Halloween

I'm an indie filmmaker, and Carpenter's "Halloween" is one of my pillars of the film-making faith. I was not at all happy when I heard there was going to be a remake.

Zombie's "House of 1,000 Corpses" was kind of decent, and I loved "The Devil's Rejects," so I was looking for a remake that butchered the original but was at least interesting to watch, which is more or less what I got.

In RZ fashion, it was intense at times, and beneath the un-needed profanity, blood, and nudity there was a captivating story, but there was ZERO SUSPENSE, and ABSOLUTELY NO REAL SCARES. As soon as the movie ended I told my friends, "This should've been called 'Michael Myers,' not 'Halloween.' Up until Halloween night of 1995 (or whenever the present was) it was an interesting and intense story, then it fell apart. Halloween night came way too fast, and there was not nearly enough time to get to know the girls (especially Laurie), and no real reason to care about them. I actually thought as I was watching it, "Wow, it's night already, how'd that happen?" Michael stalking Laurie while waiting for night to fall was sorely missed, and the lack of it took away the suspense that made the night terrifying... which is why this movie was not at all scary.

So, my $0.02, it should've been called "Michael Myers," not "Halloween." It was interesting until Lynda and Bob all of a sudden are at the Myer's house. Had there been more building to the end (Halloween night) it may have been more effective, but as it was it seemed unconnected and rushed, like RZ said, "I got this great back story on Michael Myers... oh, crap, I gotta remake the original film... here..." And, of course, it wasn't the least bit scary. It was intense, Judith's death was a little hard to watch, but there's a HUGE GAPING DIFFERENCE between something being scary due to suspense and something making you feel uncomfortable because it is intense, RZ didn't even come close to accomplishing the former.

Definitely not Carpenter's "Halloween," not a bad movie, not a scary movie, but overall an interesting movie... hopefully RZ drops some cut scenes to better tie the end into the rest of the film when it comes out on DVD.

I can't give it more than 5-stars because of how I feel about remakes, so on a remake scale of 1-5 I give it a 4, had the ending better fit into what came before it I would give it a 5... had it been remotely scary I'd break my own rule and add on another star.

Every story is worth telling, it's just how you tell it - Me. Have Fun!

One of the only reasons this movie is hated so much is because Rob Zombie chose to remake it. Everybody said, "the movie should have never been remade, it was fine the way it was." I agree. But he was not just remaking it, Rob Zombie also made a back story for about a good 40 minutes and explained more about how Michael went wrong. And Rob Zombie said he did not want this to be like John Carpenters HALLOWEEN. He wanted it to be his own vision of this movie as if Carpenters never existed. Now some things I liked about this movie was, First of all, the death scenes were great. 2nd, it actually portrayed how real teenagers act today. 3rd, this was a great plot and showed how Michaels Life was and how he became so evil. And third, for once in a lifetime, this Michael Myers actually scared me more than the Halloween movies usually do. This movie has some good acting and killing scenes, and a great unexpected ending. Overall, I give Rob Zombies HALLOWEEN, a 7/10, or a 3.5/5.

This movies takes a different approach to what makes Michael Myers terrifying. In the past his inhuman mas murders were shocking because of the absolute lack of emotion and more machine like manner in which things occur. Zombie offers audiences a background on myers. Where before the terror came in the lack of explanation, Zombie creates terror by showing how empty and how reasonless he was at 10 years old.

An interesting note about the movie is after Michael at 10 you never see his face. This part may not be different from standard Halloween movies, but unlike those, in this film you have already seen Michael's face as a boy. This then leaves the audience placing the boys face beneath the mask of the 30 year old monster making the idea of these overly brutal killings more difficult to chalk up to another death in a slasher flick. The movie gives less focus to Lori Strode and much more focus on Michael and his progressions from 10 to 30.

Zombie makes the smart call of not completely taking his own new plot line, but also not creating an exact carbon copy, leaving in specific scenes and details but still skipping over some of the more memorable ones. No, it is not John Carpenter's movie remastered, but then if you want that just run it through some filters to make his movie look new. Instead, this movie feels like a Zombie movie but in all the right ways. Best Halloween in a very long time.

This is ok if you've not actually seen the original, but if you have? Turn around and find that version to watch.

Maybe do it in either case, really.

The new structure adds in more of Michael's back story, but that's to the detriment of tension. By the time we actually get to Laurie's story, I was ready to turn it off.

Not the actors' faults, although who could compete with the original cast? Not the music or videography--both sufficiently atmospheric.

Just a script that plods on a story that's already a classic.

In sum, this version? An average job.

Like many of the horror fans out there I went through my phase of being angry and disgusted that they would remake Halloween and especially that Rob Zombie would be the director to do it. This eventually wore off and I came to terms with it. I am a fan of Rob Zombie and as it got nearer to the release date I came to believe that I would probably enjoy the movie, although I figured it still wouldn't compare to the original. Hell, I was even pretty excited to go see it (It's rare these days that we get to see horror films out of Hollywood made by people who actually give a sh*t about the genre, which is why I like Zombie even though I don't find him to be a genius director or anything like that.)

Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed with what I saw. For the most part, the first half of the movie was interesting and held my attention but once it became night time, the whole film went downhill. Essentially, like many "slasher movies" today, the last 30 minutes or so of the film turned into a string of boring chase sequences. Don't get me wrong, chase sequences are essential to these kinds of movies, but they can't carry a movie for half an hour.

It seemed to me that one of the main problems was that Zombie seemed to drop the ball when Michael Myers completely turns into a silent killer. His talent as a writer is in creating interesting characters (i.e. house of 1000 corpses & the devil's rejects), but with no personality left in his killer, the script and other characters become boring. Rob Zombie is not a suspense director and the attempts he made at it during this film were pretty lame. It wasn't scary and none of the "jump scares" worked. This isn't to say that he is a bad filmmaker, he just seems to be out of his element with this movie.

Although I thought the back story was decent and entertaining enough, I still tend to find Michael Myers a more interesting character with less back story and more mystery like in the original.

I appreciate the effort put into the movie and I have given it a rating of 5 because I still think it was probably better than what they would have made with a different writer and director, but this movie just didn't work for me.

Luckily I got to see this at a drive-in theater along with the original Halloween and Grindhouse, so the night was still pretty great.