Carnography

31 (2016)

Rob Zombie's films tend to really divide horror fans. I briefly mentioned this in my reviews of his Halloween and Halloween 2 movies, but in general people tend to either love almost every film he's done or hate it and consider him a talentless hack. I, of course, like to be different and so try to take each of his films on their own merits - although I do have to admit that his films have a lot of redneck, grindhouse and exploitation themes. And 31 is a film which has these themes in spades.

Set on Halloween 1976, a group of carnival workers are travelling to their next gig when they are diverted and captured by a group of psychos dressed as clowns. They have been captured to take part in a sadistic game for the amusement of several rich people who like to dress as 18th century French aristocrats - the five of them are trapped in an abandoned industrial complex of some sort and have 12 hours to try to survive and escape while being hunted by a selection of murderous psychotic clowns. The five of them must find all their courage and strength to survive and fight back against their assailants, all of whom are better-equipped and far more experienced in the arts of murder than they are...

So, I guess we now know what Rob Zombie's version of The Running Man looks like. If you look at the brief plot synopsis above, I'm sure you can see the similarities between the two movies (and maybe also movies like Turkey Shoot, The Hunger Games and Battle Royale among others), but I think the Running Man comparisons are particularly apt because of the introduction and use of the killers throughout the movie. They're sent after our five protagonists one at a time, with a new one (or sometimes pair) sent out only after the previous one is... removed from the competition. Eventually they even bring out their final killer, Doom-Head (and more on him in a bit), almost the same way the bring Captain Freedom out in The Running Man as the final hunter of the survivors. Each of the killers has a distinct personality and killing style as well, which also leads to this film being possibly the first and only film with a Latino Nazi Dwarf Clown (and really, that just tells you nearly all you need to know about 31).

You can tell from films like The Devil's Rejects and Halloween that Rob Zombie has a strange fascination with rednecks and exploitation films, and 31 continues this trend. The film is set in 1976, for one, in the middle of nowhere (much like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and most of the characters - protagonists and killers alike - could generously be described as "rednecks", straggly beards and all. The protagonists are all carnival workers too; transients working in a business many would consider sleazy (especially considering their main attraction is a girly show headlined by Charley, played by Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie), but they're at least a family willing to fight and die for each other. The "aristocrats" and killers don't care for anyone but themselves, betting on the outcome of their "game", and as such are almost interchangable, with only their "characters" to distinguish them from one another. The violence throughout the film is also typical Zombie movie fare - splattery and extreme and peppered with occasional uncomfortable references to sexual assault.

The exception to this is the final killer, Doom-Head. Played by Richard Brake, whose previous roles have included The Night King in two seasons of Game of Thrones and Joe Chill in Batman Begins, he is first introduced to us at the very beginning of the film in an almost Fourth Wall-breaking scene but then doesn't appear again for over half the film. At first I thought he wasn't going to be a particularly interesting character, especially after the excesses of the previous killers (Latino Nazi Dwarf Clown, remember?) but he really was spectacular. From his preparation ritual, where he turns from just another typical redneck psycho into a greasepainted gentleman clown (reminding me of Ceasar Romero's Joker or even Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs), before punching himself repeatedly in the face to finish the effect, to his calm demeanor as he stalks the survivors and treats the whole thing as a performance, I think he really did steal the show - moreso than some of the big-name actors like Meg Foster and Malcolm McDowell (although Foster was pretty damn good as well).

In the end, 31 is still very much a Rob Zombie film, which is going to be the make-or-break point for many people. It's grimy and sleazy and not all that different from some of his other movies, so if you didn't like his previous films you're probably not going to like this. It's quite predictable in places as well and the ending wasn't all that satisfying, but it still has some good moments like Brake and Foster's performances, and the troop of psycho clowns are certainly original in their personalities, to say the least.

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Halloween II (2009)

If Rob Zombie's first Halloween movie caused some differences of opinions within the fandom, then his sequel really divided opinions. Even Zombie himself didn't originally want to make a sequel, but when he heard that the studio was ploughing on regardless he decided to come on board as the writer and director because he didn't want anyone else to ruin his "vision". Whether or not he himself ruined that vision is probably up to the individual viewer.

