LeaV

First off, let me get this out of the way. Halloween is my favorite horror movie of all time (including all of the horrible and not so horrible Halloween movies that followed). Michael Myers is definitely the horror figure that I find most intriguing in that to me the brilliance of this slasher, hacker horror movie character was his symbolism of pure evil. Sometimes, you don't need or you shouldn't have an explanation for a character like this. Sometimes, that's what makes a horror movie character so iconic and so unbelievably terrifying. You can't explain why or how; you don't know where or when; but bodies are dropping every time you turn around without rhyme or reason; and how horrifying is that? Is that what pure evil is? This is my impression of what John Carpenter did with the movie Halloween and all that followed; and the Michael Myers character he created was something so simplistic and so brutally evil without explanation that it worked in scaring the daylights out of you and thus made this a classic horror movie. So, when I learned that Rob Zombie was going to remake Halloween, I was skeptical but a little excited. After all, I was a big fan of Rob's earlier work with the gritty and gruesome House of 1000 Corpses and even more of a fan of his next film The Devil's Rejects which actually ranks up there as one of my all-time favorite horror movies with it's deep-fried, sticky, slimy spin. So, one of my newly favorite horror directors was going to remake my favorite horror movie of all time. Long story short, I was deeply disappointed with Rob's Halloween remake. So, then, why would I go to see Rob's next remake of Halloween 2? Wishful thinking? It's a good question that I'm still trying to figure out myself.

Saying that this remake was a valiant effort is probably the nicest thing I can say at this point. My biggest problem with remaking this movie has to do with the fact that the whole point of the film has been lost and abandoned. The only thing intact with regard to the original Halloween 2 film are the characters and even they've been bastardized. The whole idea of Michael being this mindless killing machine was tossed out in Rob's "reimaging" to try and tell us why Michael is the way he is and why he's doing what he's doing. To that I say, "knock it off," because when you go and try and spoon feed us the motives and motivations for Michael Myers, you lose the scariness and the horror of the original films and this character in particular. He's a mindless killing machine and that's scary. A dude who misses his mommy and dreams of her all in white with a pretty white horse is not so scary. These dream sequences in Rob's remake and the back story he wants to cram down our throats is like the filling in a Twinkie. I don't know what it is or why it's in there, but I know it's bad, and I shouldn't eat it, but I do, and now I'll probably get cancer. You see Rob, when you add all this "reimaged" filler, you give people cancer.

Let me just reiterate...the original character of Michael Myers is an emotionless, mindless, killing machine. He exists to destroy. He is hell bent on destroying his sister Laurie for whatever reason, plot be damned. There is no grey area with Michael and what his character represented. Evil is evil, end of story. That's why it's so scary. That's why Michael was scary. We don't need to have everything in the world explained to us. However, in Zombie's new vision for Michael in this remake, he chose to fill Michael with lots of emotion and to give him a face (the mask does come off in this film) which defeats the purpose and the original intent of the character of Michael in the original films. The outcome is that instead of the horrifying, faceless, and mindless killing machine in which humans are just perceived as things that all Michael needs to do is stab, slash, choke, or toss until they stop squirming around; now, Michael is a sad, little boy who is angry and misses his mom (and needs a good shave). Instead of being shocked and terrified of this character of Michael Myers, all I wanted to do after seeing this new vision of Michael is just give him a tub full of Prozac and a hug. How scary is that?

However, it's not just Michael Myers' character that is changed to completely take this remake in a whole different direction away from the original films, it's also the characters of Dr. Loomis and Laurie. When you have a character as evil as Michael, you need to have a character in the story that counterbalances this evil with good, right? Dr. Loomis tried to protect society from evil. He tried to shield the world from the fact that evil existed in a very tangible form in Michael Myers. He would risk his life to protect innocent people from ever crossing the path of Michael. But, he realized his shortcomings as a human being. He realized there was no way to be completely safe from evil, but he forged on trying to warn us of the impending doom Michael was about to unleash; and we, silly unfazed human beings that we are, looked at Dr. Loomis like he was a homeless guy on a street corner holding up a sign that boldly stated, "The End is Nigh," and thus the carnage ensued. The Dr. Loomis of this remake was a manipulative prick who was only focused on making money off the plights of those who perished at the hands of Michael Myers. Again, a serious shortcoming of the movie. You can't have a horror movie, especially a horror movie like Halloween with Michael Myers, without having some character who is the exact opposite of evil or else...how completely depressing. You in some ways by doing this actually make Michael turn out to be the victim and the most sympathetic character in the movie. I don't' want to have to feel sorry for the guy who just hacked up my best friend. I won't even go into how the character of Laurie was just turned into a whiny, partying punk rocker girl. I could spend hours and hours on that travesty alone.

So, here's my dilemma. As far as this remake is concerned, I hated it. Call me a fan girl if you want, but I know that (although redundant) remakes of classic horror movies can be done well with directors injecting their own spin on the story without losing the essence of the original. I was impressed (although not overly excited) about the remakes of horror movies like Last House On the Left and Dawn of the Dead and even the remaking of Ju-on (the Grudge) or Ringu (The Ring) which were not-too-shabby efforts. However, in remaking a horror classic, especially remaking a horror classic with such an iconic horror figure as Michael Myers, when you decide to completely and totally deviate from the original story and put your own crazy spin on the film, it almost seems like you want to make your own horror film but yet want to bank on bringing people into the theater by way of saying it's Halloween 2 with Michael Myers. I appreciate Rob's effort, but I think he tried too hard to concentrate on both a plot and the characterization and development of Michael Myers; and it just created this confusing, mish-mash of Rob's cartoon horror images and completely lost the whole idea of Michael Myers and the story in the process. You see because to me, Michael as the character is the plot of this story, and that story being that evil exists and it can't be stopped...even if you try to kill it with fire which Dr. Loomis tried to do in the original Halloween 2 movie. If Rob would have taken out the Halloween references, created his own maniacal killer and back-story, I think this would have been a cool horror movie which focused on how a homicidal maniac comes to be and the bizarre rationalizations that homicidal killer makes and his feelings. I know Rob's got a great horror movie in him again, and I'm waiting patiently for that movie to come; but until then, I may have to be disappointed once again with the fact that there will be a third remake next summer (different director) that happens to be in 3-D. Oh the humanity.

Verdict: If you've got nothing better to do on the weekend and don't mind wasting $11 (popcorn and drink not included) and 1-½ hours of your life, I guess you could go see this remake. However, we're in a recession I guess; so, you'd be better off just saving your money.