I love Carpenter, I probably own more of his films than anyone other director. Now, I'm not saying he's the best living director by any means (I will say he's one of the best genre filmmakers ever), but his films strike a real chord with me.
His take on horror with the original Halloween, although really just the maturation of the late Bob Clark's Black Christmas, turned the whole genre upside down (for better or worse). The original is about pure evil, not some abused boy turned awry with cliche serial killer porn. The whole point was that Michael Myers was evil, just because and that not every single person needs a bad childhood to turn psychotic. Loomis would look into his eyes and see nothing.
The fact that you see his face as an adult, that he speaks an adult, that he speaks at all really and that a good portion of the movie is devoted towards justifying his rampage with a shitty childhood makes me want to fight it. I'd like to give it a fair shake; there's taking liberties with a concept and then there's pissing all over its legacy, and from all indications, Zombie has pretty much done the latter.
Sure, it might be reasonably better than recent Halloween sequels, but it's not a sequel, nor is it a remake of Halloween: Resurrection - the bar is the original and if Zombie cannot meet it, he has failed.
As for The Devil's Rejects, I'm just not a fan because of its awful pacing. Other, older movies have done that kind of film better. I'm sure it's a thrill for anyone that hasn't seen a horror film made prior to the late 80s, but for anyone with any kind of investment in the genre, it's nothing more than another Zombie "homage" flick. At this point, he has done nothing original whatsoever in his film career.