Halloween 2007 by Rob Zombie Review Analysis and Commentary

I was a little reluctant to watch this movie. Halloween is one of my all time favourite horror films, and Michael Myers is without doubt one of the scariest horror movie villains ever created. After watching the film I have to confess, I didn't completely hate it but my biggest complaint is that Rob Zombie has somehow managed to turn Michael Myers from a terrifying knife wielding monster into an incredibly UN Scary version of his former self. Michael Myers feels more human than ever before and I'm not sure that's a good thing! In this gore fest of a remake young Michael is played by Daeg Faerch and ‘grown up' Michael is played by Tyler Mane.

Both actors are actually very good in their roles, Daeg Faerch in particular who was genuinely disturbing as young Michael slipping quickly into his psychotic murdering ways. The killing begins with Michael torturing small animals and even killing his pet rat but this soon progresses to some extreme scenes in which he is seen beating a classmate to death and later murdering his own family. I found it to be quite disturbing to watch a child committing these murders in such a cold calculating way, if he was going for the shock factor for this movie Rob Zombie definitely delivered there at least! Myers is subsequently transferred to Smith's Grove Sanitarium where he is put under the care of Dr. Sam Loomis Played by Malcolm McDowell (A clockwork Orange) who soon comes to realise that there is no way to rehabilitate Michael, he is infact pure evil.

Michael spends the next 16 years alone there, refusing to speak and spending his time making gruesome and chilling masks. He eventually manages to break free and his second killing spree begins. He heads back to Haddonfield in search of his sister Laurie (Now played by the rather uninspiring Scout Taylor-Compton who sadly fails to live up to Jamie Lee Curtis classic performance in every way.) he let his baby sister live once, but will he show mercy this time round? Personally I think that Zombie got so carried away with the blood, gore and sex element of the movie that he somehow forgot exactly what it was that we all found so scary about Michael Myers in the first place.

This 2007 version lacked that creepy feel of the original and I don't know about anyone else, but one of the things I always loved about Michael Myers as a character was his slow, menacing almost robotic like movements that quickly became his trademark. They seem to have been flippantly brushed over here however, and replaced by more violence and gore. The problem with Rob Zombie's version I find is that we as an audience become far too sympathetic with Michael, and the moment that happens we lose our fear of him. It's like kids and the bogeyman, once you know he's not real what is there left to be afraid of? Once we delve into Michael as a real person and begin to overly familiarise ourselves with what provoked his actions he loses that edge, not knowing what makes him tick makes him scarier and far more unpredictable!

There are references in the remake and the original to this evil monster like quality surrounding Michael but the problem with Rob Zombies version is that the majority of his victims are actually people that the audience dislikes anyway. Hell, I even wished he would just kill Laurie at one point as her whiny voice began to grate on me that much. This was never the case with the original; we were rooting for Laurie and terrified of Michael weren't we? Rob Zombie did bring some new and interesting material to the table but the question remains; did we really need new material? Wasn't Halloween pretty much the perfect horror movie already? I think that whilst this movie wasn't awful, it was definitely un-necessary and that maybe it's time Hollywood came up with some fresh, new idea's rather than re making what we all knew, loved and grew up with. Cast: Malcolm McDowell - Dr. Samuel Loomis Brad Dourif - Sheriff Lee Brackett Tyler Mane - Michael Myers Daeg Faerch - Michael Myers, age 10 Sheri Moon - Deborah Myers (as Sheri Moon Zombie) Scout Taylor-Compton - Laurie Strode