Plot
After being committed for 17 years, Michael Myers, now a grown man and still very dangerous, escapes from the mental institution (where he was committed as a 10 year old) and he immediately returns to Haddonfield, where he wants to find his baby sister, Laurie. Anyone who crosses his path is in mortal danger.
Release Year: 2007
Rating: 6.0/10 (50,271 voted)
Critic's Score: 47/100
Director:
Rob Zombie
Stars: Scout Taylor-Compton, Malcolm McDowell, Tyler Mane
Storyline The residents of Haddonfield don't know it yet... but death is coming to their small sleepy town. Sixteen years ago, a ten year old boy called Michael Myers brutally kills his step father, his elder sister and her boyfriend. Sixteen years later, he escapes from the mental institution and makes his way back to his hometown intent on a murderous rampage pursued by Dr Sam Loomis who is Michael's doctor and the only one who knows Michael's true evil. Elsewhere a shy teenager by the name of Laurie Strode is babysitting on the night Michael comes home... is it pure coincidence that she and her friends are being stalked by him?
Writers: Rob Zombie, John Carpenter
Cast: Malcolm McDowell
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Dr. Samuel Loomis
Scout Taylor-Compton
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Laurie Strode
Tyler Mane
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Michael Myers
Daeg Faerch
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Michael Myers, age 10
Sheri Moon Zombie
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Deborah Myers
William Forsythe
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Ronnie White
Danielle Harris
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Annie Brackett
Kristina Klebe
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Lynda Van Der Klok
Skyler Gisondo
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Tommy Doyle
Danny Trejo
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Ismael Cruz
Hanna Hall
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Judith Myers
Tom Towles
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Larry Redgrave
Bill Moseley
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Zach 'Z-Man' Garrett
Leslie Easterbrook
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Patty Frost
Steve Boyles
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Stan Payne
Trivia:
In the opening scene of the movie, the song "God of Thunder" by 'KISS' is played and young Michael Myers is seen wearing a KISS t-shirt. KISS is a major influence on Rob Zombie's music career and the inspiration for the make-up and costuming for his band White Zombie.
Goofs:
Continuity:
When Dr. Loomis is walking through the graveyard, the collar on his coat collar goes from up to down when cutting from him to the gravekeeper and back.
Quotes:
[first lines]
Michael Myers - Child:
Come on, sweetie pie. Morning, Elvis. You're a pretty Elvis, aren't you? Yes, you are.
User Review
Rob Zombie tries to give a monster a soul.
Rating: 4/10
On paper, a "Halloween" remake looked interesting. Zombie tries to go
back to the character's origin and reinvent him - it's a recent trend
in Hollywood ("Batman Begins," "Casino Royale," the upcoming
"Incredible Hulk," etc.), so it's not quite surprising that Hollywood
greenlit the project and it got the push it received.
But the problem that arises while doing this with "Halloween" is that
it comes into conflict with the concept of Michael being purely evil.
Although I can understand what Zombie was trying to do by exploring
Michael's background, it contradicts the whole point of the original.
By providing a reason and displaying a human character on screen, you
give the character a soul - and despite what Zombie may claim, this
does NOT make Michael scarier. It makes him an average movie serial
killer: a guy with a messed up life as a kid who snaps one day and goes
on a killing rampage.
Is it scary? No. Gory? Yes. Realistic? At first. And if it were a movie
about a serial killer, it would work. But it's not. This is a movie
about a monster, a soulless creature; a boogeyman, as per the original
film. Monsters aren't scary when we know they're flesh and blood.
Carpenter had a way of framing the action in the original movie.
Michael stalks Laurie in her hometown, but we never see any real flesh
behind the mask, we never really see him moving around like a normal
human being. But we do here. He stands in the middle of an open road,
in front of three teenage girls walking home from school, and they all
see him. He stands there for a few moments, then trudges away
off-screen. We actually see him walk away, instead of just appearing
and disappearing as he did in the original film. Which method is
scarier? The answer is clear.
Zombie spends 40 minutes or so building up Michael's character before
he escapes from the ward. We see him killing animals as a child (and
torturing them, too), a stupid subplot with his mom as a stripper and a
typical school bully, and a promiscuous sister. The sexual talk is
frank and disgusting - the mom's boyfriend (husband?) is talking about
how cute her daughter's butt is, and at this point in the film we're
not sure whether he might even be the father. It's just shock for shock
value. Zombie has a tendency of this - blunt violence and blunt
dialogue combined - and in a film like this, it seems cheap and fake
and unnecessary. The heavy emphasis placed on the swearing - and I mean
this literally (as in, the actors place a noticeable emphasis on the
profanity they use) is almost unintentionally funny. Zombie cast his
wife in the role of Michael's mother, and she can't act at all.
Donald Pleasence got stuck with the most unfortunate lines from the
original film, but we were willing to forgive bad dialogue because of
how well-made the film was otherwise. Here, Malcolm McDowell gets the
worst of two worlds: he gets to handle an under-characterization with
bad, bad, BAD dialogue AND a generally weak film to boot. The sequences
with McDowell's version of Loomis are all completely clichéd - Zombie
clearly writes his dialogue based on other films' dialogue. The
"intimate" scenes at the mental ward between Loomis and Michael are
awful. McDowell struggles with typicalities of the genre, such as the
Dr. Who Wasted His Own Life By Devoting It To Someone Else's (he
explains to Michael that his wife left him and he has no friends
because of how involved he became with the case - and the dialogue
itself is straight from any cop-vs.-killer flick). The recent film
"Zodiac" had a similar theme of men losing their personal lives due to
obsession over a murderer, but it was handled better. The whole Loomis
character should have been dropped from the remake if all Zombie wanted
to do with him was use him as a deus ex machina, by the way.
Overall, this feels like a redneck version of "Halloween," which is
going to offend some people, but I can't think of any better way to
describe it. It's trashy, vulgar, and silly - and hey, that's fine, if
that's Rob Zombie's motif and he wants to make movies pandering towards
that sort of audience. I have nothing against it, and I think it may
work with some films - I can imagine him making a good re-do of
"Natural Born Killers" (although I hope it never, never happens!).
However, when you're remaking an iconic, legendary, incredibly
influential horror film - don't cheapen it by "reimagining" it with
horror movie clichés and shock-value material. The very worst aspect of
this remake is that it simply isn't scary at all - it's a typical
slasher flick, a homicidal-man-on-a-rampage flick, which ironically is
exactly what Zombie said he wanted to avoid.
The first film was eerie, spooky, and unnerving because Michael's
motivations were cloudy and we weren't sure whether Laurie was right or
wrong when she said he was the boogeyman. We only knew one thing: he
wasn't entirely human.
But ever since that original movie, the filmmakers have attempted to
keep expanding upon Michael's history: the second film developed a
motivation for his killings (Laurie was his sister), the fourth offered
more clues at his background, and now we come full circle with a
complete remake of the original film.
Michael's true demonic core - the natural horror element of the series
- is stripped bare and all that is left is a disturbed, abnormally tall
redneck with greasy hair who hasn't showered in years wearing a silly
mask going around killing people because he had an abusive family life
as a child. Some things are better left unexplored.
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