Fuck you, Rob Zombie
I give no apologies for the harsh language that will be used in this entry. There exist no other words in the English language to describe what a god-awful piece of fucking dog shit the Halloween remake is. I went into the theater tonight expecting a halfway decent retelling of the story of Michael Myers. What I got was an insulting bastardization and a slap in the face to every horror fan in existence.
Now for clarification, I respected (the past tense being very important here) Rob Zombie as a film-maker. While I didn't like House of 1000 Corpses at all, and thought The Devil's Rejects was fairly mediocre but still entertaining, I could still see that Rob Zombie had a very profound respect and understanding of the classic horror genre.
Man was I wrong on that one.
Rob Zombie either has no understanding at all of the Michael Myers character, or he just doesn't give a shit and wanted to cash in on all the fucking little mallrats who will flock to this movie and say "d00d I totalie identifi wit Michael Myerzzzz.. He iz me!"
Either way, FUCK HIM.
Let's revisit the original 1978 Halloween. The film presents us with a child who, for no apparent reason at all, stabs his sister to death. We are given the impression that up until this point, this was a normal kid from a nuclear family in a quite up-scale suburban neighborhood. We are given no motive, no warning, nothing. The kid simply... snapped. It was pure evil and nothing more that motivated Michael Myers, and the very idea was absolutely FRIGHTENING. The child never talks again. He spends fifteen years in a cell, staring at the wall, giving no sign of remorse, or even anger. He just sits, an empty shell, with nothing left inside but an evil just waiting to be triggered once again.
And it finally does, the adult Michael Myers is triggered and escapes, and goes after his only remaining family member. Why? We still have no idea, and it's FRIGHTENING. Again, we're left with nothing but pure, unadulterated evil.
Now let's also take a look at the character of Dr. Loomis. A man who spent years of his life trying to understand Myers, and was left with the same conclusion that we are brought to in the first five minutes of the movie. There is nothing there but evil. He understands this, and it destroys him to the very core. His entire world view is shattered, as his ambitions as a psychiatrist to help people and understand them and find humanity in the most hopeless cases are completely torn asunder. He becomes obsessed with the Myers case to the point that he tries to have Myers locked up forever (as well he should be).
These themes are VITAL to what made the original Halloween such a brilliant film. Few movies have captured the feelings of evil, fear, doubt, hopelessness, and isolation so well, and few are ever likely to again.
Okay, so now let's get to the Rob Zombie piece of shit.
It's like a slap in the face right from the beginning. The very first scene is a dead-on indicator that you are watching a PIECE. OF. SHIT. Everything that made the Myers character so frightening is almost immediately tossed out the window, as we find that Michael Myers is now a 10 year old mallrat kid from a white-trash family who has a stripper for a mom, an abusive alcoholic stepfather, and is bullied at school. Great. The angst-ridden teenager with the troubled childhood angle.
So basically Michael Myers goes from a character that represents complete evil and lack of humanity, to a tortured psychiatric case gone awry.
Add onto this the lesser (but still just as insulting) offense of Loomis' character. While I do love Malcolm McDowell, and his performance itself was very well done, the character was just plain wrong. One dead indicator of this is the idea that Loomis authored a book about Myers and went to colleges giving speeches about him. So basically Loomis was using the story of Myers as a cash-cow (shades of Zombie himself?!). Despite this, Loomis still displays a certain degree of sympathy and regret at having "failed" Michael. Again, wrong. This destroys the ideas of hatred and hopelessness that were so important to the Myers/Loomis relationship in the original.
Oh and I realize that this is a spoiler, but I don't care because hopefully you won't see this film anyway. What we are treated to at the climax of the film is one of the most ridiculous and nonsensical things ever to happen in a film. Michael Myers, after hunting down his baby sister and killing all her friends, locks her in a cellar where she wakes up to see her friend's corpse. He corners her in the basement, and.... GIVES HER A FUCKING PHOTOGRAPH OF THEM AS CHILDREN!
WHAT THE FUUUUUUCK!!!!!!
"Hey, I killed all your friends so I can give you a picture of us!"
So then, after this stupid bitch (that's another thing, you feel zero sympathy for the Laurie Strode character, because SHE'S A GODDAMN IDIOT!) pretends to want to help Michael, she stabs him and tries to escape, after which MICHAEL HUNTS HER DOWN AGAIN AND TRIES TO ACTUALLY KILL HER THIS TIME.
Okay, so that whole photograph thing was not only a showcase of humanity in a character that is supposed to represent a complete LACK of humanity, but it was also pointless?
WHAT
THE
FUCK!
Honestly, I thought that of all people, a person like Rob Zombie who was always professed an undying love of horror movies would have understood that it was these ideas that made the 1978 Halloween work so well. Instead, he took a gigantic shit on it.
What Zombie quite obviously lacks is the ability to write a film where much of the story is left to the viewer to decipher for themselves. Again, in the original, none of the backstory is presented to us, and we know nothing of what happens between the first murder, and Michael's escape fifteen years later. We are meant to draw conclusions from the subtext of the film, from the actors' performances, from the dialogue, and even from our own psyches. It's brilliant filmmaking, and it works. The film has not aged at all because of it.
Now, because of Zombie's inability to write such a script, he was forced to put everything right out in front, with no ambiguity at all. Unfortunately, his idea of Michael Myers was a disturbed white trash kid who grows up to be... what looks like the guitarist of Slipknot.
