Not-so-Happy Halloween
As most of you know, I am a self-proclaimed horror fanatic. Back in the tenderness of my youth I found entrance into this genre of film through John Carpenter's groundbreaking "Halloween". So, needless to say, I jumped at the chance to see Rob Zombie's remake (oh wait, I'm sorry, revisioning) of the 1978 classic. Now, you can probably say that I will be an unjustly harsh critic to this film, as the original is pretty much what got me started on horror, and as such holds a special place in my heart. So keep that in mind when I say that this film stumbled at pretty much every possible step. The movie starts out trying to establish reasons why Michael may have snapped, and building a close to empathetic attitude towards the character. We see him taunted, ridiculed, and generally left to live out a pathetic existence surrounded by Illinous white trash (even though most of the cast had a distinctly texan drawl). The reason these characters like Freddy, Michael, and Jason worked so well orginally is because of the mystery surrounding the characters. When film makers attempt to rationalize and humanize these killers, you only weaken them as you drag them into the mundane dribble that is human drama. There is something so much more terrifying about something that is evil purely because it is born that way. It has no choice. Even the tag line for Zombie's new "Halloween" goes something along the line of "some souls choose to rise above it [evil], others don't (blah blah blah)" and makes it seem as though Michael wasn't necesarrily born evil, but made evil by various sociatal pressures. Scary. Zombie changes Michael from the embodiment of something intangable and terrifying into a glorfied version of the disgruntled postman.
Then the casting. Normally McDowell is a fantastic actor, but he fell so short in this movie. Maybe it was the dialouge (the tangental comment about his failed marriage justifying McDowell calling Michael "one of his best friends"), but Lumis, who was such an important part of the original, becomes so flat and forgetable here. Jamie Lee Curtis was fantastic in the original because she took on the role of a heroine, someone who rose above the situation and came out on top. In 2007, Lori becomes a spoiled teen who spends the last half of the movie crawling through various small spaces (did you notice crawling was a big theme of his - virtually every death was preceeded by a "suspensful" floor crawl away from a knife weilding Michael) and screaming. Yeah yeah, I know it is supposed to be a remake and part of the liberty a director has with that is changing the characters, but I'll take heroine over urban princess.
By the end of the film Michael just becomes another hack and slash killer - a throwback to how the genre orginally was. And that is fine, but then why did Zombie spend all that time building up his story and a near-empathatic view point on poor Michael when in the end he reverts him to how he always was: a thoughtless killing machine. And maybe that scene in the basement where he shows Lori the picture was supposed to dispell the killing machine mentality and show he realized what he was doing, but it was so Hallmark-y I actually laughed in the theater. Too little too late.
Zombie did honor the original by having some almost exact scene reshoots from the original, and he kept Carpenter's original score, which were nice nods to the 1978 version. And he does have a knack at campy, foul-mouthed banter. Outside of that, I found myself bored by "Halloween", and hoping that Carpenter isn't too disappointed.
Yeah, I'm sure you all loved reading this.
Peace!
Then the casting. Normally McDowell is a fantastic actor, but he fell so short in this movie. Maybe it was the dialouge (the tangental comment about his failed marriage justifying McDowell calling Michael "one of his best friends"), but Lumis, who was such an important part of the original, becomes so flat and forgetable here. Jamie Lee Curtis was fantastic in the original because she took on the role of a heroine, someone who rose above the situation and came out on top. In 2007, Lori becomes a spoiled teen who spends the last half of the movie crawling through various small spaces (did you notice crawling was a big theme of his - virtually every death was preceeded by a "suspensful" floor crawl away from a knife weilding Michael) and screaming. Yeah yeah, I know it is supposed to be a remake and part of the liberty a director has with that is changing the characters, but I'll take heroine over urban princess.
By the end of the film Michael just becomes another hack and slash killer - a throwback to how the genre orginally was. And that is fine, but then why did Zombie spend all that time building up his story and a near-empathatic view point on poor Michael when in the end he reverts him to how he always was: a thoughtless killing machine. And maybe that scene in the basement where he shows Lori the picture was supposed to dispell the killing machine mentality and show he realized what he was doing, but it was so Hallmark-y I actually laughed in the theater. Too little too late.
Zombie did honor the original by having some almost exact scene reshoots from the original, and he kept Carpenter's original score, which were nice nods to the 1978 version. And he does have a knack at campy, foul-mouthed banter. Outside of that, I found myself bored by "Halloween", and hoping that Carpenter isn't too disappointed.
Yeah, I'm sure you all loved reading this.
Peace!