I’m here to put my two cents in on the newest offering from White Zombie front-man Rob Zombie – Halloween.

Lord, where do I begin with this? I kept up-to-date on this puppy since it was announced, and I haven’t been happy at all about it; and now, having seen it, I’m really not happy.

Let me first say that I, as a rule, give remakes/relaunches a fair shot. Batman Begins, for instance, was great; and I enjoyed the Dawn of the Dead remake (please don’t kill me, Romero-philes!). The reason I liked them is because they treated the fans and the source material with respect and at the same time gave us some new things. I liked The Ring, I liked When a Stranger Calls…I even thought Peter Jackson’s take on King Kong was decent, albeit unnecessary and way too long for my taste buds. I firmly believe that remakes can be a good thing.

Rest assured this is NOT one of those times.

Rob Zombie comes at us with some ideas that, by themselves, have the potential for greatness. But, because this is supposed to be Halloween and not an original Zombie film, I’m sure as hell going to view it as a Halloween movie; and it falls about as short on expectation as getting a guy on your doorstep instead of a girl from a mail-order bride service. I certainly got the exact opposite of a ‘good’ movie from this piece of shit…

We see a young Michael Myers (played decently by Daeg Faerch) growing up in a not-so-happy environment. Young Mikey is abused at home and at school by the resident bully, and his family is far from anything Norman Rockwell would show us: his mom’s a stripper, his step-dad is a deadbeat, abusive asshole, and his sister is slutty. Oh, and did I mention Mike likes to cut up animals as a hobby? (Seriously, what the fuck? Trying to show Myers as a pre-pubescent, deranged version of Norman Bates, are we [taxidermy; although Bates hates the look of beasts when they’re stuffed, birds are his bag]? What, H2O did homage to Janet Leigh and Psycho, so this is disassociative toss-up to that? Or maybe that’s just me connecting dots that only I see and doing my lame horror-geek thing. I dunno.)

Anyway, lil’ Michael snaps on the school bully and shortly after, does what landed him in lock-up: killing. The kill scene with the bully is violent, as is the subsequent slaughter of his family, save for his baby sister, affectionately called “Boo”. We then see sequences of Michael in Smithsgrove, where he kills again, this time a nurse; then later when he’s somehow transformed into Kane from WWE, he escapes and goes back to Haddonfield to finish what he started as a kid. I don’t feel bad telling you all this because everyone knows what goes down in Halloween by now…and if you don’t, shame on you.

And now, the ranting begins:

