Reel Horror

HALLOWEEN - ROB ZOMBIE - RETRIBUTION - NEW MOVIE POSTER asin: B000TSTVNK

Rob Zombie's Halloween is everything you would expect from a Rob Zombie movie. Blood, gore, Sherri Moon, and grit. Lots of grit. If there is one thing that can be said of this Halloween is that the movie is as dirty as the mind of Michael Myers.

Zombie is on record as wanting this movie to explore more of Myers back-story, and there it succeeds. For the first half of the film, we are presented with Michael as a tormented child who has a rational for his crimes, at least at the beginning. His stripper single-mother and her abusive boyfriend almost push the opening moments of the film into a ridiculous parody of the cliche "rough childhood". Bullying leads to Michael initial step over the line, and instead of Carpenters evil for no-reason, we are presented with causes to his crimes. Edges of Michael's insanity are present here and there in the beginning, but Zombie has crafted this movie (at least the first part) in such a way to invoke the audiences sympathy. Michael is the most likable of all of his family, minus the baby Laurie.

As much as I didn't really connect with the first half of the movie, the second half almost makes up for it. The content of the original 90 minute movie are compressed into around 40 minutes, and the compression removes the bits of story that made the original slow in places. Make no mistake, this is Michael's movie. Laurie Strode, played now by Scout Taylor-Compton, is not the pivot point that Jamie Lee Curtis was in the 1978 original. Danielle Harris picks up the mantel of Annie Brackett, the Sheriffs daughter, and Laurie's best friend. Harris played Laurie's daughter in Halloween 4 and 5, adding a nod to the previous movies. No spoilers but - I am not sure I am pleased with Annie's ultimate fate in this movie. It did not fit with what we know of Michael.

As much as Michael is the focus of the first half, his transformation into The Shape for the second half wouldn't resonate as much without the scenes of Michael talking (!!!) to Loomis before his descent into muted madness. Zombie shows the audience Michael's humanity slip away until he only remains the shell of evil that we have become familiar with. One point Zombie has made about re-imagining this series, is that Freddy, Jason, and Michael are so familiar now that it is hard to be scared of them. He has succeeded in changing our perception of Michael, but it remains to be seen if it is a lasting change.

Purists will most likely have problems with this adaptation. Elements stay close enough to the original story to be frustrating at points. Some of the dialogue feels as if was written after watching the original once, and then making notes. Sequences are recreated (walking home, Michael outside the school, "ghost" Michael) well, but the homages feel forced in places. Unlikely as it is, Zombie could have gone farther if he retreated farther back from the source material in places. The one addition that was not needed was the "back-story" for Michael's mask. Part of the terror of Myers is the irrational, not the reason behind his props.

This is a 2007 horror movie. The psychopaths are sympathetic, the virginal heroine not so virginal, and the deaths move as far away from the bloodless 1978 Halloween as you can. This movie was not crafted to relaunch the franchise, but to put an end on it.