HALLOWEEN (2007) (**1/2)

When I first heard that Rob Zombie was remaking John Carpenter's classic horror film HALLOWEEN, I thought he was either one of three things — terribly gutsy, completely arrogant or monumentally stupid. Now having seen the film, I can say he was the first. When approaching a remake of this classic, he did everything that could be asked of him in being true to the original, while expanding on it in new and interesting ways. His reverence for the material shows his love for Michael Myers. However, his love for Michael Myers is also the film's undoing to some degree.

Unlike the original, Zombie's film takes us deeper inside the mind of Michael Myers, played as a child by Daeg Faerch and as an adult by Tyler Mane. As a child, Michael was tormented by kids at school, but his taste for comeuppance is bloody and cruel. His home life is not stable at all with his white trash mother Deborah (Sheri Moon Zombie, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS) constantly fighting with her deadbeat boyfriend Ronnie White (Robert Forsythe, THE DEVIL'S REJECTS). His older sister Judith (Hanna Hall, FORREST GUMP) is a crude teen who is only interested in sex and boys… in that order. On Halloween night, he snaps and goes on a murder spree that lands him in an asylum. While under the care of the kind doctor Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE), he sinks further and further into a world of his own and becomes more disturbed as his time in confinement grows.

Now grown and tormented by his past, he escapes from the prison with one purpose — to return to his old life. Meanwhile, some teens from Michael's old neighborhood plan for Halloween night. Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton, SLEEPOVER) plans to babysit as usual while covering for her friends Annie (Danielle Harris, URBAN LEGEND) and Lynda (Kristina Klebe, SHE HATE ME) who want to sneak away with their boyfriends. They will become the target of Michael Myer's rampage, because of a secret. Laurie is Michael's grown baby sister.

All the background information fleshing out Myer's psyche is fascinating. But he's not the kind of devious killer that you can follow and wonder when he's going to slip up and get caught. He's a killing machine. Zombie takes great pains to show several gruesome kills, but they lack suspense for several reasons. During his first rampage as a child, the film dips into torture porn territory because we know Michael is going to kill these people, so making us sit and watch is no better than a snuff film. Let's get a thrill out of Michael hacking up sleaze balls. Then for his second rampage after escaping, Zombie rushes to the kills, providing this section of film with none of the gut wrenching suspense that made the original so scary. Zombie shows Michael stalking the girls, where as Carpenter kept us in fear of where he might be lurking. Additionally, Zombie has switched the point of view to Michael, ridding us of our identification with Laurie and her friends. Once Michael's mom, who gives us an in to care for the killer, is gone, the film's emotional pull is gone as well.

As remakes of classics go this is an honorable effort. In comparing the two films one sees a lesson is both direction and writing. The original was a director's film. Carpenter's patient style builds dread and created one of the scariest films ever made out of a relatively simple idea. Zombie's more psychological approach is intriguing in an intellectual way, but not nearly as exciting, and at its worst it turns into a geek show. While I've heard the director's cut solves some of these problems, I doubt it solves them all. Zombie ends his film with a very interesting moment with Laurie. Once again he goes into the minds of his characters. Too bad he waits to the last moment to go inside the mind of someone we can relate to.