Halloween II: An open letter
Dear Rob Zombie,
I realise that you love, or at the very least are fascinated by, Charles Manson. I respect that and even applaud the fact that you have managed to slip allusions to Charley's Family into the vast mjority of your ouvre. Maybe I sniggered a bit when you turned Otis from your take on "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" into a Charley-clone for "The Devil's Rejects", but at least it did fit the overall tone of the film.
Giving Michael Myers a big, bushy beard and letting him run around without his mask on for large parts of the film, just so he resembles a huge Manson or possibly just a bigger you was a bit silly, though. And not really helped by the film being boring, predictable, unengaging and lacking killings either nasty or entertaining. And why does Michael grunt all of the sudden? (Surely what was scary about him was his sheer lack of emotion). And will Malcolm MacDowell really do any film for money?
Look, there are some pretty funky dream sequences in this film that remind the discerning viewer of the cool visual stuff you used to do for White Zombie and even "House of 1000 corpses". You are good at that, use that. Maybe even in a film about Charles Manson. But please stay away from Halloween in the future.
Considering it's supposed to be a reimagining, it is sad that it only gets interesting as soon as you use the original Carpenter-music in the sort of hommage to "Psycho" which I had hoped for within the first half hour. Following *that* thread might have made for a cool film.
No love,
Me
I realise that you love, or at the very least are fascinated by, Charles Manson. I respect that and even applaud the fact that you have managed to slip allusions to Charley's Family into the vast mjority of your ouvre. Maybe I sniggered a bit when you turned Otis from your take on "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" into a Charley-clone for "The Devil's Rejects", but at least it did fit the overall tone of the film.
Giving Michael Myers a big, bushy beard and letting him run around without his mask on for large parts of the film, just so he resembles a huge Manson or possibly just a bigger you was a bit silly, though. And not really helped by the film being boring, predictable, unengaging and lacking killings either nasty or entertaining. And why does Michael grunt all of the sudden? (Surely what was scary about him was his sheer lack of emotion). And will Malcolm MacDowell really do any film for money?
Look, there are some pretty funky dream sequences in this film that remind the discerning viewer of the cool visual stuff you used to do for White Zombie and even "House of 1000 corpses". You are good at that, use that. Maybe even in a film about Charles Manson. But please stay away from Halloween in the future.
Considering it's supposed to be a reimagining, it is sad that it only gets interesting as soon as you use the original Carpenter-music in the sort of hommage to "Psycho" which I had hoped for within the first half hour. Following *that* thread might have made for a cool film.
No love,
Me