Rob Zombie to direct new 'Halloween'

[Rashid]

As a person who hated 1000 Corpses and loved Devil's Rejects, I made sure to into Halloween as open minded as possible, especially after reading countless negative reviews. Overall, I was impressed. I'd say it was almost as good as Devil's Rejects, and one of the best horror remakes.

The section detailing around Michael's childhood I didn't mind so much. But one reason why I love the original Halloween is because as far as we know, Michael has no reason for killing and he's just pure 100% evil. Though I understood this was Zombie making his own movie, not a direct remake, so I respect what he did. He wanted to make Michael a character you could feel sympathy for.

The acting was pretty good, with Sherri Moon and McDowell giving the best performances.

I'd give Halloween 8/10, it was my favourite horror film so far this year. It obviously doesn't come close to the original (which is one of the great horror films of all time), but it does do the original justice.

[zero]

The movie was #1 this weekend and it demolished a previous record:

From IMDB

There was more treat than trick about the decision to screen Rob Zombie's remake (the studio called it a "re-imagining") of Halloween over the Labor Day holiday. By Sunday, the film had already grossed more than any other film ever released over the holiday -- $26.5 million. The previous record was set two years ago when Transporter 2 opened with $16.5 million. (Labor Day is typically the slowest holiday period of the year at the box office, as young moviegoers are preparing to head back to school.) The film also gave a boost to the horror genre, which had come upon hard times this year. As MGM distribution chief Clark Woods observed in an interview with the Los Angeles Times: "Only a couple weeks ago, people were talking about the death of the horror movie. ... The genre sure wasn't dead this weekend." Coming in second was Sony's Superbad, which had reigned as the top box-office attraction during the previous two weeks. It grossed $12.2 million, slightly more than the No. 3 film, Universal's Balls of Fury, which debuted with $11.5 million. The rest of the box office looked as frightful as No. 1, with most other films drawing a piddling amount and pulling the average down below what it was a year ago. Nevertheless, the weekend will cap an extraordinary summer for the box office, which is expected to finish with a total haul of about $4.15 billion (first weekend of May through Labor Day).

[TGC]

Spoiler: Click here to view

Four horror films really made me love the genre growing up. Those were Psycho, Friday The 13th (original), The exorcist, and John Carpernter's Halloween. All four mean something to me because of how or when I saw them, so for any to be remade, and allmost all have now, is not what i want to see. However it was Zombie remaking my number one horror film ever, so I was both dreadful and excited for the last year. As the last few weeks came upon me, the countless bad reviews and low score on Rotten Tomatoes really worried me, however I finally made it to see it yesterday, with an open mind, and when the two hours were over I was very disappointed.

While I liked the first half, which felt and acted and was shot as a Zombie flick, the second half didn't work for me. I'm not one who feels you must do things the same when you remake, or in this case reimagine, a film, so the running didn't bother me. In fact, I was sitting there hoping as he showed Laurie the photo that he would rasply whisper "Happy Halloween Boo", as to me those being the only words he uttered in 15 years and after he killed upwards of fifteen people just to see her would have been very meaningful and almost tragic. I know for a fact a speaking Michael would have been considered blasphemy by fans everywhere, but to me it made sense and I longed for it. However it never happened. And that's what I wound up disliking the most, that being all the countless stuff that didn't happen that could have. It could have been a really great reimagining, but somewhere along the line he went for the safe route. He decided to reimagine the first half of the movie and remake the second half. It was a bad choice, and the overall film was hurt for it.

I also didn't care about Laurie at all. She was a self absorbed shallow little bitch, and that's not what you want your audience to see when she is the heroine. I realize this was Michael's film and not hers, as the original was, and that's fine, but she was a very unlikeable character. As are most of the victims of this film. Almost everyone is either unlikeable or not developed enough for me to care. Hell, I enjoyed the Brad Dourif sherrif more than half the teenagers killed, and he had maybe 10 minutes of screen time. Not good. I will give kudos to Malcolm McDowell's version of Dr. Loomis though. Very different and very well done. Not a fan of the way his story ended at all, but it's a lesser evil than so much of the rest of it.

All in all, it's a 4/10 for me, sadly. It could have been so much better and so much more, but he failed. In five years time this won't be a classic reimagining of the series or the original, it will be just another in a long line of shitty Halloween sequels , which is what is too bad.

On a side note, I have the workprint and will watch that this week. I am interested in the dieffering ending and the altered scenes. Oh and the nudity and sex scenes are no big deal really. Halloween and Friday The 13ths all had several nudity and sex scenes apiece, so it's nothing that I was shocked by at all.