Halloween II picks up immediately where the last film ended, with Laurie Strode being taken to the hospital to recover from her injuries suffered during her neverending fight with Michael Myers. Michael, of course, isn't nearly as dead as the coroners believe, breaks out of the coroner's van and heads to the hospital as well to finish Laurie off, slaughtering everyone else along the way. It all turns out to be a dream, however (and this is okay, because it's happening at the beginning and not at the end of the film where the audience has gotten invested in the character's journey and development, only to have it all wiped away). The rest of the film takes place two years later, and follows the main characters from the first film as they deal with what happened to them in their own ways. Dr Loomis has become a media monster, getting fame off his encounter with Michael Myers, Laurie is a bag of angry, barely-contained psychosis, and Michael, whose body was never found, of course, has gone to live in a shack in the middle of nowhere to heal (and build himself a corpse pit in his spare time). Eventually, of course, Michael decides the time is right to find his sister again and everyone's destinies end up intertwined in bloody and final ways...

Halloween II has a lot to do with dreams and the subconscious, making it a Jungian horror film rather than a Freudian one for a change (interestingly, this is not the first reference to Jung in the series; that happened in Halloween: Resurrection). The biggest recurring theme is that of a white horse, which both Michael and Laurie see in dreams, visions and in supposed "subconscious" imagery throughout the film (such as a Rorschack picture that the audience can clearly see the white horse image in, well before it's mentioned). Interestingly, the start of the film defines a dream of a white horse as meaning "Linked to instinct, purity, and the drive of the physical body to release powerful and emotional forces, like rage with ensuing chaos and destruction," from The Subconscious Psychosis of Dreams - yet every other dream guide I looked at on the web describes dreams of a white horse as meaning something like "favorable for prosperity and pleasurable commingling with congenial friends and fair women." Is this book real? I've not been able to find a record of it anywhere, so it looks as though it was just made up for the film to fit with the whole white horse imagery overall.

The movie also focuses a lot on the various ways in which survivors deal with the traumas they've endured, specifically Laurie of course as she's the main character. It's made abundantly clear that she's not dealing well with what happened to her one bit, and this is emphasised more by the comparison between her and Annie Brackett, who also survived Michael Myers and has dealt with it in her own way, seemingly becoming less as outgoing and rebellious as she was in the previous film. The idea of examining the characters via the traumas they've suffered in previous films is an interesting and original one, seeing how most slasher movie survivors who make it to a sequel seem to be remarkably unscathed by what they've been through (the only exception I can think of being Tommy Jarvis from the Friday the 13th series, and even he seemed to bounce back pretty quickly). Unfortunately it makes for some pretty unlikeable characters, even Laurie who we could understand being so screwed up. There's also the dream imagery, of course, which is considerably more confusing - it's one thing for Michael to be having the recurring dreams and visions of a white horse and his mother in white, but what are we meant to  understand from Laurie seeing them too? Is this another psychic link between brother and sister? Are we back to the nature/nurture debate? Or is it something else entirely that's never really explained? According to Zombie the Director's Cut of the film tells a rather different story to the theatrical one, with Laurie's descent into psychosis much more pronounced and plot-important (along with Michael having really died at the end of the last film), which at least can go some way to explaining the shared visions...

 As for the rest of the movie... Well, it's certainly full of the amounts of violence and nudity that you'd expect from a Rob Zombie Halloween movie. The most brutal murder is actually the one we see the least of, Annie's - it's got more impact because we know she'd already survived one encounter with Myers, and that and seeing only the blood-soaked aftermath of the second, fatal attack only makes it more poignant. But overall the movie might seem less bloody and death-filled than other Halloween movies because of its length, and that the deaths are more spaced out throughout it.

After this film, Dimension actually wanted to make a third Halloween film. Rob Zombie was not going to be involved and so they brought on another director for the film, but in 2015 they lost the rights to the franchise and so unless someone else gets them this is the end of the Halloween series. Whether that's a good or bad thing will depend on your feeling of the films overall...

 

 

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Halloween (2007)

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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