Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Sheri Moon Zombie, Tyler Mane, Scout Taylor-Compton, Brad Dourif, Danielle Harris, William Forsythe

Category: Horror

With all due respect to Psycho, which Halloween tried to emulate, Halloween is just so much better than any other horror film ever produced. I realize this is not an empirical statement, but the quality of Halloween and the influence it has over a plethora of horror films is. There is simply no getting around it, Halloween is the best of the best. I say this because for Zombie to want to remake the pinnacle of horror takes a lot of balls and it had better of been a faithful retelling of the story or it won’t work.

This film sadly doesn’t work. In fact, it stinks.

Rob Zombie either has no understanding at all of the Michael Myers character, or he just doesn’t care. Perhaps he needed a hit after his first two films were well received by the critics, surprisingly, but did little business at the box office. Or perhaps he thought all of today’s jilted youth would flock to it and somehow relate to the Myers character.

Let’s revisit the original 1978 Halloween. The film presents us with a child who, for no apparent reason at all, stabs his sister to death. As Dr. Loomis tells us, there is no rhyme, no reason and no understanding behind his eyes. He seems like he is a normal kid with a nuclear family who just takes a large knife and slaughters his sister on Halloween night. It is simply evil that motivates him. This idea that an incarnation of evil could just snap is what made the film so FRIGHTENING. He spends the next fifteen years in an institution just waiting. He doesn’t speak or move or show an intelligent signs of life or even a modicum or human understanding. He just waits for Halloween night and then guided by evil, he escapes.

IT, Michael Myers escapes Smith’s Grove and heads to Haddonfield and goes after his only remaining family member. Why? Who knows. It is never really explained. But we are left with is pure and unadulterated evil, on a mission of death.

Dr. Sam Loomis was the only person who knew this. No one else believed him or took heed to his warnings. They just left Loomis and his pet patient alone. Loomis’ world has become one that is spent making sure that Myers never leaves Smith’s Grove. It drives him almost to the brink of insanity. He wants to make sure that Myers is never let out of the institute.

These themes are tantamount to what made Halloween such a brilliant piece of film making. I don’t think another movie will ever capture the feeling of evil and doubt and fear quite like Halloween.

When you look at Zombie’s white trash version, the first five minutes of the film are like a slap in the face and it makes you cringe.

Zombie literally slaps you in the face and decides to give us a reason as to why Myers is the way he is. And what do you think that is? He is from a white trash, trailer park family. The evil and disgusting step-father, the stripper mother and the whorish sister. The family speak like drunken sailors and go on about things that just don’t resonate. And then of course you get Myers being bullied at school. So we have the personification of evil being evil because his step father is a jerk and kids beat him up. Are you kidding me?

So basically Michael Myers goes from a character that represents complete evil and lack of humanity, to a tortured nutcase that snaps. When in the original, he was just E-VIL.

What is also terrible in the film is the writing and the dialogue of every character. Where Carpenter and Debra Hill shared the writing duties in the original, Zombie does it all here and his juvenile rantings of the female characters in here is just wrong and even his kindergarten like interpretation of Loomis is terrible. Malcolm McDowell is fine as the good doctor, but Zombie betrays him with psyche 101 babblings of what he thinks Loomis would say.

What makes it that much more frustrating is that Zombie says he loves films like Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And instead of emulating what made those so effective, he dumped all over the Halloween legacy. This might have been a decent horror film, but it is not a Halloween film. He doesn’t understand Halloween, Myers, Loomis or any of Carpenter’s brilliance. He hacks away at it for the Facebook generation and it is a nauseating experience.

This movie resembles more of a rock video than it does an iconic horror film. And that is sad. Even worse is kids who haven’t seen the original might actually like this repulsive version.

This is the worst horror remake ever, and that includes Psycho.