REVIEW - "Halloween" (2007)

It’s clear that Hollywood has been running out of ideas lately. The biggest movies of the year are often sequels or remakes. Remakes have played a major role in the past, but now Hollywood has found a new obsession: The reboot. The reboot is different from a remake in the sense that it takes a whole franchise and starts over from scratch. The reboot deals with the same characters, but has a completely different storyline compared to any of its predecessors. There have been some really amazing reboots recently, including “Batman Begins,” “Superman Returns,” and “Casino Royale.” It’s clear that director Rob Zombie wanted his “Halloween” to be a reboot, but what it adds up to is a poor remake with a long prologue.

“Halloween” begins with ten-year-old Michael Myers and his bad childhood. After murdering his mother’s boyfriend, sister and sister’s boyfriend he’s sent to psychiatric care under Dr. Loomis. He spends the better part of his life there and escapes to find his baby sister, Laurie, and continue his killing spree. More or less it’s the same storyline as John Carpenter’s original film.

I’m not a fan of slasher flicks. They’re all the same and always showcase the most incompetent actors. That said, I’m a fan of John Carpenter’s original “Halloween” and even “Halloween II.” Carpenter’s 1978 film set the standard for slasher movies, but the problem is none of them have been anywhere near as decent. They have all copied “Halloween” to the point that even it gets bashed for formulating the genre. (Not that it was the first slasher movie, but it set the bar.)

So how does Rob Zombie’s “Halloween” stack up? Well the man tries desperately to bring something new the table, but it doesn’t necessarily work. The young Michael Myers doesn’t transition well to the adult version, but it’s interesting to watch the character psychoanalyzed. We find out why Michael wears a mask and why he never talks and while it’s mildly intriguing it ruins the character’s mysticism. When Michael finally breaks loose the movie transforms in to a sped up version of the first film, only with awful actors and no scares. In some ways, the goofy antics in the awful “Halloween: Resurrection” were more affective.

How does revealing Michael’s past ruin his character? First we find that Michael killed his mother’s abusive boyfriend (in a rather unintentionally hysterical scene involving duct-tape) and in some twisted way it was for his mother. As awful as his act is, there is still compassion for his mother. So the character, that is suppose to be nothing more than the embodiment of evil, now has compassion? This would work if Zombie was trying to completely reinvent the character, but the second half doesn’t follow suit. In fact it offers nothing more than your typical slasher formula. However, I’ve seen the “work print” version of this film and the ending to that version far better suits the Michael that has been developed in this movie. Instead of keeping that ending, Zombie decided to go the route we’ve seen hundreds of times and finish a movie that contradicts itself. Oh well…

The casting is kind of bizarre. The first half of the movie offers some relatively decent talent, where as the second half, which consists of Michael terrorizing a neighborhood, tortures us with some of the worst performances I’ve seen this year. Malcolm McDowell does a fine job as Dr. Loomis; contrary to popular belief he delivers a satisfactory performance. Even Daeg Faerch, who plays the 10-year-old Michael, does pretty well. But the teenagers of the second act are nearly unbearable. Scout Taylor-Compton takes over Jamie Lee Curtis’s character, Laurie Strode, and does nothing more than disgrace the character made so popular by this series. While it’s disappointing that she’s not a main character like she was in the original film, I’m glad she got less screen time.

The gratuitous decisions in this movie are very curious. Rob Zombie has an odd idea about how normal people speak and a clear obsession with trailer trash. Michael’s family is so cliché and unbelievable I couldn’t realistically grasp why he became a killer. Laurie’s adopted family, in the second act, is clearly a nicer, cleaner family, but they still talk like drill-sergeants. Cursing like crazy is apparently normal in Zombie’s world. As is sex! In this film there are three sex scenes and one rape scene—All of them are uncalled for. In fact, the majority of Michael’s prey are in the middle of having sex before he kills them. How necessary is this? Does Michael have a fetish for killing people engaging in intercourse? Whatever the reason is, it doesn’t make the scenes any scarier.

While Zombie did bring new ideas to the table, he also succeeded in ruining the impact of Michael Myers and giving us the same bad acting and poor characters we’ve seen many times before. He simply revealed too much and killed the suspense as a result. In the original “Halloween” there is a seen where Laurie (the superior Laurie, played by Jamie Lee Curtis I might add) accidentally pushes Michael’s mask off while trying to get away. Michael is so scared that his mask is off that he takes the time to put it back on while Laurie tries to flee. Why? He’s a good-looking young man, what did he have to hide? The poetry of this scene is that Michael was so scared of revealing he was human that he had to put the mask back on. Men have evil in their hearts, but they have good in them too. Michael didn’t want the good showing so he masked it…literally. This is the only secret about Michael revealed in the original film and it’s all we need to know. What Zombie did was take that concept and humanize Michael to the point where he’s not as evil and not as scary. The allegory of evil is lost and we end up having too much sympathy for a character we should hate.

*½ out of ****