Halloween, part I

You know, I feel sorry for Rob Zombie.  Remaking Halloween, or reimagining it, as he says, was doomed to fail in both the critical and the public eye.  There are basically two ways to do a remake, both are guaranteed to anger part of the population.  Should he stick slavishly to the outline of the original, people would be asking, “what’s the point?  Why bother?”  If he does something completely new, basically borrowing the name of Halloween, people would decry him for his lack of respect for the original.  Rob Zombie was apparently not happy with just angering one crowd, so he chose a third option.  He made the first half of the film original material, but made the second half a more traditional remake of Halloween.  This seemed to piss off everyone.  Not only did he ruin the mystic of Michael Myers, Halloween’s legendary killer, but then ruined the second half by making all of the characters shrill, underdeveloped and unlikable.  It seems Rob Zombie found a way to make a lose/lose situation even worse.  The thing is, for whatever flaws it has, Rob Zombie’s Halloween does something that very few, if any, slasher films do.  It tries.  It tries to add psychological depth to the tale.  It tries to create realistic characters.  It tries to imbue its story with emotion.  It may not succeed all of the time, but this is a much better slasher film then the reviews have let on.  It isn’t great, but it isn’t the antichrist of horror films, either.  It’s biggest fault may be that it is a remake of Halloween directed by Rob Zombie. 

                Halloween drops us right into to dysfunctional Myers house on October 31^st.  There is the mother, Deborah Myers, a kind hearted stripper just trying to provide for her family.  The stepfather, Ronny, is a drunken, abusive, good for nothing lout.  There is the teenage daughter, Judith, interested only in boys and sex.  There is a little baby named Angel.  Then, there is Michael Myers, a young boy with serious emotional issues.  One Halloween, he snaps and brutally murders a school bully, Ronny, Judith and her boyfriend, leaving only his mother and baby sister alive.  Arrested and locked up in a mental hospital, under the care of Dr. Sam Loomis,  he continues to retreat further and further away from the world, until he is just a giant shell of a man.  Then fifteen years later, the night before Halloween, he escapes and heads back to his home town of Haddenfield.

                That sums up about the first fifty minutes of Rob Zombie’s Halloween.  What was given two scenes and maybe ten minutes in John Carpenter’s original has been expanded into half of the movie; and it is here that Zombie is most successful.  Given space to deviate from the original, he is able to tell his own, reasonably interesting tale.  Where the Michael Myers in the original was pure evil, without rhyme or reason, Rob Zombie’s Michael is human, very much a product of his environment.  Verbally abused by his sister and stepfather, bullied at school (and ridiculed about his mom being a stripper), Michael starts retreating inside himself, torturing small animals to make himself feel stronger.  The only two people he seems to genuinely care about, and who care about him, are his mother and baby sister; the only two he spared his wrath.  This glimpse into his life allows us to see what made Michael Myers become the serial killer that he did. 

                Following his arrest for the murders, the film follows Michael into Smith Grove’s sanitarium.  Here we get to see how Michael’s fall from reality affects those around him, particularly Dr. Loomis and his mother.  As the original film didn’t deal with Michael’s family at all, watching the continuing relationship between Michael and his mom is where Rob Zombie’s film really has a chance to shine.  Zombie is also able to put a different spin on the character of Dr. Sam Loomis to good effect.  As compared to his Ahab-like counterpart from the original, Dr. Loomis here is more kindly and compassionate.  He seems genuinely sorry that he wasn’t able to reach Michael and help him return to society.  Watching Michael slowly shutting down and Loomis’ frustration at his failure to help him adds an interesting layer to the second half of the film where Loomis is forced to hunt Michael down.

                Where the first half falls short is in depth, and this is a plague that haunts the entire movie.  We are given glimpses into Michael’s home life, but they are just that: glimpses.  The time spent at the Myers’ house is interesting, but too brief.  It’s only twenty minutes or so before Michael starts killing.  To really get inside Michael’s head, and for Rob Zombie to really bring something new to the table, more time need to be spent on developing where Michael comes from.  We don’t meet the beast until he is ready to snap.  More buildup would have made the resulting murders more powerful, and considering how vicious they are, the level of the violence feels somewhat unjustified.

                The same problem also applies to his time at the asylum.  We get little glimpses of his degeneration, but nothing more substantial.  If you want us to see how the child Michael Myers becomes serial killer Michael Myers, you actually need to give us a sustained look.  It feels like Rob Zombie didn’t trust his audience, or his material, enough to go with a completely re-imagined Halloween.  By not giving Michael’s backstory the time it need to really succeed, Zombie film isn’t as effective as it could have been; which is really a shame as the first half has some outstanding elements worthy of praise.