Edited September 4, 2007 by TGC1997

[apsham]

The way I see it, is that Zombie can create some concepts that look good on paper... but I really think he just gets a little too carried away when it comes to executing them.

[Gabriel]

I watched the Workprint today, and I will say that I was incredibly impressed. The only thing I really didn't like was the over-humanization of Michael Myers. The workprint ending is different than the one released to the public though, so I'm not sure how that changes things really... though, if they wanted to have a sequel, it wouldn't be too hard to do.

While I would stand by the idea of leaving the film as a stand alone, I would also be very excited to see the franchise continue on from this point. The problem is though, that it's hard to write for the Myers character if Laurie Strode isn't involved... and there will come a point, just like in the original series, where Laurie Strode won't be involved, and the stories will become ridiculous.

Not as much sex as I was expecting from Zombie... but Sheri Moon is one hot mama.

[Toe]

I just wish they had given the Laurie character more time to develop.

[apsham]

ROG from I-Mockery reviews;

Spoiler: Click here to view

Wow. Please tell me this was all an elaborate joke on horror fans. How the hell did this ever get greenlit? This wasn't a reimagining of the original Halloween story, this was a raping of it. Rob Zombie has somehow managed to take one of the most infamously evil horror icons and turn him into a Kane-sized ogre who had a bad childhood. Now I had already mentioned that I had some serious doubts about trying to tell the backstory of Michael Myers because it simply wasn't necessary. Michael's backstory was perfect the way it was in the original when Dr. Loomis explained: "I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes… the *devil's* eyes! I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply… evil!" Perfection. All we ever see of Michael Myers as a child in the original is through the eye holes in his mask as he kills his first victim. Then we get that perfectly eerie slow zooming out shot of him standing outside with the bloody knife and a blank stare.

In Rob Zombie's version, we get far more information than that. Instead of Michael just being born of pure evil, Rob has completely fucked up the story by having Michael's evil come as more of a reaction to the household he grew up in. An abusive stepfather who was always insulting him and fighting with his mom, who was of course, a stripper. You can just tell that Rob thought that by adding in a mean stepdad who threw around profanities like they were confetti from the hands of Rip Taylor, that he was making the movie far more shocking. Wrong. The only shocking thing about it was how bad the script was. So as a result of living in such a nerve-racking household, Michael spends his time killing small animals for a while to let out his rage. RAGE! Eventually, he's ready to start killing real people… but instead of making it creepy, Rob just has this kid act out his methodical killings as brutally as he possibly can. Honestly, I thought Macaulay Culkin was more frightening in "The Good Son" than young Michael here… and that movie sucked. I'm a huge fan of blood and gore, as you all know, but that is not what the original Halloween was about nor is that what made it such a classic.

Oh and forget about that creepy zoom-out shot in Rob's version… but hey, we do get to see Michael sulking on the sidewalk while the song "Love Hurts" plays. I shit you not. I'm sure he thought it would be really funny or creative scene, but this isn't like that perfect moment in The Devil's Rejects when they drive towards the cops, guns a' blazin' to the tune of "Freebird". No not at all… this was just pure shit and felt way out of place.

Even worse than that, Rob decided that we all needed to know why Michael Myers wears that mask. Well not just that mask, but apparently a ton of masks. Throughout his childhood, Michael spends his time making a variety of masks to cover up his face. And his reason for doing this? "To hide my ugliness." Well hellooooooooo Gothy McMyers. Nice to meet you. Here, have a box of tissues. Seriously though, why did he feel this was necessary!?

I also hated the new Michael Myers as an adult. Does he really need to be a 7 foot tall behemoth? No, of course not. Rob just doesn't get that one of the coolest things about the old Michael Myers was that while he was of average height and didn't have big muscles or anything, he was still able to overpower anybody because of some evil super-strength he had within. Rob's Michael Myers appears to not have any internal evil powers, but instead relies on the same brute strength that any extremely tall big guy with a temper would have. Again, this really detracts from the infamous Michael Myers persona. It also doesn't help that you can hear him grunting like a perverted old man sometimes when he's manhandling his victims. Michael Myers is a silent evil… I didn't need to hear him talking as a kid and I didn't need to hear his man-grunts.

