Film: Halloween (Rob Zombie)

[Coolio]

Because in my opinion, the original sucked?

 

[His Name Is Frank]

Because in my opinion, the original sucked?

Wow. Who could argue with such great insight like that? I'll bet you think Michael Bay is one of the greatest directors of our time and that Date Movie is the funniest movie ever,

 

[BlueEclipse]

Wow. Who could argue with such great insight like that? I'll bet you think Michael Bay is one of the greatest directors of our time and that Date Movie is the funniest movie ever,

haha date movie. i hated that movie watched first 10 minutes and thats it.

 

[physix]

Because in my opinion, the original sucked?

are you asking us or telling us?


At any rate, the beginning was nice.

Altho', it shows a limitation of Zombie's that he can only envision 'such horrors' coming out of a childhood with that amount of conflict. despite liking the comical nature of the white-trash dad, I found that I missed the original Myers family. The 'horror' of the original was that someone like Michael Myers could come from a perfectly 'normal' suburban family.

But... Zombie knows white trash; stick with what you know.

It was still interesting. I hated the original's second beginning (which shows the aftermath of Michael's break-out and not how he did it). So, Zombie's 'answer' to that deficit was welcomed.

But honestly, it was yet another movie I walked out on. First of all, I hated the 2 girl friends. Utterly. And I was glad the first bitch got it, to be honest. But, by the time the main girl is running down the street fuckin' screaming her head off, I'm wondering WHERE THE FUCK IS EVERYBODY?

Seriously... NO ONE HEARS THIS!?!?!?

As an experiment, I screamed bloody murder when I left the building. Two cars stopped and one person got out of the car to look around. Maybe he thought he ran over someone...? Who knows... but unless the town was sponsored by Sominol, SOMEONE should have came out to see what was up.

Not to mention a frantic girl calling the cops about a murder and only two cops showing up??? And the one cop not telling other cops when he decides to go check on the one family with the psychologist? In the original, we're told that the cops won't be alerting the townspeople because of all the copy-cat fakers that they would get... in fact, we're even shown one kid wearing the Myers Mask getting killed after running from a cop. But how the fuck do you justify this? Does that town need to raise taxes and hire some more cops??

These two little things are simply too poorly handled to be tossed aside with some flimsy "suspension of disbelief" nonsense, which is really just an excuse for lazy fuckin' writing.

This film was simply aiming to ride on the coat-tails of utter brilliance, slap on massive amounts of tit shots, and have near-dyke displays from the young girls...

Bah, I say...!
A thousand times, bah!

Give me the original two any fuckin' day of the week.

 

[Coolio]

physix, where do you live? Because in most small towns you'd be lucky if there's 2 cops on duty after 10pm, and you can run around screaming all you want down a residential street on Halloween and nobody's going to look outside.

 

[His Name Is Frank]

This is my full review that I wrote for Horror-101.com

Rob Zombie’s Halloween. Where to begin? It would be unfair to call it horrible,because it did have some redeming qualities. But it was far from being a great movie. I went into this movie with high hopes. After all,it was one of my favorite movies in the hands of Rob Zombie,a man who is grounded in 70s horror and has a great respect for the genre.

I’ll go on record and say that that I didn’t really like his first film,House of a 1000 Corpses. It had some redeming qualities as well,but it just left you with an empty feeling. I liked the fact that the villains won and no one escaped(rare for a horror film)but in the end,I really didn’t care. Plus,a lot of the film really did make you feel like you were watching a Rob Zombie video. His second film,The Devil’s Rejects,I loved. It had you laughing one second and yelling,”Oh my God!” the next. It was a film that hit every nerve without going for the cheap gross-out factor. Plus,I love how Zombie made you actually feel for this sadistic family by having them tortured by a sheriff that was just as sadisitic as they were. The characters of Otis,Baby and Captain Spalding were funny and terrifying all at once.

Now back to Halloween. As I said before,this film did have some great scenes:Michael’s first murder in the woods with the bully. It was classic Zombie,in its brutal realism. The scene where Michael realizes he’s never going to be released to go home. You really feel for this kid who really doesn’t understand why he’s in the institution in the first place. And Annie’s torture. Again,Zombie has a real knack for nailing violent scenes that are so real,they’re unnerving.

What I felt was wrong with the movie? Pretty much everything else. First,you either do a remake of a movie or a retelling. You can’t do both. This was the movie’s most fatal flaw. The first half of the movie was very different from the original. So different,in fact,it could have been an entirely different movie had the kid not been named Michael Myers. The sceond half was so similar,it was almost as if it was a bastardized ripoff of the original Halloween. To already know what was going to happen to each character made the movie boring. Zombie could have thrown us for a loop or two. He could have had Michael kill Tommy Doyle as Tommy tried to help out the little girl(I forget her name) He could have had Loomis snap,out of guilt and knowing that Myers is unstoppable evil. It would have been interesting to see Loomis plow though anyone to get to Myers,even kill someone for getting in his way. This could have been made believable by maybe having the nurse who was killed by Myers in the beginning be a love interest of Loomis’s. He tries to help Myers while all the time harbering contempt and hate for the child for what he took away from him. Instead,we are handed the cookie-cutter second half.

I’m almost finished with this soapbox. The main problem I had was Zombie’s explanation of Myer’s motive. So he came from a foul-mouthed white trash family. If that was all it took to turn a kid into a serial killer,then a third of the kids in my homestate of Louisiana would be running around with butcher knives. I have a great,dark idea for what made Myers kill,but I think I’ve rattled on too long already.

In conclusion,I don’t hold this movie against Rob Zombie and I look forward to his next one. Rob Zombie works best when he’s being original. Let’s face it. While House of a 1000 Corpses was interesting,it was basically Texas Chainsaw Massacre without the chainsaw.

 

[physix]

physix, where do you live? Because in most small towns you'd be lucky if there's 2 cops on duty after 10pm, and you can run around screaming all you want down a residential street on Halloween and nobody's going to look outside.

i can agree with that, i s'pose... but was that a small town, or a suburb?

i got the impression of both at dif't times of the movie, another flaw i think...


but still come on...

NO ONE wakes up?

 

[psychetool]

I watch a lot of fucking horror movies and I liked it a lot.

 

[colors]

rob zombie has always been a corny plagiarist, both as a musician (al jourgensen) and a director (jim van bebber, etc). he's not really an artist, more of a fan and a business man who's breaking 'cool' americana down for 14yr olds.

i like his 'fan' side better. there are some nice gritty scenes in the first two movies. the barnyard execution for example. or the motel hostages. add sid haig and some ice cream dialogue and you've got a decent tribute to 70's horror/exploitation. if he was more talented and had a firmer grasp on film making, he could probably weasel his way into a robert rodriguez type position.

but on the flip side, the 'businessman' can't seem to resist scraping the bottom of the barrel for the worst cliches and a totally hackneyed style. zombie's movies all reek of this made for tv / wwf quality. and it's apparent who that's appealing to. it takes a real visionary to walk the mainstream line, and zombie is not that kind of person. he goes lowest common denominator too often with no flair to cover his tracks.

all that said, halloween is totally blasphemous, and it exposes zombie as the hack he is. he made a complete mess of it, and i'm glad it was a flop. it was the cinematic equivalent of pantera covering cat scratch fever. inept is the word. he totally lost the spirit and feel of the original. 1 star

 

[Pharcyde]

I fucking loved it