Damn Bloody Horrorcast

Sigh. Yes I know, so far I’ve been hitting up somewhat mainstream horror films when there are sooo many other bizarre and unheard gems out there. However a lot of those may require another viewing because my memory of some are sketchy at best, or they’re so damn bad, I’ve erased them from my memory.
In any case, I re-watched my Blu-ray copy of Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake tonight and feel it needs some discussion.

So here… we… a-go!

I can’t really say Rob Zombie has left me with any resonating pieces of work as a Writer/Director. I am a bit of a hypocrite however, as I do own House of 1000 Corpses, Devils Rejects and Halloween. I do respect him for his enthusiasm to the genre but I don’t know, nothing’s really stood out to me that’s made me see him as an up and comer that deserves to be watched.

Halloween was no exception. A remake of one of the quintessential slashers of the 80’s, Zombie attempts to put a reason and backstory to Michael Myers bloodstained path of destruction.

We start off with a good 40 mins of how shitty Michael’s childhood was and the inevitable spiral into evil. There’s a strong push to feel bad for the poor kid, and you do. Abusive step-dad, severely bullied at school, half bitchy older sister – the only person who actually cared for him was his mother (and once committed Dr. Loomis – which was played flawlessly by Malcolm McDowell BTW). From here we see Michael grow up, escape the asylum, and head back to his home town to begin another spree of killings.

And here begins my biggest problem with the film. In Zombie’s attempt to humanize and create sympathy for Michael, he completely lost me once Myers started killing innocent people. To build near half the movie by saying “Hey, Myer’s isn’t so bad, he just had an abusive, horrible childhood that twisted his perception of life and death so he eventually killed his family so it’s not really his fault… oh wait… no sorry, he’s a monster who’s slaughtering anyone that get’s within 2 meters of him.” To throw audiences in a break-neck complete opposite emotional direction is a bit of a ‘fuck you’ and a near hour waste of character empathy in my opinion.

Besides that though, another problem is the real lack of presence from the beloved final girl Laurie. The original kept the main focus on Laurie’s goodness and innocence as the silent figure stalked her silently from afar, creating tension as you cared and feared for her life. The remake doesn’t completely slut her up so much you despise her ‘whore-iness’ but it doesn’t highlight her angelic side either. Again, the film fails to build an empathy with who should be the film’s main protagonist. You feel bad that this monster is pursuing Laurie and killing everyone close to her, but as mentioned earlier, the major emotional tug of the film focuses of Michael’s childhood and cancels all previously established empathy when he turns 180 degrees into cold silent killer.

And without going too far into this, (I really dislike directly comparing original’s to remakes) virtually all of the original film’s themes of moral righteousness VS sexual depravity were left out of the remake. Part of what made the original great was the underlying sexuality in the film. Myers, a large hulking man easily killing off the promiscuous, rowdy teenagers with a large phallic object (butcher’s knife), while Laurie, the wholesome and chaste protagonist, escapes his advances and survives the entire horrific ordeal. It was a simple theme and it worked. Bottom line (and horror survival rule) – Stoners, drinkers and sluts die!

I will give Zombie praise for making his own rendition of Halloween and not sticking to John Carpenter’s scene for scene outline as other god-awful remakes tend to do nowadays. There was no way he could out-do or improve the original film so I’m glad he took the film in a more prequel oriented and unique direction, accepting Carpenter’s as THE Halloween.
It’s obvious where Zombie wanted to go with his version, but it seems like he did play the sympathy card too hard early on, without pacing himself for the Laurie’s role in the film, jabbing the audience and pointing to the luminescent “Sympathize Now!” sign like some sleazy late night talk show.

Ultimately, I’d save this recommendation only for Rob Zombie fans or someone who’s new to the Halloween series. As far as modern horror’s go, there’s other better, more direct films out there. I will say that it’s not the worst horror remake/reboot out there but it’s no where near the best.

P.s.
At this point in time, I have no interest in seeing Rob Zombie’s sequel, there may come a day where I’ll check it out but right now, I’m staying faaar away from that one.