For a while, they had wanted to make yet another sequel in the Halloween series. There was talk of naming it Halloween: Retribution, or featuring John Tate from Halloween H20 returning to hunt Michael Myers down to get revenge for the death of his mother, a crossover movie with Hellraiser like Freddy Vs Jason, or even making a prequel called Halloween: the Missing Years before the studio finally decided to go with Rob Zombie's remake. Production was delayed further after the 2005 death of long-time series producer Moustapha Akkad in a terrorist attack in Jordan. Finally in 2007, Rob Zombie's remake of the classic slasher was released.
Haddonfield, Illinois, October 31, some time in the past and we're introduced to the Myers family. The stepfather is an abusive deadbeat, the mother is a stripper and the elder sister is, well, a typical teenage girl victim in a slasher movie, so it's of little surprise that young Michael (aged up to 10 here) is a complete and utter psychopath who only actually likes his baby sister. Before we're even 15 minutes in we've seen the aftermath of him killing a rat, a cat and a dog (thankfully we don't see any of it happening), and him beating a bully to death before the expected scene of him slaughtering half his family. After this he's admitted to the Smith's Grove Sanitarium, where a young(ish) Dr Loomis attempts to reach him but to no avail. 17 years later and Michael is now a 6' 9" hulking mute who does nothing but make masks, who escapes after two orderlies make the mistake of having a rape party in his cell. He then heads back to Haddonfield in search of his baby sister, who is all grown up now after being adopted by the Strode family, and we all know how the story goes from here...
Rob Zombie went for a very different take on the mythology of Michael Myers, with the whole first half of the film being more like that proposed prequel of his earlier years than the more traditional Halloween plot that we know. This led to a lot of mixed reactions from people, with a good number unhappy with the way the remake went, but I found it all quite refreshing and an interesting take on the slasher mythos - Zombie does a pretty good job of presenting Michael as a budding psychopath, ticking a good many of the boxes along the way. It certainly doesn't hurt that the actor playing young Michael, Daeg Faerch, is really quite good at playing an intense, psychotic murdering child. Tyler Mane as the adult Michael has something of an easier job, seeing as he just has to loom over people, kill them and has about one line of dialogue in the whole movie, but he does acquit himself well. There's also Malcolm McDowell taking on the role of Dr Loomis, which is... interesting. Because there's more of a focus in the film on young Michael's time in Smith's Grove, Loomis has a larger role than in the original, but his character feels rather... schitzophrenic for most of the film. He spends the first half doing his best to be Michael's friend so as to help him better as his doctor, but the very moment he escapes he shifts into Crazy Ralph/Woodsman role as if he'd been waiting for this moment all his life. Maybe he was, but his last words to Michael before his escape are ones of apology and friendship. There's also hints of the fame-hungry persona he has in the sequel, but we'll get to that next time.
Because it's a Rob Zombie film there's several things that we've come to expect from his films - excellent use of music (I'd never have thought that Nazarath's Love Hurts would work as a stripper song, but it's hauntingly effective); scenes of extreme violence and sex - that's something I didn't like; the rape scene in Michael's cell because it seemed thoroughly gratuitous - and the inclusion of all of his friends in cameos. There's Danny Trejo, Ken Foree, Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Tom Towles, Brad Dourif... oh, and Danielle Harris in the role of Annie Brackett (played when she was 29). I'm just surprised that Diamond Dallas Page didn't appear for a moment in Marilyn.
The biggest flaw with Rob Zombie's Halloween is it's length. Or rather, the ridiculously overlong ending. Michael finds his sister and tries to reconnect with her, but fails, and then they fight. And they fight. And then Loomis shoots him. And then there's more fighting. And more fighting. There's at least three false endings in this whole sequence, where we're certain Michael is dead but it turns out he isn't, and it gets annoyingly boring quite quickly.
Overall though, this remake of Halloween is a success. It' brings something new to the story and the movie, which is really the only proper reason for a remake to be made, while also being true to the original. Rob Zombie actually told John Carpenter what he was doing before he started his film, and Carpenter told him to "make it [his] own", and I think Zombie succeeded in doing so quite admirably.
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