HALLOWEEN

Director: Rob Zombie

Stars: Malcolm McDowell, Scout Taylor-Compton, Tyler Mane, Daeg Faerch, Danielle Harris, Brad Dourif

Year: 2007

Rating: R

You have to give director/writer Rob Zombie credit for trying. This update/remake of the iconic John Carpenter film that introduced the world to homicidal maniac Michael Myers spends its first thirty minutes or so going into much more detail about the little boy that Michael was - and the circumstances that supposedly made him the merciless killer he became. Here, we see Michael's rather messed-up family life - his mother's a stripper, his teenaged sister is a bit of a slut, and even the only "father figure" in the house (it's never made clear whether it's Michael's real dad or a stepfather) is an oily prick who comments on the hot ass of his own daughter (stepdaughter?). We're even introduced to the new baby girl in the house, only called "Boo" here. As if Michael's living with a houseful of dysfunctions who treat him like crap (except for his mom), the kid also has to endure endless bullying at school because of his less-than-attractive looks and less-than-stellar family tree.

It all adds up to Michael (played here, as a kid, by Daeg Faerch in a very creepy performance) beating one of his worst bullies to death in some woods, then on Halloween - while is mother is at work - slaughtering his own family, with the exception of baby Boo. When Michael's mom comes home that night, to find her blood-spattered son sitting on the front porch with the baby, it's the beginning of Michael's nearly twenty years of incarceration in an institution - during which he becomes only more withdrawn and more violent. Eventually, after his mother's death, he stops speaking altogether, only continuing to make mask after mask that he uses to hide his "ugly" face - even shutting down to the point where his own long-term doctor, Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), gives up and leaves the case ... after writing his own tell-all, bestselling book about Haddonfield (Michael's hometown) and the evil it spawned.

Then, as in the original, Michael (in a ridiculously-constructed scene) is able to break out of his room - and, eventually, the sanitarium - at which time he heads back to Haddonfield (with Dr. Loomis on his tail), to reclaim baby Boo ... now a teenager named Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton), who lives in Haddonfield and has a pretty ideal life that's about to be shattered all to hell.

I caught myself actually yawning during this film - which, considering it's a horror movie with plenty of blood and violence, is a pretty strong indication of my feelings about it. After seeing a couple of his previous films, I was expecting some real, torturous gore here - but Zombie, mercifully, keeps things neat (by comparison to his previous work, anyway), and like Carpenter goes more for the suspense than the gore. Danielle Harris, a huge part of the Halloween franchise from parts four and five of the previous series, even shows up here as Annie Brackett, Laurie's best friend, in a really nice touch (though I was surprised at the nudity she had no trouble doing for the film!).

But in trying to give Michael Myers a soul, Rob Zombie also robbed the vicious killer of the reason he was so terrifying in the first place. In the original, the horror of Michael's killing his family came from the fact that here was a sweet-face, angelic little boy who no one would have ever suspected of performing such a heinous crime. In this Halloween, Rob Zombie makes Michael a textbook example of exactly the kind of kid that does grow up to be a homicidal maniac, complete with a the kid's torturing and murdering of animals even before he bumps things up a notch to people. He's humanized Michael Myers, all right - but in doing so, he's made him no longer special. No longer the frightening, malevolent, almost supernatural force that was "The Shape" in the original film(s).

It's a real letdown, as is the film. Nicely made and beautifully shot - but not the same. Not the same Michael Myers that we've all grown to know and fear. Stick with the original, which is still infinitely scarier/creepier than this one could ever hope to be. ** - Reel Mediocre