Rob Zombie has added another tally mark to the ongoing list of uber-gory, cut-the-sex-crazed-teens-into-little-pieces, villain-can’t-die slasher flicks.
Yet this one comes with a twist—it’s a remake of John Carpenter’s 1978 “Halloween,” the film that established this exponentially growing genre.
Bearing the same name as its predecessor, Zombie’s remake sets out to humanize the super-human killer, Michael Myers, whereas the original presented him masked and one-dimensional.
The result is choppy, yet the film is inherently frightening at the same time. While the Carpenter’s “Halloween” begins with a short clip that depicts a young Myers murdering his sister in cold blood, then cuts to a grown Myers returning to the town after escaping from the mental institution to continue his bloody rampage, Zombie’s version covers the in-between as well.
Zombie’s “Halloween” begins the morning before Myers kills his sister, portraying both his troubled, “white-trash” family and his uncontrollable impulse to kill.
Ten-year-old Myers, played by Daeg Faerch, makes his debut washing the blood off his hands after torturing and killing his pet gerbil. Throughout the beginning scenes, the movie suggests many more gruesome animal deaths at Myers’ hand.
Myers makes his first human kill after school, chasing a school bully into the woods on his way home, and proceeding to beat him mercilessly with a tree branch until he dies.
This scene is probably the scariest in the entire film. Zombie films this scene in late afternoon and chooses not to include any cheesy, ominous music. The harsh light of the low sun combined with the documentary style, shaky camera work makes this scene feel startlingly realistic.
Faerch does an exceptional job as Myers, particularly in this scene. He depicts the categorical evil of this infamous villain without overdoing it, resulting in a frighteningly believable performance.
Unfortunately, it all goes downhill from there. After Myers murders his stepfather and his sister’s boyfriend, an unnecessary amendment to the original, he kills his sister in a ridiculously bloody feat before he is taken to the mental institution he will escape from years later.
Zombie dedicates a small portion of the film to the psychoanalysis of Myers via his meetings in the institution with Dr. Samuel Loomis, played by Malcolm McDowell. These brief scenes serve to prove that Myers is not plagued with hatred or anger, only an insatiable impulse to torture and kill, and no deeper than that. It also covers his obsession with masks, because they “hide my ugliness.” He passes his time before his escape by making sinister masks and hanging them in his cell.
While Zombie’s efforts to show the Myers behind the mask is notable, it is insufficient. His depiction is cliché and lacks originality. It is a textbook example of every serial killer portrayal.
Once Myers grows up to be a freakishly gigantic man, his face is never shown again and he fails to utter another word for the rest of the film. He escapes the institution by impractically breaking through his chains and killing all the guards (even though they’re armed) and returns to his hometown to find teenage Laurie Strode, played by Scout Taylor-Compton, who turns out to be his sister, a fact that Carpenter didn’t reveal until his sequel.
This is where Zombie’s version merges with Carpenter’s, but with a few inconsistencies. The rest of the film is a bloody yet dull cat-and-mouse game between Laurie and Myers with a few gruesome murders in the intervals.
The ending moments, while gory, are unremarkable, a cop-out next to the nail-biting terror the beginning scenes promised.
