“Next time I see that Myers pussy, he’s dead!” For fans of the Halloween franchise this, thankfully, is not the truth. Michael Myers is still alive and, well, mutilating promiscuous, drug-using teens like the good old days, thanks to Rob Zombie.
Rob Zombie’s previous movies, House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, were poorly made, poorly written and left little to be desired in terms of future works of the director who probably should have stuck with music. His remake of the 1978 classic slasher flick Halloween is a redeeming piece of cinematic art.
While it does not follow the precise storyline of the original, the basic idea is there. Michael Myers is essentially evil incarnate. Zombie’s take on the mass murderer made famous by John Carpenter is much more interesting and is ultimately more unsettling. It allows Myers the human aspect that was never really introduced in the original films. This happens to be because the remake is more of a character study psychological thriller than it is a flat out horror movie.
While this is Rob Zombie’s best film, one really cannot deny the charm of the original Halloween. The original was perfectly cast. It was filmed in just the right way to build up the proper atmosphere. John Carpenter, in his filming, is a flat out genius. Myers in the 1978 version was a silent angel of death. Half the film was done through the eyes of this indestructible psychopath. The rest was done with a sense of terrifying foreboding that is rivaled in few horror movies in general. The music had the right use of extreme high tones and extreme low tones. Light and dark interacted flawlessly.
That being said, yes there are flaws with the remake. The casting was off for the two biggest and most influential characters in the Halloween franchise, Laurie Strode and Doctor Samuel Loomis. Musically, they did not stick to the same extremes. They brought it closer to the mid-range tones of a piano. Sometimes when going through the main theme they put a techno style club drumbeat to it. Also, most of the scenes where a first person perspective would have worked best were done in third person.
Part of the reason why the first Halloween was as good and frightening as it was happened to be because some of the most important scenes, which were done in first person, did not have the normal degree of separation that would give that comfort zone, no matter what you are watching. Rather than seeing the killer on screen, you saw it from the eyes of the killer. So rather than witnessing it, the psychological effect is supposed to be that you did the killing. In those scenes, you, the audience, were Michael Myers.
Despite the flaws within the direction, Rob Zombie’s Halloween was actually a good horror movie that did the original justice. It was worth the money to see in the theaters and will be well worth the money to see yet again when it comes out on DVD.