Zombie's 'Halloween' slices too deep
If Rob Zombie is such a big horror movie buff, you'd think he'd want to avoid helming a remake right now.
Yet, here's the industrial rocker's "reimagined" version of John Carpenter's "Halloween," the granddaddy of all slasher films, joining a recent cavalcade of horror revamps which includes "The Omen," "Black Christmas," "The Hitcher," "The Wicker Man," "Pulse," "When a Stranger Calls" and two installments of "The Hills Have Eyes."
Granted, this is not a direct remake. Writer/director Zombie delves into the troubled past of serial killer Michael Myers, depicting the events which shaped him into a remorseless killer. By the time we get to the event that began Carpenter's "Halloween," Michael's murder of his teenaged sister on the title holiday, he's already racked up a few victims.
Young Michael is an introverted loner who says he likes to wear masks because "they hide my ugliness." His loving mother, Deborah (Rob's wife, Sheri Moon Zombie), strips to pay the bills. The boy contends with Deborah's drunken, verbally abusive boyfriend as well as school bullies who taunt him about his mom's line of work.
Psychologist Dr. Sam Loomis (a reliably hammy Malcolm McDowell) tells Deborah he's worried about the boy. In his expert opinion, Michael's hobby of killing animals and photographing their corpses suggests a profile that might lead to future problems.
This origin stuff is more thought out than that in last year's awful "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning," but it has a similar dulling effect. By reducing the unstoppable murder machine that audiences have come to know over the past 29 years to your standard mistreated misfit kid who sits around making papier-mache masks that look like rejected Slipknot costumes, Zombie demystifies an icon better left inhuman.
The actual "remake" part of the film fares better. Scout Taylor-Compton, in the Jamie Lee Curtis role of stalked babysitter Laurie Strode, is a genuinely agreeable heroine. Zombie knows his way around a murder sequence, too, giving the graphic (and, compared to the original, far more frequent) violence here the intimately unpleasant edge he displayed in his last film, "The Devil's Rejects." His predilections for shaky camerawork and painfully obvious classic rock hits are, unfortunately, also in full force.
Carpenter filmed his 1978 indie chiller on a $325,000 budget. The film made roughly $47 million at the domestic box office, and still ranks among the most impressive budget-to-box office ratios in history. Zombie's studio-approved "Halloween" cost about $20 million, and while it has its moments, it's too fixated on Michael Myers the man for his trademark mask to seem as frightening.
"Halloween"
Two stars out of four
Now open
Starring
Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Sam Loomis
Tyler Mane as Adult Michael Myers
Daeg Faerch as Young Michael Myers
Sheri Moon Zombie as Deborah Myers
Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie Strode
Written and directed by Rob Zombie. Produced by Malek Akkad, Andy Gould and Rob Zombie. A Dimension Films release. Rated R (strong horror violence and gore, sexuality/nudity, drug content and language). Running time: 109 minutes.