Halloween (Unrated Director's Cut) 2007 The Weinstein Company Official Website Buy It Now

There’s no denying the fact that John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher Halloween set the standard for what was to come in the industry. The success of the film had every producer and studio trying to get a slasher of their own into theaters. Over the years though, the faces of terror have become less and less frightening and just about everyone these days doesn’t go to a slasher to be scared but rather to see how foolish teenagers will die. Rob Zombie, as any fan knows, is a huge horror fan, and with the success of films like House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, Zombie decided to set his sites on the Halloween franchise, but not a sequel and not a remake, but as he puts it, a reinvention of the original film, and while I’m not a huge fan of the original, just that phrasing alone was enough to get me interested.

Zombie’s new vision of Halloween is set in the late 70’s, the exact date isn’t mentioned, but given the present of the KISS song “God of Thunder” from their 1976 album Destroyer, the math becomes very easy. The new vision of the film provides a back story for Michael Meyers (Daeg Faerch), a 10-year old who lives in a dysfunctional family. His mother Deborah (Sheri Moon Zombie) works at a strip club and is trying to raise her son as best as she can. Her boyfriend Ronnie (William Forsythe) constantly picks on Michael, something tends to be common while he’s at school as well, but the bullying of classmates finally causes Michael to lash out. His mother is called into the principal’s office where she also meets with Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) who is concerned about the boy and fears that he may be showing signs that may lead him down the path of becoming psychotic.

Loomis is correct, but Michael runs away before they can meet. He tracks down one of the school bullies and beats him to death, then returns home to celebrate Halloween. His sister Judith (Hanna R. Hall) ends up not taking him out as promised and finally, Michael snaps even further and murders his sister, her boyfriend and Ronnie. Only his mother and baby sister Laurie are spared. Michael is then institutionalized and becomes more and more distant before he finally stops speaking completely. Fifteen years later, Meyers (Tyler Mane) is free thanks to some new guards at the institution who underestimated his powers and now he’s on his way back home to Haddonfield in search of his sister Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton) and death will come to any who stand in his way.

I grew weary quite a while ago of the remake trend, and it has shown absolutely no signs of slowing down, but Zombie saying that Halloween was in fact a reinvention of the franchise was the first thing that I really had to give him some credit for. Again, I’ve really never been a huge fan of the series, but Zombie himself has said, as many others have, that the horror icons which once made people scared ceased to do that years ago. In quite a few ways, the new approach is quite fresh, but Zombie also doesn’t completely go out into left field either.

The back story is really a nice addition into the series, and in fact the first half of the film looks at only this. We find that Michael has started killing small animals; something that many psychologists say is the start down the road to becoming a serial killer. Even after his first murders, Michael has no memory of them, at least that’s his claim, but the sweet and innocent looking boy starts to become withdrawn. He finds that making masks is something that takes him away from what has happened and “hides his ugliness.” The psychological degeneration becomes too much for his mother who eventually commits suicide, something else that certainly would scar the man who would become a vicious killer.

The adult Michael played by Tyler Manes is a great deal more menacing than what has been seen in the past films in my opinion. Manes stands about 6’8” and has a massive figure that would frighten just about anyone, and once you put the classic mask on him, Meyers becomes a more horrific personality. We actually never see Manes without the mask as Meyers has taken to wearing the ones he’s created constantly. Zombie’s vision of Meyers however doesn’t include killings that are beyond the realm of possibility. Everything is quite plausible, and Meyers is seen as a much more ruthless and unforgiving killer.

McDowell taking on the role of Loomis actually works quite well for the film, and unlike the characters we’ve seen in the past movies, Loomis here does more than simply make an appearance and spout of some menacing words about the existence of evil. He’s a more active participant, not just in trying to rehabilitate Michael, something that he eventually gives up on, but also in trying to track him down. Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie though is a bit debatable. She does a fair job, but I don’t think her performance is nearly as fantastic as what Jamie Lee Curtis provided. Zombie however gets some great visual images of her running in terror, and this is true of the other victims of Michael Meyers, that really adds to the intensity of the film. The only real issue that I have with the movie is that the director’s cut feels a little too log in my opinion, and while the original theatrical cut was 109 minutes, this version is 121 minutes, and I feel that 2 hours is a little too much for any horror film.

This two-disc edition of Halloween has quite a few treats when it comes to bonus material. The first disc includes the film with commentary from Rob Zombie and the second disc is packed with bonus material. There are a vast collection of deleted scenes, all with commentary, and where they included in the film, you’d probably be looking at a movie that’s nearly two and a half hours which is even longer than what the movie found be. There are some bloopers, some of which actually are amusing and a look at the various masks that are used in the film, not just the classic one that has become known to many as “The Shape.” Re-Imagining Halloween looks at a variety of aspects of the film from the creation and production down to the special effects, and Rob Zombie isn’t taking the standard course of action with this movie but instead relying just on usual makeup, not computer animation. The cast members are also featured, not just in a segment where they discuss the film, but also a look at the casting sessions. Overall, this is an impressive collection of bonus materials for the movie, and it seems that it’s usually just the classic horror titles that get a large degree of bonus features.

I know a number of fans of the original Halloween that absolutely hated Zombie’s reimagining of Carpenter’s classic, and while there are moments where the movie drags a little, I don’t think that this is a bad approach. The Halloween franchise has become quite stale over the years, and it’s not alone. Friday the 13^th, Hellraiser, and Nightmare of Elm Street have become nothing more than pale shadows of what they once were, and this could be considered a reboot of the series and as the most successful films in terms of theatrical profits (and that’s not accounting for inflation) this could be just the thing to breathe new life into a classic. If you’re a long time fan, try and approach this as not being a remake so much as a reinvention, and if you’re new to the Halloween franchise, there’s really nothing wrong with seeing both versions.

-mike-