This shit had mallrat cash cow written all over it.
DO NOT SEE THE HALLOWEEN REMAKE.
Now for clarification, I respected (the past tense being very important here) Rob Zombie as a film-maker. While I didn't like House of 1000 Corpses at all, and thought The Devil's Rejects was fairly mediocre but still entertaining, I could still see that Rob Zombie had a very profound respect and understanding of the classic horror genre.
Man was I wrong on that one.
Rob Zombie either has no understanding at all of the Michael Myers character, or he just doesn't give a shit and wanted to cash in on all the fucking little mallrats who will flock to this movie and say "d00d I totalie identifi wit Michael Myerzzzz.. He iz me!"
Either way, FUCK HIM.
Let's revisit the original 1978 Halloween. The film presents us with a child who, for no apparent reason at all, stabs his sister to death. We are given the impression that up until this point, this was a normal kid from a nuclear family in a quite up-scale suburban neighborhood. We are given no motive, no warning, nothing. The kid simply... snapped. It was pure evil and nothing more that motivated Michael Myers, and the very idea was absolutely FRIGHTENING. The child never talks again. He spends fifteen years in a cell, staring at the wall, giving no sign of remorse, or even anger. He just sits, an empty shell, with nothing left inside but an evil just waiting to be triggered once again.
And it finally does, the adult Michael Myers is triggered and escapes, and goes after his only remaining family member. Why? We still have no idea, and it's FRIGHTENING. Again, we're left with nothing but pure, unadulterated evil.
Now let's also take a look at the character of Dr. Loomis. A man who spent years of his life trying to understand Myers, and was left with the same conclusion that we are brought to in the first five minutes of the movie. There is nothing there but evil. He understands this, and it destroys him to the very core. His entire world view is shattered, as his ambitions as a psychiatrist to help people and understand them and find humanity in the most hopeless cases are completely torn asunder. He becomes obsessed with the Myers case to the point that he tries to have Myers locked up forever (as well he should be).
These themes are VITAL to what made the original Halloween such a brilliant film. Few movies have captured the feelings of evil, fear, doubt, hopelessness, and isolation so well, and few are ever likely to again.
Okay, so now let's get to the Rob Zombie piece of shit.
It's like a slap in the face right from the beginning. The very first scene is a dead-on indicator that you are watching a PIECE. OF. SHIT. Everything that made the Myers character so frightening is almost immediately tossed out the window, as we find that Michael Myers is now a 10 year old mallrat kid from a white-trash family who has a stripper for a mom, an abusive alcoholic stepfather, and is bullied at school. Great. The angst-ridden teenager with the troubled childhood angle.
So basically Michael Myers goes from a character that represents complete evil and lack of humanity, to a tortured psychiatric case gone awry.
Add onto this the lesser (but still just as insulting) offense of Loomis' character. While I do love Malcolm McDowell, and his performance itself was very well done, the character was just plain wrong. One dead indicator of this is the idea that Loomis authored a book about Myers and went to colleges giving speeches about him. So basically Loomis was using the story of Myers as a cash-cow (shades of Zombie himself?!). Despite this, Loomis still displays a certain degree of sympathy and regret at having "failed" Michael. Again, wrong. This destroys the ideas of hatred and hopelessness that were so important to the Myers/Loomis relationship in the original.
Oh and I realize that this is a spoiler, but I don't care because hopefully you won't see this film anyway. What we are treated to at the climax of the film is one of the most ridiculous and nonsensical things ever to happen in a film. Michael Myers, after hunting down his baby sister and killing all her friends, locks her in a cellar where she wakes up to see her friend's corpse. He corners her in the basement, and.... GIVES HER A FUCKING PHOTOGRAPH OF THEM AS CHILDREN!
WHAT THE FUUUUUUCK!!!!!!
"Hey, I killed all your friends so I can give you a picture of us!"
So then, after this stupid bitch (that's another thing, you feel zero sympathy for the Laurie Strode character, because SHE'S A GODDAMN IDIOT!) pretends to want to help Michael, she stabs him and tries to escape, after which MICHAEL HUNTS HER DOWN AGAIN AND TRIES TO ACTUALLY KILL HER THIS TIME.
Okay, so that whole photograph thing was not only a showcase of humanity in a character that is supposed to represent a complete LACK of humanity, but it was also pointless?
WHAT
THE
FUCK!
Honestly, I thought that of all people, a person like Rob Zombie who was always professed an undying love of horror movies would have understood that it was these ideas that made the 1978 Halloween work so well. Instead, he took a gigantic shit on it.
What Zombie quite obviously lacks is the ability to write a film where much of the story is left to the viewer to decipher for themselves. Again, in the original, none of the backstory is presented to us, and we know nothing of what happens between the first murder, and Michael's escape fifteen years later. We are meant to draw conclusions from the subtext of the film, from the actors' performances, from the dialogue, and even from our own psyches. It's brilliant filmmaking, and it works. The film has not aged at all because of it.
Now, because of Zombie's inability to write such a script, he was forced to put everything right out in front, with no ambiguity at all. Unfortunately, his idea of Michael Myers was a disturbed white trash kid who grows up to be... what looks like the guitarist of Slipknot.
This shit had mallrat cash cow written all over it.
DO NOT SEE THE HALLOWEEN REMAKE.