Halloween - Rob Zombie's latest abomination

On August 31^st (which occurred during this summer - incase you’re too mentally incompetent to own something as fundamentally rustic as, say a calendar?), the much anticipated remake of John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher classic, Halloween was released in theaters. Well, actually, it wasn’t that anticipated…the movie was speculated to be a bomb. It was expected to basically be the first Halloween movie had John Carpenter been intoxicated when initially writing the script. Surely enough, that speculation was oh so true to the fullest extent. The infamously known “director-slash-songwriter,” Rob Zombie acted as Michael Myers in metaphorically murdering the original movie.

            In case you grew up in a closet and never saw the movie, Halloween is about the boy-turned man who, in his childhood was locked like a dog into a mental asylum for randomly murdering his sister and her perverted boyfriend on Halloween night. Years later, he breaks free when officials attempt to transfer him to another asylum, coincidentally occurring October 30^th, the day before Halloween. The next day, chaos inferably occurs in Littleton, Illinois, where he lived as a boy and brutally ended the life of his sister. That night, the usual happens – about four unknowing teenagers are cut down like sheep by the wolf (as in, Michael Myers) as he searches for his baby sister, Judith who he forgot to viciously exterminate.  

Overall, the movie replicated the same redundant techniques of The Devil’s Rejects and House of 1000 Corpses, but putting Michael Myers into the mix. Incase you haven’t seen them; Rejects and 1000 Corpses were both blatant rip-offs of the decent-at-best Saw movie series and the extremely lousy remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. For whatever reason, these two types of movies have been replicated numerously in Hollywood. It’s as if two ugly celebrity parents kept mating and reproducing remarkably unintelligent and unattractive children that had finally grown up to be ultimate failures, despite hype and anticipation. That’s Hollywood!

            The fact that producers are still accepting Rob Zombie as a horror-movie writer is astonishing – his writing style is completely unoriginal and his directing is loaded with bad angling, pointless nude-scenes, and, as stated before, gore, blood, and more gore

            The casting for this movie hurt this movie greatly for two reasons, other than the overall lack of decent acting. Tyler Mane acted as Michael Myers, but unfortunately resembled a depressed football player struggling with retirement, who had just lost his fifth bet in a row on a meaningless football game and went on an angry rampage to kill a few teenagers for the hell of it.

            Even worse, however, was Malcom McDowell, who played Doctor Loomis, Michael Myers’ psychologist in the cuckoo’s nest. Whoever decided to hire McDowell with out a doubt deserved to be thrown into a nut house himself/herself; McDowell sounded and looked like a cheap Sean Connery impressionist and the real one is irritating as it is in his old age. We don’t need a fake one to add to the pain.   

The main difference between Carpenter’s masterpiece and little ‘ole Robby’s repugnant failure is simplicity. When John Carpenter was making his movie, he was forced to work within the parameters of a strict budget, limiting his options greatly. What he did was work on shaping everything around the fundamentals of making a movie, just hoping to make some money with its release. What Rob Zombie did, along with many other writers and directors are continuing to do these days, is go for an amazing movie that overshot and turned into an obnoxious piece of garbage. The story of Halloween requires simplicity and simplicity only. Rob Zombie’s style of directing is far too eccentric, as he shoots for the top with every movie he makes, failing to consider taking a step back to achieve the fundamentals even simpler than good acting.

My last complaint is how Rob Zombie molded the character of Michael Myers. Aside from horrendous casting, the way Myers was described in the movie was appalling. Zombie tried to humanize Michael Myers, exposing his struggles in the asylum and showing him cry. First of all, Michael Myers doesn’t cry. He’s a cold-blooded killing machine with the steadfast intention of killing more. There’s no crying in the killing business. Look at the Alien movies. The hideous insect-like creatures went on a killing spree on the unsuspecting human scientists. Did they cry? I’ll be damned if they did. In the movie Resident Evil, did Alice shed a tear after hundreds killing blood-thirsty zombies? I think not!

Overall, I’d give the movie a D+. It was somewhat entertaining in the fact that certain parts of the movie were humorous in the it’s-so-bad-it’s-funny kind of way, but that’s about all it deserves. Enjoy!