Halloween (2007)
Keep It Simple Stupid
Rob Zombie’s Halloween evokes but one phrase – “Did you have to?”
Repeatedly, I asked this question of Rob Zombie as I watched a remake that just did not need to be made. The original is both a classic slasher film and example of the ingenuity that comes with low-budget independence.
Whereas Carpenter ’s original felt bare-bones and driven by suspenseful builds to shocking bursts of action, Zombie’s Halloween wastes no time getting right to the violence. Acts of brutality are only interspersed with vulgar obscenities, that sound like children just learning to swear, and gratuitous innuendo and nudity.
Zombie had too much money and too little talent to create anything more than gore, and he doesn’t even do that well. While not completely insufferable, this film might have been forced to think more creatively about its construct if it did not feel like most of Rob Zombies whims where answered with a blank check. Zombie’s soundtrack probably cost more in clearance rights than the budget of the original Halloween and one only has to look at the songs he chooses to evoke feeling or responses from the audience to see where his priorities lie. They are not in creating something new, but in taking something somone else created and reusing it to meet his own desires.
There is one new aspect to the Halloeen franchise that Zombie offers up. Zombie spends the first third of the film attempting to explain the psychology behind Michael Meyers. Sadly, this is just the first in a series of horrible decisions that Zombie can never complete. Our killer’s childhood is depicted as an abusive, trashy dead-end, preparing him for a life of misery or murder. That or he’s the devil incarnate. Zombie can’t seem to decide.
Even the simple act of build suspense seems outside of Zombie’s abilities. I recall very little killing in the first Halloween. Yes, many people died, but their deaths were quick. What I do recall is a far greater sense of dread that is absent from Zombie’s remake. There are few false scares, maybe none. Instead, what you will find in Zombie’s version is a high level of trashiness, especially in the beginning of the film. It’s so over the top it seems farcical. For instance, Michael’s mom is a stripper. I get it, you established that with an advertisement in a newspaper. Did you really have to show her dancing in the club? Especially while you intercut between her and a young, dejected Michael Meyers sitting on the curb with “Love Hurts” playing over the soundtrack? Seriously, did you have to?”
As the picture progresses from Michael Meyer’s past to the present, the story takes on a more familiar structure. Hell, with a few rather wrongheaded exceptions the latter part of the re-make plays just like the original. There are some heavy nods to the original source, but most of the time I felt as if Rob Zombie was simply uglify a corspe. He took someone else’s ingenuity and added his own vile finger prints.
This is the problem of so many re-makes. They merely ratch up the sex, violence, and action to make an old story ‘more palpatable’ to our modern eyes. How did it come to this? When was it determined that we crave an excess of action and vulgarity to feel up to date? Did Rob Zombie have to make his Halloween with these excesses to meet our demands. Did he have to?
I’ve been a Halloween movie fan my entire life, since I was about 6 years old and “pretended” to be asleep with my head on my Mom’s lap, but was really watching the movie (which has haunted me to this day). I ultimately became of fan of the whole franchise (up until the one with the rapper and Tyra Banks) because of the continued story surrounding why Michael Myers is, well, Michael Myers. I’ve even read the book by Curtis Richards that was turned into the original movie (the prologue of the book gives the backstory needed to understand the motive of Myers, which wasn’t ever truly addressed in any of the movies, but once you read it, it makes sense). Some of the movies in the series were great, some not, but as a whole, I appreciate that they tried to stick to the story, eventually trying to tie in the curse. Needless to say, I’m a fan.
Imagine my excitement over a re-make…not that I think it needed one. I did anticipate it being gorier than the first (using the re-make of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a baseline), but was still ready to give it a shot…and it was craptastic…an epic failure. If I were to see RZ walking down the street, I might have kicked him in the junk.
Fast forward 2 years…I’m still not over the re-make, but lo and behold, I hear there will be part deux. Ah…redemption! My hopes are high, I get excited again, I sign up for all the updates from the set, and I’m watching the calendar. Scenes from the set are coming in that look scary as shit and I’m ready. But then the trailer comes out…and I’m now apprehensive because what I see already looks like it will be worse than the first. Then more trailers come out, RZ’s wife is in a white dress lookin all freaky (and you know, she blew her brains out in the first one so she’s dead), and I’m pissed. Being a glutton for punishment, my friends and I go to see it, with some shred of hope that maybe it won’t be as bad as we think. We even prepped ourselves with some vodka, just in case. And, it was worse. Far worse. Now, I don’t want to kick RZ in the junk…I want to tie him to a chair for the rest of his life and make him watch these two movies over and over again.
I don’t agree that the second half of the first movie played just like the original. Yes, some of the scenes had a vague familiarity, but because the first part of the movie so distorted the original storyline, it ruined the rest of it. The frustrating part, for me, wasn’t so much that RZ felt the need to pander to “modern eyes” and the recent trend in Hollywood horror (the gore, violence, language, etc). My frustration and disgust comes more from being a lover of the original story which RZ completely disregarded in the white-trashiest, move unforgiveable way. The book and (at least) the first two movies created an unforgettable story of innocence and evil, of darkness, of fear of the unknown, of the dark shadow that one can sense is following them, but they don’t know why, and sheer terror. The originals created characters that were real and could be you or me…there wasn’t anything special or different about them, they were just normal. Even Michael, until this one day he decides to kill his older sister for no apparent reason. And then there’s Dr. Loomis, whose character RZ absolutely butchered, no pun intended. What was so great about the Loomis character all through-out the series (for the most part) was the fixation he had with Myers in a Capt. Ahab and his white whale kind of way. And, it was believable. I’m all for some creative liberties with a re-make, but a re-make should take the original, and make it better. Heck, even the liberties that Quentin Tarantino took with Hitler in Inglorious Basterds wasn’t as bad as what RZ did to the Halloween franchise.
To answer the final question in the above post…no, RZ did not have to do what he did in his version of Halloween. He could have put a modern spin on a classic story that ultimately lead the reader/view to the question: does pure, unexplainable evil actually exist?
If anyone sees RZ, kick him in the junk for me. Twice.