HALLOWEEN (2007)

HALLOWEEN: It ain’t as bad as it could’ve been
By Eric Matthew Harvey

I grew up on HALLOWEEN (1978). That film and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) were two of the films that made me into a horror fan. I was never a monster kind of horror fan, although I liked those movies. No, I grew up on slashers and Italian zombie pictures, as well as the Romero kind. The funny thing is, those movies are technically adept and scary. Well, maybe not the Italian zombie ones.

When the HALLOWEEN “re-imagining” by Rob Zombie was announced, I, like many others, cringed and hemmed and hawed about what a disaster it was going to be. Well, I’m here to tell you it’s not a disaster, but it’s pretty fucking pointless and put together terribly.

In Zombie’s version, it’s all about Michael Myers and how he became Michael Myers. Yet you really don’t understand why he became Michael Myers because it’s never properly addressed. Other than some exterior influences, nothing much is revealed, kind of like the first one. But the first one understood that you didn’t need to know this back-story, so why take up the first half of a movie focusing on something you can’t (or won’t) explain?



Oddly enough, the first half is the best part of the movie. Here is where Zombie isn’t remaking HALLOWEEN, but adding to it. All of this begs the question; why not just create something new instead of attaching the stigma associated with HALLOWEEN to it? Zombie, while no means a seasoned filmmaker, does have an eye; it just gets lost somewhere amongst his horrid scriptwriting and wink-wink cameos and the use of white-trash stereotypes he’s so fond of (not to mention his annoying use of earthquake-cam and sloppy close-ups throughout this film).

The opportunity was there to create a new boogeyman for a new generation, but once he begins to really remake HALLOWEEN, with the same characters and dialogue and running through it like a Reader’s Digest abridged version, everything he somewhat accomplished in the beginning becomes null and void.

Zombie’s HALLOWEEN is not scary or suspenseful. It’s garden-variety slice and dice and brings nothing new to the table. I guess I didn’t expect it to, but after the leaps and bounds in direction he made with THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, I expected something a lot more.

But the end result isn’t abysmal. Compared to the last four true sequels, Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN ranks under HALLOWEEN 4 in quality within the Michael Myers saga. I expected to destroy it, but I can’t. It’s just not that bad.

It’s just there, unfocused and non-threatening, which may be worse than the all out hate I have for parts 5,6,7, and 8.

At least I remember those turds in some capacity, even if negative. Zombie’s film has created complete and total apathy within me and in a couple of weeks, I’ll probably not think about it all.