When they first announced they were going to remake Halloween, I'll be completely honest with you -- I was angry. How dare they remake a horror classic! Mind you, this was a complete knee-jerk reaction on my part because by this time, why not ,they were remaking every other horror classic! It's just I like the first film so damned much, I just didn't see a point to doing this film. Rob Zombie was doing it and it seemed though that everyone else was on board with it. I thought they all were afterwards as well, as there was a part 2 which J-Man reviewed a few months back on this very website. Needless to say, I may have been mistaken considering it's on this list now...but then again let's delve into this a tiny bit deeper...
I only saw the work print of this film, I guess you could call it the director's cut? I'm not sure, but from what I saw, yeah, I didn't like it. The first part was just pure backstory, trying to justify why Michael Myers turned out to be a knife-toting psychopath. Umm...wasn't it that he was just purely and simply evil? Must everything be explained ad nauseum? Why did I go bald? Well, you see Stephenstein, there are hair follicles and stuff happens sometimes...yeah, we don't need explanations for everything, especially considering we had a perfectly good reason in the first place. The second half was like Halloween's greatest hits, just with more annoying people.
That being said, I have come to understand that Rob Zombie himself is a big fan of the original Halloween (not to mention horror movies in general...House of 1,000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects, anyone?) and the wanted to pay a sort of homage to the original. Now, whether or not he should have bothered with remaking it instead of making a part 9 and just making it really well, we could talk about that all day, but the point is, based on the second half and how Michael Myers is treated as a sort of anti-hero, I can believe he is a big fan of the original, if not the iconic killer of the series. If he was going out with a smart-assed attitude that he would make a better Halloween than the original, (something I doubt anyone could do), than we may have a problem, Houston. However, based on the fact he just really wanted to show his love for the original (as well as pander to today's audience who clearly all have ADD), then how can the film be hated?
Okay, so it wasn't as good as the original. Did you think it would be? Halloween is a classic, one of the first if not the first slasher film and to this day, it still gets me. When the kid is running and bumps into Michael and you get that sound cue? Awesome. When he's chasing Laurie across the street and you have that unbelievably amazing soundtrack? It doesn't get better than that, ladies and gentlemen. You could say that I'm letting Zombie off the hook for Halloween while I blasted Singer for Superman Returns, but it's different. Zombie loves Halloween and you can kind of see it, at least in the work print, which I consider the director's cut. Singer didn't show any love for Superman in Superman Returns. That enough is good enough for me to say this movie should not be on the hated list.
Rating: Worth the hate? No, but it should have been part 9 instead of a remake. That may have avoided some of the hate, at least.
- Stephenstein
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