Movie Review: Halloween (2007)
Halloween (2007)–No Stars
Rob Zombie only makes bad movies. His film House of 1,000 Corpses, an ultra-violent ripoff of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and his unwatchable follow-up, The Devil’s Rejects, are disasters. But neither of those films can prepare anyone for the coup de grâce Zombie deals audiences unlucky enough to experience his remake of the iconic horror film Halloween.
Zombie’s Halloween is everything a horror film, or any film for that matter, shouldn’t be. It’s unconscionably pornographic, more suited for Grindhouse 2 than for any standard release. It’s written like an anti-social high school sophomore’s creative writing project, with little imagination and less inspiration. Worst of all, it demystifies the legendary cinema icon Michael Myers, a character who was only terrifying when we didn’t know anything about him.
Take the first half of the film. We meet Michael Myers, a kid growing up in a broken home with a stripper mother, her lazy boyfriend, his trollop older sister and a lovable baby sister. He’s even bullied at school. Myers has a tough life and often takes his frustration out on neighborhood pets. One Halloween night, Myers goes a little bonkers and kills his sister, her boyfriend and the guy who sleeps on his mom’s couch.
Enter Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell). The doc recognizes Myers as the psychopath the young man is. He works with the boy who is committed to a sanitarium, but after killing one of the nurses (and quickly equaling the body count of the entire original Halloween movie), Myers goes silent for more than 15 years. Silence, Loomis realizes, means he can’t work with Michael, so he quits, leaving the a very large Myers (apparently they have body building equipment in the Warren County Sanitarium) in the hands of the hospital administrators.
Inevitably, Myers escapes. And a marauding Michel Myers doesn’t leave any person who gets in the way of finding his baby sister Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton). There’s a lot of blood and a lot of violence and a lot of breasts, but Halloween in all it’s sheen never manifest itself as a film. It’s just one long Zombie music video, with all of his horror film inspirations used to the same end as they are when his music is playing over his visuals: to satisfy his own lust for blood and boobs.
Zombie’s “reimagining” of John Carpenter’s Halloween looks and feels more like Friday the 13th than anything comparable to the rest of the Halloween franchise. It’s so off the mark, it wouldn’t have even made a worthwhile sequel.
Worse, Zombie’s casting is as bad as his directing. When Carpenter made the original, he cast classically-trained actor Donald Pleasence as Dr. Loomis and expected Pleasence to use his talent. In his remake, we get Malcolm McDowell who plays Loomis will all of the energy of an extra in a TV commercial. From casting former pro-wrestler Taylor Mane as adult Michael Myers to loading the film with C-list horror film regulars, Halloween sets itself up for failure from the get go.
The real tragedy may be that Halloween, one of the worst remakes to hit the screen in recent memory, will make enough money to warrant a sequel. With a $15 million budget, Halloween is a surefire profit maker. For the horror genre, which doesn’t have the air of elitism that the can save the rest of cinema from severely tragic remakes, it can only mean that innovation will be stifled, the worst horror films will get remade and, worst of all, Rob Zombie will still have a job.
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