nudity and enough blood to make a special effects company weep for joy at the size of their bill. But we have gained nothing in the iconography that is Michael Myers. While we are given more background on him, we care less about him than we ever did.

Worst of all is the fact that Rob Zombie, a director that showed such great potential before, seems to be telling us after only three films that this is all he has to offer. Stories told from the same world, a world that blasts apart the whole FATHER KNOWS BEST world we would all like it to be. In his world, there is no caring parent. And when they are caring, they are twisted in some revolting way.

I haven't given up on Zombie yet though. Having recently signed a two picture deal with the Weinstein's, perhaps he will show us he has more tricks up his sleeve than he let on. But if he returns to the carnie soiled world he's offered in three films to date, then it looks as though he's a one note director. Let's hope he offers us more. It's in there somewhere.
June 27, 2008

Not fair to compare it to the original.

But I know everyone will.
Myself included.
Zombies take on the original is fresh, fun and VERY disturbing.
It's gross, VERY gross.
Apart from that, I walked out of the theater with a very bad taste in my mouth.
Why?
The movie isn't just gross, that doesn't really bother me.
The movie is RAW!
Raw you ask?
RAW!!!!!!!!
Now that I've bought it on DVD I can say it's just a hair below the original version.
The two are just so different, it's almost impossible to compare the two.
Zombie is BRILLIANT. And his version is strong enough to stand on it's own ANY day.
Truly making the original into something so disturbing I had a hard time watching it.
I'm glad he didn't turn the film into the usual Satan mumbo jumbo like parts 3- 6.
He made very good sense of Michael's childhood and the extended version FOR ONCE has scenes that should have been in the theater version. Those scenes further explain Michael's childhood and how he became what he became.
The one scene in the hospital, with the girl and the two guards??? YUCK!!!!!!!!
I'm glad he cut that scene and I wish he would have left it out of the uncensored version.
I guess I'm torn though.
Is this what horror movies have become.
The original was less horror and more thriller and it still scares even to this day.
Every sequel became more gory and less scary.
Has horror come to this? That movies have to border on disturbing to get a scare out of the audience?
Have we as horror fans become so desensitized to onscreen violence that it HAS to border on reality for it to be scary?
I think Zombie's vision is brilliant and the second best Halloween movie in the franchise.
But I think, more importantly, it raises some interesting questions as to what direction the genre is heading.
This movie is not for the easily offended, and PLEASE parents use your discretion. This movie is NOT for the young ones.
For adults and old cynical fans of the original Halloween?
Highly recommended.
June 20, 2008

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