Im not sure if the mid 2000’s was really the right time to do a ‘Michael Myers’ origin story…letalone to let Rob Zombie be the one to try and depict such an event…But the results here in the 2007 quasi-remake of ‘Halloween’ were mixed at best and left me kind of frustrated.
The plot is a near identical retelling of the 70’s classic, only here it’s been modernised (whereas the original opened in the 60s and takes place in the late 70s, here this film opens in the late 70s (apparently) and…seemingly takes place in the early 90s…) for this edition nearly all of the subtlety, nuance and tone has been sucked out and replaced by ‘easter eggs’ and callbacks to the first film, alongside Zombies usual heavy gore and swearing…Oh, and an extra 30 minutes has been bolted onto the front of the film depicting Michaels angst ridden preteens as he struggles with heavy DA, bullies and his love for torturing rats and cats…
Being truely honest, I struggled on almost every level to really get into this thing, the script itself is really quite over long when it really didnt have to be. The opening segment with young Michael, at first I felt was a nice touch, but it doesnt really tie in with the film in any way past Michael escaping Haddonfield hospital. thus making it pretty pointless.
The bulk of the film that acts as a remake to the original doesnt really bring anything new to the field (other than a healthy dose of homophobic and ablist slurs) and apart from a couple of scenes being swapped around and some of the key plot points getting a slight rework (an example being, in the original Michael breaks into a hardwear store and steals some rope and his mask, in this film Michel hides his mask under the floorboards of his old family home…where it sits seemingly untouched or undegraded for over 15 years…alongside a butchers knife that equally is pretty much unrusted…which is just ludicrous.)
The film seemingly doesnt seem to ‘get’ the characters…or rather, here they’re boiled down to their most basic elements. and those basic elements are then amped up to 10. So for example, Lynda was a slightly ditzy, slightly horny teen in the original…but there were layers to her character. Here…shes just horny and sarcastic…and little else. Laurie is supposed to be a wallflower, bookish, but able to stand up for herself if she needs to…here shes just a snarky, slightly aggressive teen. Lumis goes from being a doctor who’s exhausted and frustrated, but ultimately working to protect the community and ensure that his patient is locked firmly away..dead or alive.
To here being presented as a shill, someone who’s feined an interest in Michael to ultimately cash in on his story, there are some elements of compassion present, but its hard not to feel like everything he’s doing here, he’s basically logging so that he can write a revised edition of his cheap and sleazy novel. Which was particularly depressing.
Other than that, the script is just kind of lame really, as I’ve mentioned, it’s basically just a re-run of the original ‘Halloween’ but with more grungy rock aesthetics thrown in and all the complexities and subtleties taken out. The pacing is way too slow broadly speaking for something like this (it overstays its welcome) while ALSO asking the audience to make huge mental leaps to cover the gaps it cant be bothered to cover in the plot.
The tones kind of all over the place, it feels like a Zombie flick in places, with heavy gore being married up to border campy, heavy swearing, trailer trash black comedy. But then there are gulfs where it’s just retreading the old movie, where it feels like Zombie, the writers or the producers have made it clear those scenes are sacro-sanct and cant be analyzed or changed in any way from how they were in the original.
I didnt much care for the direction here, Zombies style seems to have been smothered to some degree, whether it was studio intervention or otherwise. Given his previous on ‘House of 1000 corpses’ and ‘The Devils Rejects’ I was expecting a colourful, gritty, grindhouse style reimagining of the original. But instead, this things drowned in that awful mid 2000’s trope of blue tinted largely desaturated footage thats handheld, shakey and a mixture of CONSTANT closeups and extreme closeups that arnt particularly focussed on anything, combined with overuse of B-roll and cutaways that make for a totally incoherent watch in places.
It really works against this film, because; while I cant say the various production elements havent worked together well, the end product they’ve produced is just plain ugly; and very out of spirit with what these kinds of movies really run on. They trade on suspense, subtlety and a slow boil thriller to help really upsell the slasher elements better.
Here? the style would have been better suited to some of the more mindless ‘hack and slash’ fodder of franchises like ‘Friday the 13th’ or ‘The Hills have eyes’ remake. it doesnt feel like a ‘Halloween’ film at any point here.
The cine is problematic, as mentioned composition is kind of lacking, theres no real main focal point for a lot of shots and seemingly the films coasting on nudity and gory kills to help keep people invested. Theres nothing striking about this film, nothing that really helps it stand out against the other turgid sea of entries that were made around this time. It’s just a fairly generic, fairly washed out grubby little horror movie.
The edits manic and lacks focus as well, a lot of the film feels like they just dropped whatever footage they had down on the timeline to get things up to a near 2 hour runtime, and the chronic issues of incredibly slow scenes with breakneck cuts, just left me feeling tired by the end.
Equally; I have to say that…this thing is nearly 2 hours long. NO ‘Halloween’ movie should be nearly 2 hours long. And its a serious fault on the film makers that to have allowed that to happen.
The performances are mixed too. Malcolm McDowell I feel gives a solid performance as Lumis. He’s animated, bright and has a good mix of tone. It’s just a shame that the CHARACTER of Lumis here is so one note and against what the original really worked as. I feel had McDowell had the chance to play OG Lumis, this could have been a very different feature.
Scout Taylor Compton as Laurie again has similar issues to McDowell, had she been allowed to play the role with a bit more of a muted and subtle edge to it I feel she really could have brought her own energy to the character, as it stands the way her character is written here, she could have been the ‘final girl’ in almost ANY low budget horror production from 2002-2009…meaning that she’s at best; annoying for most of the runtime, and at worst; forgettable.
The rest of the cast are really quite one note, dont really bring anything to the production, are very muted; dont really get to use their space much and generally are introduced just to be killed off within 10 minutes…it’s depressing to sit through honestly…especially given the calibre of some of the casting choices here (Danny Trejo, Ken Foree, Udo Kier). And I still find it hilarious that Rob casts his wife in every film he makes…whether she fits the bill or not….here? she doesn not.
As a closing note, the soundtracks awkward and inconsistent; some of the movie is a bit of a Jukebox picture with ‘Dont fear the reaper’ getting multiple outings (hey! remember how it was playing on the radio in the original? Well; its gonna play at least 3 times here!) alongside modern (90s) tracklistings that dont really add anything to the production and…for some bizarre reason, the original Halloween soundtrack cues…unaltered. Which…given Rob Zombie is a musician, and given that this film is a gritty 2000’s remake of the original. Im BEYOND surprised he didnt ‘grime’ up the original audio cues…maybe add a heavier; rockier edge to them or something…as it stands it just feels like a swill bucket of available tracks and attempts to please the fans.
All in all? While there are elements I liked with this one, there really wasnt enough to win me over. the scripting is overly pandering, overly long and kind of boring, the characters have been dumbed down to the point where I dont care if they live or die, the camera work is messy, the whole thing looks dull and lifeless and its tied together with lacklustre casting and a questionable tracklisting.
I didnt really care much for ‘Halloween (2007)’ Its not the worst, and i’d say its maybe worth checking out at least once as an oddity…But its not one i’ll be hurrying back to, and it isnt one I can really recommend…
Oh yeah…and the best line in this thing? is ‘IM JOE GRIZZLY, BITCH!’…me and my partner laughed our asses off at that for a good 2 minutes solid…
TYTD Reviews 