1. Hillbillyween – This is the nickname people are giving this film, because they refuse to actually call it Halloween. I call it this, having seen it now, for a different reason. The look and feel of this movie match that of Zombie’s other works, namely HO1KC and Devil’s Rejects. (I hated Corpses, and thought Rejects was only decent at best; but I digress.) If I wanted to see that style of film, I’d actually SEE those films. Michael isn’t supposed to be the Superbeast, Rob, you fucking fuck!... Myers is all about being the Shape. This leads me into the next one...
2. The Shape No More – Why oh why?! Everything – every fucking thing – that made Michael an ominous, evil force is just raped out of him in this movie. Literally, it’s as if Zombie took his “Dragula” and shoved it up the franchise’s ass, and all the “good” that remained after the post-part 3 sequels up until Halloween: Resurrection just came bursting out like the chest-burster scene in the movie Alien; only not as cool and not so much scary as a crime against horror filmmaking in general. No more “oh look he’s in the background and now he’s gone” creepiness; no more silently stalking, “don’t know where he’ll appear next” fears; no more Michael Myers. You’ve replaced a once great horror ICON with your own twisted mix of a living Jason Voorhees with John Wayne Gacy/Ted Bundy and graced him abysmal WWE style of stalking. I think I’m going to puke just thinking about it.
3. We Don’t Need No Stinking Icon Status – Continuing from the last part…what made Michael Myers able to stand on stage with the likes of Voorhees and Freddy, Pinhead and Leatherface, and his other brothers in blood – was the fact that he was a mystery wrapped in an enigma; you didn’t know what he was, why he was doing his deal, all you knew is he wasn’t stopping and he’s going to cut you, vatto. Now everything is explained, and not in the Mark of Thorn, it’s my sister sense… no, we had to go and turn “pure evil” into “just another killer” for this movie, didn’t we Rob? Once you explain the psyche behind Michael Myers, you rob him of his ‘monster’ status; you reduce him to just a psycho killer. He goes from being a horror god figure to a mere mortal, even if he’s a gigantic uber-beast of a mere mortal.
4. Nothing Makes Any Sense – What? Zombie made a film that’s boring to watch, predictable, and doesn’t make any sense? Shocker. It’s great to use lines from the original film like “two road blocks and an all-points bulletin” and all, but in the original film, that line makes sense because all he did was steal a car and he had given no signs of being dangerous from a murdering standpoint since offing his sister. In this one, he’s a repeat killer, who slaughters several people in violent manner before taking off; the friggin’ army would have been called on that, especially since he’s all ‘roided out of his goddamned psycho mind enough to rip off doors. And the sheriff didn’t think it’s a big deal for ten minutes arguing with Loomis, and then all of a sudden, thinks it’s a big deal… and does anything trigger this? No, of course not… he just uses the old Adam West Batman “eureka” logic and catches the clue-train. Huh? Goddammit, I hate you, Rob Zombie…
5. Hooking Up His Friends With Work – Okay; putting all your friends in your movie with you… great. But come on… the Danny Trejo as the janitor was a part I just know was created just to have him in the fucking film, because it served no point whatsoever (he did play a characteristically non-Trejo part, though… that was cool). And “Captain Spalding” Sid Haig was in it. And so was his wife, Sherri Moon. And so was he. And there’s Brad Dourif. And that’s Ken Foree (also in the movie for no other reason than being Zombie’s buddy). And Bill Moseley. (Maybe this isn’t something wrong with the film as it is something that annoyed me. What is he trying to do, emulate the guys from Broken Lizard? BTW, I love BL and Zombie’s got nothing on those guys…)
6. Danielle Harris’s Tits! YES!! But Wait… - Okay, admittedly seeing Danielle Harris topless was a good point for this flick (I see all you pedophiles out there; I’m with you on it too). But she lived. After everything else in the movie with Zombie’s Michael, she should NOT have lived. Period. He killed everyone, even the janitor who was his friend, and is now trying to kill his baby sister who he liked so much (and the fact that he didn’t seek to kill Laurie right away undermines the whole point of the movie, IMO; way to fuck everything up, Rob)…and he doesn’t kill Danielle Harris? Hell, even the Michael in part 6 didn’t fuck that call up (granted that’s not Harris, but it’s the character based on her original character); but hey, this shit makes me cry out pining for the “Mark of Thorn” storyline. The classic Michael might have used the bait tactic utilizing stealth and killer cunning; this Michael could be seen fighting Hollywood Hogan and The Rock in a triple threat match on pay-per-view and has all the subtly of Gilbert Gottfried on a megaphone.
7. Suspension of Disbelief – I really can’t say too much about this topic other than – fucking hell. How does he know where to go? How does he know Laurie will follow him? Why the hell would mama Myers kill herself when she still has a baby (“Boo”) to care for; seriously, her developed character up to that point was NOT a neglectful mother, and was shown to be stronger than that. Again, the sheriff’s “eureka” moment. Loomis quitting and then coming back…why? These questions and more can be explained by the following:
In the movie Teen Wolf, Fox’s character goes wolf man after getting dog piled on court during a game. Everything goes silent, and after a few seconds, Fox just continues playing. The crowd goes wild and everything is cool. I can picture the meeting on this part of the movie in my head:
- “So…how do we explain him going wolf in front of everyone like this? Having the crowd freak would ruin the build up we’ve got so far…”
- “Maybe…they just go with it?”
- “Brilliant! Add it in, Johnson!”
Yep, Zombie just expects us to roll with it. No matter how fucking retarded it is. So not only has he sought – and succeeded – to piss off all the horror fans and Halloween fans out in the audience, but he’s also undermining our collective intelligence. Or maybe he’s not so much Dr. Evil, plotting to torture us all… maybe he’s just a horrible filmmaker. Either way…
8. Quasi-Loomis Is Lame – Okay, okay… nothing is going to top Donald Pleasance in this role, and that’s that; but could Malcolm McDowell look like he cares any less in this flick?? And Loomis’ character is supposed to be trying to keep Michael locked away because he knows how dangerous he is, he’s supposed to be the failed zoo-keeper in a way. Not in this version; in this version, Loomis is a clueless white-collar doc who retires and then somehow tries to toggle between emulating Pleasance and thinking about whatever movie he’s got planned after this instead of actually working on this one. Ugh.

At least I have new love for kung-fu Busta Rhymes (Halloween: Resurrection reference there; watch that instead of this, I beg you) after watching this… thing. Fuck you, Rob Zombie… you promised not to fuck up this masterpiece and that you would treat it like gold as a fan should. You fucking liar.

“Oh, well, they’re gonna remake it anyway; people might hate me for this, but better a fan like me do it then some cat who doesn’t give a fuck.” Yeah, sure… but it doesn’t make a difference if the supposed “fan” of the franchise fucks it up when there’s no damn excuse for that to happen. In actuality, that makes it worse; Uwe Boll I can see having an excuse for fucking things up, but not a proclaimed fan of the franchise.

So as a quick recap, Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake/re-imagining is complete and utter shit. Nothing makes sense, he rapes and pillages the franchise of what makes it great in the first place, and Danny Trejo is in the movie just for being Rob’s buddy. And the equipment to film this feature was run off electricity generated from Moustapha Akkad’s body rolling around in its grave. Maybe from Donald Pleasance as well, we’re not sure.

R.I.P. Michael Myers/Halloween…