                The performances are generally quite good.  Hanna Hall and William Forsythe are both solid as Michael’s white trash sister and stepfather respectively. Forsythe in particular is very loathsome, although one has to wonder why any woman would stay with him.  Malcolm McDowell turns in a sympathetic performances as Dr. Sam Loomis.  There is an element of tragedy to his character as he realizes that the fifteen years he spent trying to reach Michael were a failure, both in his inability to help Michael, and the destruction that his dedication to Michael caused in his personal life.   More time exploring Loomis’ character would have been great, but even without it, McDowell’s performance still has a nice depth to it.  Daeg Faerch does a good job as the young Michael, able to play both sweet and psycho convincingly.

                The star of the first half, and the person that makes this film worth watching, is Sherri Moon-Zombie as Deborah Myers. Even with her limited screen time, she creates a heartbreaking character.  Her reaction when she realizes what Michael has turned into and her subsequent fate are the high point of the movie and truly sad to watch.

One complaint that was lobbied against this film is that it ruins the mystic of Michael Myers.  Don’t buy into that line of crap.  This isn’t an expansion of John Carpenter’s original Halloween.  It isn’t a replacement for the original.  It is a completely different film.  This isn’t John Carpenter’s Michael Myers.  If you want the Myers that is purely and simply evil, watch the original.  Only watch Rob Zombie’s Halloween if you are to accept it on its own merits.  Interestingly enough, if you want to see the film that ruined the mystery surrounding Michael Myers, watch the original Halloween 2 (1981), written and produced by John Carpenter himself.  It is nothing more than a Friday the 13^th clone, which is funny, since Friday the 13^th was a Halloween clone.  It takes the smart, resourceful characters from the first film, and makes them idiots.  It adds a bunch of new morons to kill, tons of cheap gore, and turns Michael from the mysterious evil prankster who strikes without rhyme or reason into a boy trying to kill his sister.  The plot twist that Laurie was Michael’s sister was so lame that Carpenter himself admits that idea was the combination of writer’s block and heavy drinking.

It should be said that lack of depth in the first half is actually more of a frustration then a flaw.  Few, if any, slasher films spend the whole first half of the film trying to give its killer a proper backstory.  What is here is very good, but it could have been great.  When compared to most other films in this genre, though, this is quite a bit of development. 

                Two more quick issues with the first half. First: the use of John Carpenter’s Halloween theme is intrusive and doesn’t fit well.  I loved hearing the music again, but where placed where it is, it comes off as more of a distraction than anything else.

                Second: Michael escaping the asylum because two white trash, redneck security guards decide to rape a female inmate in his room just feels in poor taste.  Rob Zombie loves to throw these types of characters into his films, all his films take place in the world of white trash, but here it is just needlessly disgusting.  If he is trying to add some sympathy to Michael by having him kill these two loathsome people, that’s fine.  But Zombie completely negates that by having Michael brutally kill the one security guard that had been good to him for the last fifteen years.  As a result, the scene comes off as needlessly dirty.

                Although flawed, the scenes at the Myers’ house, and between Michael and Loomis at the asylum, aided some good performances, make the first half of Halloween ultimately successful.  It offers far more development then most slasher films ever do.  It’s just that it could have been so much better. 

                The second half is, unfortunately, more problematic than the first.  This is also where they pay the price for spending the first half of the film on backstory.  They now have almost the entire first film to remake and only half a movie to do it.

                This half has Michael Myers stalking Haddonfield looking to reunite with his sister, Angel, now named Laurie Strode, and along his way he kills anyone that crosses his path.  Laurie and her friends Annie and Lynda spend the night babysitting, and doing other teenage activities.  Dr. Loomis arrives in Haddonfield to try and stop Michael and enlists the help of Sheriff Brackett (also Annie’s father) to do so.

                Here is what works in the second half of the movie.  By introducing Michael’s baby sister in the very beginning of the movie, the plot works much better then when it was used as deus ex desperation in the original Halloween 2.  It feels much more an organic part of the story.  The scenes where Sheriff Lee Brackett, nicely played by Brad Dourif, explains how Angel Myers ended up Laurie Strode are among the better in the second half of the film.  This material also gives Dourif a chance to create a very human character, and be the one character unique to second half of the film to actually feel somewhat fleshed out.

                Dr. Loomis character and his relationship with Michael is played out in an interesting way.  Having shown that Loomis is very fond of Michael adds a sadness to their confrontations, where Loomis is not only has to face someone he cares a great deal about, but his failure to help him as well.  Malcolm McDowell plays his scenes very well, and, due to his development in the first half, comes off strong enough to make you forget his counterpart from the original for the duration of the film (if you give him a chance, anyway).

                Tyler Mane makes for a good Michael Myers.  With the exception of Nick Castle in the original Halloween, all the actors who played Michael just felt like some guy walking around in a mask.  Mane is the first other actor to actually feel like he is playing a character.  All he is given to act with are his walk and his eyes.  With those, he ably portrays rage, sadness and even manages to elicit some sympathy from the audience.  That last one is a first for Michael Myers.

