Horror remakes are all the rage these days - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Omen, The Hills Have Eyes, The Amityville Horror, Dawn of the Dead etc, etc - usually of varying quality, rarely a patch on the original.
A couple of days ago I saw the Halloween remake for the first time, directed by Rob Zombie, who was the lead singer of awful death metal group White Zombie and the director of House of 1000 Corpses, which wasn't bad and The Devil's Rejects which was better. Now the original Halloween, I consider the granddaddy of slasher movies, it was the first true slasher movie of what we've come to love (Black Christmas did beat it by 4 years though) and was clearly an influence on movies like Friday the 13th, so I was pretty much in the camp of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it...", but however I attempted to watch the film with an open mind, I'd like his first two movies enough and not every remake in the history of the world sucks, so what did I think
Well what makes it different from the original, Michael killing his sister Judith while he was 10 years old, was what a 10 minute scene at the very, very most in the original, now this time we get an whole backstory, young Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) is seen first killing Elvis, a rat in what we assume by the musical choices (Love Hurts, Don't Fear the Reaper etc) is the 1970s, here we see Michael's family, an abusive and crippled stepdad (played by the great William Forsythe), his sister Judith, who is only slightly slutty (Hanna Hall, who played the young Jenny way back in Forrest Gump), a baby sister and a stripper mother (played by Zombie's wife Sheri Moon) who at least is loving towards young Michael, We then see Michael struggle at school with the bullies (led by the kid from the Spy Kids movies). Some short time later he follows the Spy Kid into the forest attacking him viciously with a piece of wood and pretty much killing him dead. On the night his stripper mom needs to go stripping so she asks Judith to take him treak or treating, she decides to stay and have akward teen sex with her boyfriend in her bedroom while crippled step dad gets drunk until he's unconcsious downstairs, young Michael, whose got sweets (so he must have gone trick or treating) decides he's had enough and gaffer tapes crippled stepdad to his chair while he slits his throat, Judith's horny boyfriend goes downstairs to make himself a sandwich and is quickly beaten to death with a baseball bat, leaving half naked Judith upstairs, he feels his sister's leg for a bit before she realises it's her younger brother, a stab in the stomach later, she is crawling all bloody, until he goes crazy stabbing her another bunch of times, he goes to his baby sisters crib and picks her up and takes her outside to wait for there mother, like nothing as happened...
Crazy Young Michael is sent to an insane asylum and put under the eye of Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), at first Michael doesn't really remember the killings and his mother still visits (probably holding on to her last bit of family), but his becoming obsessed with masks, whilst there he also befriended by Danny Trejo an orderly. After Michael goes crazy killing a nurse with a folk and in the process Michael's mother sees him insane in person for the first time, Michael mother kills herself at home (not sure how much later after the previous event). We cut to fifteen years later, Dr. Loomis is quitting on Michael (now played by Tyler Mane) after he stopped talking for the past 15 years, we quickly learn Loomis as wrote at least one book on Myers and as probably benefited financially from being Myers doctor. Also still working there by the way is Danny Trejo, after new guard Tom Towles (Lew Temple, whose great here) whose a bullying redneck and his equally bullying redneck cousin (Courtney Gains) taunt him and rape a female mental patient in front of him, Myers snaps killing both men, Danny Trejo arrives at the hospital, the kindly warden tries to help him but Myers ends up drowning him, figuratively showing the audience Michael what he is capable of, after a brief stop at the Truck Stop, he kills the legendary Ken Foree before the movie becomes not that much different from the 1978 version (which I'll go into in a little bit).
So there you go, whether you asked for it or not you get a much bigger Michael Myers backstory, and I did like parts of his backstory - Forsythe was great as always and Sheri Moon got to show a different side to her - but did we really need to see behind the mask so to speak, I can live without seeing a massively developed Freddy or Leatherface backstory and could live without a Michael Myers one, so what becomes 10 minutes of the 1978 becomes 40 or so minutes of the 2007 version, but the backstory as much as I am complaining about it, is the best part of the movie, the 2nd part which is more similar to the original features a more spunky Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor Compton), whose performance I really liked and was completely different to Jamie Lee Curtis' original and two similar to the original counterpart sluttier friends (One of them played by Danielle Harris, already a veteran of the Halloween movies appearing in 4 and 5 way back). I have to admit despite some good little performances and camoes in this part (The Devil's Rejects used it's cameos better though) - Micky Dolenz of the Monkees fame having a good little part - it mostly as very little tension, which is a shame, Zombie is showing great talent as a filmmaker, but this overall feels like a bit of step back for him. Kudos for Zombie for using John Carpenter's original chilling theme, a lot of remakes that have an original with a memorable theme you spend most of the movie waiting for that theme and are disappointed if it doesn't come
Overall, disappointing despite some good points mostly in some good performances and I expect I haven't heard the last from Scout Taylor Compton. I'm gonna have to be stingy on the rating here...<> <> <
(out of <><><><><>)
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