Archive for September, 2007

I went to see Rob Zombie’s remake of the classic horror film, HALLOWEEN, from brilliant director John Carpenter (well, he was brilliant with Halloween, at least.) I didn’t have very high hopes going in, having read that Zombie (whose real name is Cummings, I think) turned it into a film that shows Myers’ childhood and that his family is a white trash dream.

I’ll start off with a few complaints.

The first 40-50 mins of the film was taken up by Myers as a child and his wife trash family and his escape 15 years later. It’s nearly an hour in, from what I could tell, before we ever meet the original film’s main character- Laurie Strode, wonderfully played by Jamie Lee Curtis (I guess the plus side is that Laurie, in this version, is very cute in a dorky sort of manner with the ‘smart girl’ glasses and all).

That was just a bad move. I didn’t want to see William Forsythe scream drunken obscenities at anyone, let alone Sheri Moon Zombie (the director’s wife) who is 1. a terrible actress, and 2. annoying as all hell. She is the epitome of white trash in all three of the films Zombie has directed. That and her high pitched whiny, barely knows how to read a script, voice. Ick.

Why Zombie thought it would be a good idea to make Myers a victim of white trash family, I have no idea. The character shouldn’t be explained if you ask me. In the original, Carpenter was brilliant in making Myers a new person, a character that was called “the Shape”. He wasn’t a man who grew out of a boy who was semi-abused as a youngster. His family was well off and almost professional looking from what we saw of them in the 1978 original. He was made all that much scarier because he wasn’t explained, he never spoke a word, we didn’t know why he was evil, just that he was evil. That was truly frightening, and it’s what made the original so creepy. That and Myers was never in full open view in the first film. In Zombie’s film, Myers is out in front of the camera nearly the entire time. It made for a completely lame and not-so-scary boogeyman. I didn’t find this version the teeniest tiniest bit creepy. All I could do was sit there thinking- this is the ugly white trash kid with the bloated face. Big whoop.

Zombie is not only obsessed with white trash, he’s also obsessed with vulgarity. This film starts off with Forsythe’s character talking about his stepdaughters “dumper”. There is constant use of the F word and even worse. It seems that Zombie writes his films like he lives his own life if the tattoos and long hair are any sign of what he’s really like. I mean, does anyone look at Zombie and think anything outside of “this guy is scary white trash.”?? I know I sure don’t. So, the language is what you’d expect from a guy whose arms are covered in tattoos, makes music videos with the devil, and calls himself “zombie.” Still- way over the top. Also- why did every female in the film need to get naked? In Linda’s case it was bye bye to her top and her bottom! And why do actresses today so easily remove their clothes? It’s downright embarassing.

Sure, there was nudity in the original, but it wasn’t girl topless for 5 mins, it was just quick shots of Linda without her top in bed and Annie (I honestly don’t remember if they showed anything with her? I don’t remember them showing anything outside of her bare back when she was changing her butter-soaked clothes.)

So, white trash, over the top vulgarity, and nudity nudity nudity. Great start to destroying a horror classic.

Myers, as I mentioned, isn’t scary in this one. Why? There’s absolutely no tension. The film is horribly put together and edited. I have a feeling Zombie’s lexicon doesn’t include the word “pacing.” As many others have stated, it feels like 2 or 3 films put together. A story of young Michael, his escape and the nonsense that went along with that, and the remaking of the original with Laurie, Linda, and Annie…Tommy and Lynday added in as well. Because of that, I felt like I was sitting there forever, going through a horribly boring backstory, watching young Myers interact with a horrible remake of Sam Loomis (he’s not played by Caligula and is out to cash in on Myers with the book he authored on the subject!), waiting for ANYTHING remotely interesting to happen. Once the backstory and escape parts are over, it feels as if Zombie merely rushed through the parts that most closely match the original version in order to be allowed to call it Halloween. It seemed to me that Zombie never wanted to remake or reimage or re-whatever Halloween, but that he wanted to make yet another lame white trash-laden “horror” flick about a young boy who murders his family, to hell with the adult Myers and the original film.

For proof of this- take the scene of Linda, Laurie, and Annie leaving Haddonfield High after school. One- it’s too vulgar. Zombie seems to think that it’s a good idea for all his female characters to be as perverted and unlikeable as possible. Linda is telling the story of how she flashed her (insert gross term for vagina here) during cheerleading when she decided to wear no panties. I vaguely remember the word “snatch” in there somewhere. What a shocker- Zombie’s vocabulary is stuck in middle school. Second, the scene lasts maybe a minute. There’s zero character development, and we have no idea who these girls are. Nothing sets them apart at all. In the original, we knew Laurie was the smart, school-oriented girl scout-type, Linda was the somewhat slutty and dopy one, and Annie was a lesser version of Annie, but actually semi-Laurie in that she was babysitting too, though trying her best to get out of it to see her grounded boyfriend.

Sure, Deborah Hill’s “girl” dialogue in the original was halfway lame and not 100% believeable, but it wasn’t over-the-top anything, and it made sense within the context of the overall film. Zombie’s characters are one dimensional, and worse- they’re boring and no one cares what happens to them. We know very little about Laurie herself, so we don’t care much what happens to her. Plus, like I said before- the scenes in the end feel totally rushed and almost obligatory, as if Zombie said “I don’t want to add these scenes, but damn it we sort of have to to be able to call it Halloween.”

In the original, we spent time with Laurie, getting to know who she was. We had to care about her, because Hill and Carpenter made her the type of person we should care about. Zombie’s goal seemed to be to just brutally kill off any character who ventured into frame as gruesome and bloody as possible. Throwing in heaping doses of female nudity and vulgar language as a bonus. To hell with decent character development and good storytelling. That nonsense need not apply here.

He left out key scenes- like the closet, myers sitting up in the background, myers running into tommys bullies, myers driving, myers behind bush w/ laurie. These were all scenes that made the original a classic and a great work of art. The differences in the Zombie film stuck out like a sore thumb.

Zombie failed on all accounts here. Even without comparing it to the original- this film fails completely as a horror movie. It’s not one bit scary, it’s not exciting, it’s not entertaining. It’s dull, it’s lame, it’s boring…Myers beats up a house for about 10 mins in Zombie’s film if that tells you anything about its merits as a horror film in general.

I was actually looking forward to this remake for some time. But, I have to say I was definitely let down.