                Using “Mr. Sandman” in the soundtrack was also a nice touch, and a reference to one of the few effective moments from the original Halloween 2.  It is a nice tip-of-the-hat to the older film without being too intrusive and taking the viewer out of the movie.

                Now, here is what doesn’t work.  First and foremost, this is a remake of Halloween, and while the changes they made to the first half were interesting, the characters in the latter half of the film, specifically Laurie, Annie and Lynda, get shortchanged.  A great many moments are either direct remakes of scenes from the original, or they follow them closely enough so a real sense of déjà vu sets in.  The dialogue is very similar.  The same musical cues are used.  During these scenes, it feels like Rob Zombie is trying to play John Carpenter.  While the first half tried to create its own reality, the second half seems satisfied with just trying to copy.  That has several disadvantages.  The characters introduced in this half of the film (save for Sheriff Brackett) aren’t given enough time to become anything memorable.  This is no fault of the actors (Scott Taylor-Compton and Danielle Harris both give terrific performances in the sequel), but they all feel like nothing more than victims here.  Scott Taylor-Compton’s Laurie Strode doesn’t get the chance to become the worthy advisory to Michael Myers that Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie does in the original.  Scott does the best she can with the part, and does do a good job during her protracted battle with Myers, but she isn’t the memorable heroine the movie needs her to be. 

The thing that sets Laurie, Annie and Lynda apart from their original counterparts, more than anything else, is their vulgarity.  The characters come off vulgar, shrill and unlikable, and then they get attacked.  This is especially true of Linda and Annie.  This is Rob Zombie’s white trash mentality shining through again.  Do high school girls really refer to each other as slut?  All the time?  They do in Rob Zombie’s world.  The time spent with the characters isn’t enough for them to overcome their vulgarity and become real people.  The biggest impressions Lynda and Annie make, again no fault of the actors, is in their nude scenes.  Lynda getting strangled while completely nude and Annie running around topless while getting beaten by Myers are all you will remember of those two characters in this film.

That nudity becomes another problem as it is directly related to the violence.  The violence feels a little exploitive.  The problem isn’t that they are naked per say, but when paired with graphic violence, it makes the viewer feel uncomfortable, and not in a good way, if there is such a thing.  Violence like that can be painful to watch in a way that enhances the film by making you really feel for the characters, yet Halloween is still just a slasher film and never quite earns that right to use that violence. 

This film is also missing the element of universality from the original Halloween.  While the Haddonfield in the original could have been any town in America, and Michael Myers could have been stalking down your street, in Rob Zombie’s vision, it is Rob Zombie’s Haddonfield, more vulgar and trashy.  That would be fine if this section wasn’t such a direct remake of the original, but it is.  It takes away something precious from the original, and replaces it with something that makes the film harder to relate to.

If there is one overlaying problem to the second half of Halloween, and therefore a problem with the payoff to the whole film, is that it just isn’t scary.  The violence has no buildup.  It happens suddenly, and then it is over.  They never build any suspense.  The original Halloween (I don’t like to keep comparing Rob Zombie’s film to John Carpenter’s original, but few modern films have done a suspenseful buildup as well as the original), Michael Myers would spend what felt like forever stalking his victims, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats waiting for him to strike.  This is the one problem the film can’t get over.  Most slasher films have lackluster characters.  Even the original Halloween isn’t an amazing character study by any means.  The slight element of exploitation could be forgiven if this film had a merciless suspenseful payoff, but it doesn’t.  You are never on the edge of your seat.  Laurie’s final battle with Michael, well done in-and-of itself, lacks the bite of better slasher films (of which the original Halloween is the pinnacle) because it doesn’t feel like something the whole film was building to.

Although it is always best to view a film as its own and not in comparison to another, that is hard to do when a film is a remake.  Zombie succeeds in the first half of the film to put his own stamp on things, and that makes it easy to view the film on its own terms.  The second half, however, being more-or-less a direct remake of the original, forces a comparison.  The flaws in Zombie’s Halloween are made all that more apparent as a result.  A more divergent take on the material would have forced less of a comparison and made for a stronger film on its own.  

Ultimately, that’s what sinks Rob Zombie’s Halloween; his refusal to go with a completely re-imagined story.  Maybe he felt obligated to tell the same exact story.  Maybe he didn’t feel his material was strong enough to support something totally different from the original, or that the audience wouldn’t support him if he did (and kudos to Mr. Zombie if his worry was that people wouldn’t support a version of Halloween that was completely his own.  It turned out he was right.  Read on to find out why).  If this review feels more negative than the opening paragraph implied it would be, it is because there is obvious potential here for the film to be something special.  It was well cast, there are some terrific scenes and the idea of creating a new Michael Myers is welcome after so many terrible sequels to the 1978 original.  The character of Deborah Myers is a better character then most slasher films ever see, and alone makes the movie worth seeing.  Ultimately, there is still enough good here, especially in the first half, to warrant a recommendation to those who are willing to forgive this being a remake of Halloween.

Rating **1/2 (out of *****)