Film: Halloween (A Rob Zombie re-make)
Tagline
Evil has a destiny
Plot
Well, the critics hated it. But before anyone tries to take a dump all over Rob Zombie’s remake of this John Carpenter classic, let me remind the picky bastards out there that the last time we saw Michael Myers on the big screen, he was karate-chopping it with Busta Rhymes. Yeah. How does Zombie’s version sound now?
The flick opens on Halloween day but no year is given. It could be the 70's but maybe the 80's — it’s deliberately non-specific. We find ten-year-old Michael (Daeg Faerch) eagerly dissecting a rat in his room. His rail-thin but sexy stripper mom (played by Sheri Moon Zombie, Rob’s wife) fights constantly with degenerate, wheelchair bound Ronnie (William Forsythe) and Michael’s ultra-slutty older sister (Hanna Hall).
Michael’s childhood, to say the least, is typical white-trash-upbringing at its best, and at school, little Mikey gets picked on by bullies (imagine that!) So he decides to move from killing animals to killing people. Like his whole family. He spares mom and little infant sister. Nice guy. The bloody mayhem he causes on Halloween night gets him locked up in an asylum where Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell taking over the role for Donald Pleasance) takes on his case.
After years in his cell, Michael has grown to hulking proportions with almost supernatural strength (now played by pro-wrestler Tyler Mane). He easily manages to escape by murdering almost every guard on the asylum grounds, and heads back to his old hometown of Haddonfield to locate his baby sister, Laurie (the very school-marmish Scout Taylor-Compton), for his final act of brutality. This is where Zombie’s film picks up the storyline of the 1978 original. Now Myers dons the famous white-faced mask and begins slicing and dicing.
Acting
Zombie uses his time with Halloween to delve deeper into the workings of the white trash heart. Large sections of the film seem like outtakes from his 2005 hit The Devil’s Rejects — lots of great expletives, borderline-comedic bickering, and classic rock songs. I appreciated this distance from Carpenter, and as always, Zombie is incredibly good at capturing the seedy chaos of an uncontainable dysfunctional family.
As for the acting, the only members of the cast to turn in actual performances are Moon and McDowell. It's not that the others can't act, but they spend most of their time on-screen screaming (Taylor-Compton) or hiding, dialogue-less, under a mask (Tyler Mane) or some other form of non-acting—which is admittedly neither here nor there since the same could be said about most slasher movies. Moon lends some humanity to an otherwise emotionless affair, and it makes her stand out in more than one way, but sadly, her performance is rather short-lived.
And as a shout out to those die-hard original Halloween fans—Taylor-Compton certainly has nothing on Jamie Lee Curtis as the original Laurie Strode, except for perhaps the decibals of her piercing screeches. Filling in for Donald Pleasence, McDowell wasn't a bad casting choice to deliver cryptic, if dubious, dialogue, but his performance is rarely more than funny. 'Funny' could sum up most of the acting here.
Verdict: There’s no doubt that a good 10 minutes could’ve been shaved off the climax of the film. I got the sense that Zombie might have been overcompensating in the suspense department to give the picture some added spooks. However, that’s a minor complaint in what I found to be a great classic rebirth, topped off with an outstanding ending that boldly states 'NO SEQUEL.' Purists will undoubtedly scoff, but the trick is to look beyond the nature of the remake to see what Zombie was attempting here. Yes, Zombie does delve into Michael’s psychosis. Yes, that might take a little bit of the mystery out of the man. But you can’t deny that Zombie’s Michael is still one big, bad, evil, unstoppable mofo. I see a semi-brilliant reawakening of a first-class horror icon. And the best part about it? No Busta Rhymes.