Halloween (Zombie, 2007) - 6/10
Fantastic direction. Great action. Mediocre casting. Bad acting. Terrible writing. From best to worst, that is Rob Zombie's Halloween in a nutshell. I found more to like than to hate, based on my passing score, but there are a ton of major flaws with the film, amidst several rather inspired other things.
Starting with the negatives, the writing is awful. In 1000 Corpses and especially The Devil's Rejects, Zombie's white trash characters and dialogue fit perfectly, and even added to the charm. Same with the incessant gore and nudity. In Halloween, those elements couldn't be a worse fit. I almost wanted to walk out after the opening 10 minutes. The trailer park trash dialogue and vulgarity of everything was a big turn off. Same with the gratuitous sex scenes (although all three girls had very nice assets to show off) and abundance of gore. The original film worked so well because it played on the implication of terror, not directly showing it. Same goes for adding the backstory to Michael Myers. His character worked so well in the original film because he was just pure evil. No stereotypical bad childhood garbage, just pure evil. The more you try and delve into the motives of someone like Myers, the more you destroy his mythos.
The cast and their performances are the source of more headaches. The casting was just bad in the first place. I understand that Zombie has a stable of actors he likes working with, but that doesn't mean he needed to shoehorn every cast member of The Devil's Rejects into a role. Fact of the matter is, most of them aren't good actors. So here you have a cast of mediocre actors turning in bad performances based off a mostly awful script. The kid they chose for the child Myers was especially bad, to the point of leaving me feeling embarassed we had to see Michael like this. It was akin to having Darth Vader's legacy sullied by Jake Lloyd. The few positive acting standouts were Malcolm McDowell hamming it up as Loomis, the new Laurie Strode, and the adult Michael Myers, who was genuinely terrifying.
It wasn't all doom and gloom, however. The film really hits its stride when it turns into a remake of the first movie around the half way mark, which was hardly a surprise. There are a few interesting twists and turns on the original here, enough to keep viewers on their toes until the end credits roll. Watching the adult Michael reek havoc on Haddonfield was really worth the price of admission. Two scenes that sold the movie to me were the sad revelation from Michael to Laurie, and Michael relentlessly tearing down the ceiling to the attic in pursuit of her. The final half hour or so of the movie was really well done.
I've said it many times before, and I will again here: I feel that Rob Zombie is rapidly becoming one of the better young American directors out there. Halloween's faults lie on Zombie's failure as a writer, not as a director. I love his style, the types of shots he employs, the color palette and lighting he uses. He knows how to shoot action and horror scenes, and I really find his movies a treat to watch. In the hands of a lesser director (ie. any of the Halloween 2-8 directors), this would have been a total trainwreck. In Zombie's hands, there is something to salvage amongst the many problems.
As it stands, Rob Zombie's Halloween is something of an oddity. Not a great movie, not a terrible one. A flawed but interesting "re-imagining" of a classic. At the end of the day, one is reminded just how special the original film was.
