Halloween (2007) Review

CLAYTON'S CREEPY CINEMA!

WEEK 5: REMAKES AND REHASHES

Halloween (2007)

Welcome to the final week of Clayton’s Creepy Cinema! In the 2000’s, classic horror movies started getting the remake treatment, but it quickly turned into a remake epidemic, with terrific slasher film series’ like A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre getting unnecessary reboots. There’s one that gets dismissed by most horror fans, but I actually think it’s one of the best, if not the best, of the recent remake resurgence, and that is Rob Zombie’s Halloween.

The plot is basically the same as the original, but there are some differences, mainly in showing the killer (Michael Myers) as a kid and his progression to adult psychopath. If you don’t know the original plot, it goes something like this. Michael Myers, a serial killer from the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois, escapes from a mental asylum and returns to his hometown. Dr. Loomis, played by Donald Pleasance in the original and here is played by Malcolm McDowell, pursues Michael. Meanwhile, in Haddonfield, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton here, Jamie Lee Curtis in the original) and her friends are just hanging out, but Laurie keeps catching glimpses of a masked man watching her. That Halloween night, she goes babysitting, and that’s when Michael strikes. Laurie is in for a brutal fight against this deranged man, who may be more closely related to her than she realizes...

Halloween is not a by-the-numbers remake, and actually attempts to be both a prequel to the original John Carpenter flick and a reimagining, and it manages to do both of these things quite successfully. More of Michael’s back story is given, which is interesting, though disturbing, to see. Fleshing out the back story was a technique also used in the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, however I felt that was one of that movie’s issues. With Freddy Krueger, we don’t need to see his whole story in a series of flashbacks; a simple explanation worked in the original, and you can see his history on his scarred, burnt face. With Michael Myers, his blank white mask tells us nothing about the man underneath—he could be anyone, which does add to what makes him scary, but it also gives us little indication about who he is and what drove him to kill in the first place. With Freddy it was always clear, but with Michael I wanted to know more, so in this case, it worked a lot more effectively for me. Having said that, the sequences of young Michael are uneven, and it isn’t until he’s an adult that the movie hits its stride. Scout Taylor-Compton is good as Laurie, but the choice to have Michael played by a tall and imposing actor was brilliant. He’s intimidating and scary even just standing there. Although I think Rob Zombie did a lot of things right with this film, he also made some poor choices. There’s one death which I won’t spoil that I thought went too far and was more comedic than horrific, much of the horror comes from jump scares rather than sustained suspense and genuine fear, and the film overall is uneven in pacing and tone.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween is not as bad as you might think. Having said that, I am not a truly hardcore fan of John Carpenter’s original. If you are passionate about the original, this will likely disappoint you, but if you were like me and found the original to be good but not nearly as scary or original as fans claim, then you might be open to this re-imagined version.