As the release date of Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 (H2) approaches, I will review his reimagining of the horror classic, Halloween from 2007. Be warned, this review is full of spoilers. So skip to the Recommendation section at the bottom if you want to stay spoiler-free.
I make recommendations of films on the following scale: Skip It, Rent It, Buy It.
Plot, Characters, Comparison with Original Franchise
Rob Zombie's Halloween is a brutal, troubling film. It's not really as suspenseful as John Carpenter's 1978 original and it's not really a slasher film like the series of sequels that followed. It's really more of a tragedy with no hero to root for.
Zombie's Halloween assumes the audience knows the basic back story and chooses to retell the tale this time from the point of view of the killer — the infamous Michael Myers. Fans of the franchise know he killed his sister, was institutionalized and treated by a psychiatrist (Dr. Loomis) who comes to the conclusion that he is evil incarnate, he escapes and terrorizes young women in his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois. Most of that is in place here but a considerable amount of time is now devoted to Michael at that young age and through the first years of his treatment following the murders.
Zombie's take on this franchise is indeed his own. In Carpenter's version, we know nothing about Michael and that makes him very frightening. Zombie chooses to introduce a vastly different origin story for Michael than what was assumed in the original. His family is rooted in baseness and dysfunction conceptualized in a very disturbing manner from set dressing to performance. It's a difficult thing to watch and swallow. Michael's mother, played by Sheri Moon-Zombie, is a stripper struggling to raise him, his tramp-in-training older teenage sister, and a baby. Along for the ride is a deadbeat, loser, foul-mouthed, guy-of-the-month type (played by William Forsythe) whose sole purpose is to spew hate at everyone in the house. Michael (played by the talented and very creepy Daeg Faerch) is disturbed and scary just in his own right before his rampage begins. (It is implied and later revealed that he has a habit of torturing and killing pets.) His school life isn't much of a relief. He's bullied, targeted by the school principle, and even referred to counseling (a great way of introducing the Dr. Loomis character early in the story).
Early, Zombie hits us with a particularly disturbing sequence where Michael finally takes his stand/revenge against the school bully and beats him to death with a large branch mere hours before trick-or-treating. Zombie doesn't intend to scare us with this kill; he intends to shock us with every bone-crunching blow in order to establish just how "bad" Michael is when he wants to be. What happens next is an expansion of the original story's murder of the sister. Michael systematically and mercilessly kills everyone in the house. First is Forsythe's deplorable character, second is his sister's boyfriend (from whom he acquires the trademark mask), and lastly is his sister. He ends by removing the mask and playing with the baby sister while waiting for his mother to come home from stripping and discover the carnage.
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