I also didn't like some of the choices Rob made for who would be playing certain characters. Don't get me wrong, I've always liked Malcolm McDowell and think he's a badass, but he just didn't do much for the role of Dr. Samuel Loomis that the late Donald Pleasance acted out so perfectly. Pleasance was greatly responsible for making Michael seem all the more evil… you could just tell how weary he was from all the years of trying to get through to him and how responsible he felt for Michael. In Rob's version, McDowell just seems more surprised and panicky throughout the film with far less emotion invested in his ex-patient. Then again, when you consider the script he had to work with, that probably explains a lot. The other person I didn't need to see again was Sheri Moon. Look Rob, I know she's your wife 'n all, but you don't need to put her in every single thing you do. But if you must, at the very least, don't give her such prominent roles like the mother of Michael Myers. It's not going to help her career when most people think the only reason she has one is because she's married to you. Oh, and you also don't have to have her shaking her ass on the goddamned screen in every movie either. Lemme tell ya, that ass-shakin' really helped me understand the rage within young Michael Myers.

And speaking of ass, that's probably the most fitting word I can think of to describe the ending of this movie. After literally giving the girl a football tackle out of a window, she somehow lands on top of him, grabs a gun and presumably shoots him in the face. I say presumably because they don't actually show it, they just show her point the gun, squeeze the trigger and then get splattered with blood while we have to endure more of her annoying screams. Then it simply cuts to a black screen and we're all left sitting in our chairs wondering… WHY?

Wanna know what truly shows how bad this movie was though? Not a SINGLE moment in the movie made me (or anybody else in the theater for that matter) jump in the slightest bit. Many of them were laughing at how bad and cheesy it was throughout the film. When the credits rolled, a few people clapped while many people booed. Now I'm sure a lot of you are thinking, "Oh he just grew up on those movies, so that's why he hates this one so much." No, that's really not the case here at all. There have been quite a few remakes that I thought were handled really well - "Dawn of the Dead" for example. As much as I wanted to enjoy it, this new Halloween movie just didn't have anything going for it. If you're looking for the real "Halloween" experience, then stick with the original. If you're looking to substitute the ominous Michael Myers persona with far more noise and T&A, then go with Rob Zombie's version.

But just to show you that it wasn't my nostalgia getting the better of me, most of the people in the crowd that were booing at the end? Yeah… they were teenagers. Teenagers who I assume were the real demographic Zombie was hoping to please, and while I'm sure there are some out there who absolutely loved this movie, I was glad to see that many of them recognized the fact that they just watched pure-unfiltered shit.

There were only two good points I could come up with regarding this movie:

1) Micky Dolenz' (from The Monkees) brief cameo as a gun salesman. I really wanted to see this scene go on longer, and I suspect there is more footage out there that will be saved for the DVD release (including the alternate ending), but I'll be damned if I'm gonna buy it because nothing can save this flick.

2) Michael Myers' mask looks much better than it has in quite a while. I'm sure Captain Kirk would approve.

As nice of a guy as he seems to be and as big of a horror fan as he is, Rob Zombie has completely failed to "get" what made Halloween so great. It was the enigma that was Michael Myers. Very little about him was explained, he simply was evil through and through. This made his undying rage seem all the more potent and real. Zombie screwed it up by giving too many reasons for his anger… a troubled childhood and an emo outlook on his life.

One critic wrote the following about Rob Zombie's new "Halloween" movie and I think he summed it up best: "John Carpenter can rest easy; any self-respecting horror fan will forget this film even exists by the time the real Halloween rolls around this year."

So for those of you who have seen it already, what'd you think?

Edited September 5, 2007 by apsham

[LL!]

What's funny is that two of the friends I saw it with thought he was being portrayed by Kane.

[WWE_Diva_Lover]

I enjoyed the film very much. I went in with an open mind, and I came out satisfied. The film has it's scary moments and it actually has good acting. Zombie did well. This movie was a hell of a lot better than the sequels, and to me it's almost on par with the original 9/10.

Spoiler: Click here to view

I thought the struggle scene with Annie and Michael was very intense. And the stalk/chase scenes with Laurie were excellent. The only downside of this movie is when we meet the girls, about forty-five minutes to an hour into the movie, it felt rushed. Like in the original it took it's time with the girls, and then reached the climax. I only wish this movie was a little over two hours, giving Zombie more time with Laurie, Lynda, and Annie.

[reyrey619]

I gotta agree with one thing in that review: the Love Hurts scene. I started laughing out loud in the theater when they started playing that song. Maybe that is what Zombie was going for though.

[Fanku Kaibutsu]

I've never seen the original Halloween, so I have no idea what differences there are between this version, and the original, but I greatly enjoyed this movie. It had blood, brutality, and boobs, what more would anyone want or expect from a slasher movie? Is it me, or did Michael Myers look like he belonged in Slipknot when he was in the asylum? They should also make a prequel to this movie, and call it "The Legend of Joe Grizzly."