Halloween in only 3 Weeks!
There are three movies I anticipated with bated breath this year, but only one of those is one I'm personally invested in.
Rob Zombie's reimagining of Halloween (1978) arrives in a mere three weeks. At this exact moment at that given time I'll be sitting in a darkened theatre, in OKC or Tulsa if need be, awaiting the midnight showing of this film.
This is big for me to say the least. Carpenter's Halloween was the first movie I ever saw, at the age of three. It had me riveted from beginning to end, and didn't leave me scared at all, which isn't necessarily supposed to be the point. The thing is that film is so psychological it skirts the blood or gore in favour of mythology and atmosphere. Carpenter is a master of suspense, and for what was an independent film at the time, it's powerful stuff. I didn't move an inch that first time, or any time afterwards.
If you haven't seen the original, please don't go see this first. If you have even a cursory hankering to see it, seek out the original beforehand (I can loan you one of my many copies). You may think you know what it's about sight-unseen, but you'd be wrong. True, it kick-started the infamous skein of bad 1980's slasher films, but as the originator, it holds up very well. Why else would you judge something against knockoffs?
I readily admit Zombie may have had a misfire for his audience with his first outing (House of a Thousand Corpses - 2002), even though I loved it, but many mainstream critics and genre fans agree that the follow-up, The Devil's Rejects (2005) was one of the finest films ever in the road-revenge genre. The fact is that New Line was either going to make yet another crappy sequel, or give a reimagining a chance. They could've picked a complete unknown hack, but they scored by gaining an artistic director who actually cites Carpenter's masterpiece as his favourite film of all time.
I know it can't possibly surpass the primal power of the original, but I do know it'll be very good. So even though the real Halloween is still around 80 days away, give the original a chance before you even think of seeing how it might be interpreted differently. I'm now in slavering anticipation mode!