2008 Woodie Awards
Zombie's 'Halloween' a bloody mess (or just a mess)
Doug Graham, Editor in Chief
Issue date: 9/6/07 Section: After Hours
- Page 1 of 1
I don't know what to say about Rob Zombie's "Halloween," except that it's not a very good movie.
Zombie won over a lot of people - gorehounds and critics alike - with his rather brilliant "The Devil's Rejects." A confidently decadent, focused film, "The Devil's Rejects" was everything "Halloween" is not.
Zombie's new picture, a confused mess of a remake, has its high points, but they're few and far between.
But it's not for lack of effort. Zombie is good at staging fright scenes and amping intensity, and when hulking psychopath Michael Meyers (pro wrestler Tyler Mane) finally gets to offing folks, he does it with more gusto than ever. During these scenes we see what could have been if Zombie was as good at writing dialogue as he is at filming mayhem.
However, far too much of this remake - around an hour - is devoted to Michael's troubled upbringing. Michael's stepfather (an overacting William Forsythe) is among the worst caricatured abusive parents ever committed to film, while his mom (acting-challenged Sheri Moon-Zombie), while nice, is a stripper, which naturally creates some tension at school.
After Michael savagely beats little Juni from "Spy Kids" and then kills half of his own family, he gets sent off to the psych ward for, presumably, the rest of his days. There he meets Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), who delivers his dialogue about as well as Zombie wrote it.
Fifteen years and 200 pounds of muscle later, Michael escapes. And he must have seen the original "Halloween" because he re-creates the entire movie in the space of half an hour.
Fanboys of John Carpenter's original "Halloween" were quick to register their disgust on the Internet upon hearing Zombie was hired to write and direct a redux. Their cries grew louder as more news emerged: Zombie had cast a roided-up bodybuilder as Michael; Zombie was going to demystify "the shape;" Zombie was going to cast aside the original's suspense in favor of more gore.
All of these changes would have been fine in a more effective movie, but this is a stinker. If Zombie wanted to make Michael a more sympathetic character (indeed, he is the protagonist for the film's first half), he should have written him better dialogue and cast better actors to tell his story. As it is, the audience is bored for the first half of the movie and exasperated for the second.
And what did Zombie want us to think about Michael anyway? He gives him a reason to be a killer and then turns him into a mindless animal. A work print of the film that surfaced on the Internet showed a much more sympathetic slasher, but that version lacked any kind of tension.
The new version's ending feels more like Zombie wanted to remake "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
What are we to make of this mess? What are we supposed to get out of it?
The movie offers no answers. And what's worse, I doubt Zombie could, either.
Zombie won over a lot of people - gorehounds and critics alike - with his rather brilliant "The Devil's Rejects." A confidently decadent, focused film, "The Devil's Rejects" was everything "Halloween" is not.
Zombie's new picture, a confused mess of a remake, has its high points, but they're few and far between.
But it's not for lack of effort. Zombie is good at staging fright scenes and amping intensity, and when hulking psychopath Michael Meyers (pro wrestler Tyler Mane) finally gets to offing folks, he does it with more gusto than ever. During these scenes we see what could have been if Zombie was as good at writing dialogue as he is at filming mayhem.
However, far too much of this remake - around an hour - is devoted to Michael's troubled upbringing. Michael's stepfather (an overacting William Forsythe) is among the worst caricatured abusive parents ever committed to film, while his mom (acting-challenged Sheri Moon-Zombie), while nice, is a stripper, which naturally creates some tension at school.
After Michael savagely beats little Juni from "Spy Kids" and then kills half of his own family, he gets sent off to the psych ward for, presumably, the rest of his days. There he meets Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), who delivers his dialogue about as well as Zombie wrote it.
Fifteen years and 200 pounds of muscle later, Michael escapes. And he must have seen the original "Halloween" because he re-creates the entire movie in the space of half an hour.
Fanboys of John Carpenter's original "Halloween" were quick to register their disgust on the Internet upon hearing Zombie was hired to write and direct a redux. Their cries grew louder as more news emerged: Zombie had cast a roided-up bodybuilder as Michael; Zombie was going to demystify "the shape;" Zombie was going to cast aside the original's suspense in favor of more gore.
All of these changes would have been fine in a more effective movie, but this is a stinker. If Zombie wanted to make Michael a more sympathetic character (indeed, he is the protagonist for the film's first half), he should have written him better dialogue and cast better actors to tell his story. As it is, the audience is bored for the first half of the movie and exasperated for the second.
And what did Zombie want us to think about Michael anyway? He gives him a reason to be a killer and then turns him into a mindless animal. A work print of the film that surfaced on the Internet showed a much more sympathetic slasher, but that version lacked any kind of tension.
The new version's ending feels more like Zombie wanted to remake "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
What are we to make of this mess? What are we supposed to get out of it?
The movie offers no answers. And what's worse, I doubt Zombie could, either.
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