A Review By Taylor Anthony
Way back in 1978, a movie that was written and directed by horror movie legend John Carpenter was released entitled ‘Halloween’. It may not seem like it now, but for its time, it was a very scary movie. Carpenter started one of the most popular horror movie franchises of modern day; the ‘Halloween’ series. Many more sequels were made after the first one to continue on a story of a notorious fictional killer; Michael Myers. After countless amounts of sequels, the franchise started to die down and in 1998, the last movie of the series was released “Halloween Ressurection". Halloween was over. But then, nearly ten years later, rock musician Rob Zombie decided to remake the classic original Halloween. He was relatively new to writing and directing, his only two movies before it were House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects. Both movies received mostly negative reviews, but could this new revamped version of the 1978 classic be a breath of fresh air for people in dire need for another good horror movie? Or will it only be a minor, unrecognized slice in the horror genre.
First of all, I will say, this movie has been intensified to the highest level of suspense and horror, this movie shows the dark , gritty and twisted origin of Michael Myers and explains why he went postal. The movie starts with young ten year old Michael Myers before he went insane. The film does an outstanding job at displaying his horrible life at home showing how bad his family members are to him, with the exception of his mother and baby sister. His step dad and sister are extremely abusive to him mentally. I found that the beginning sequence of Michael at a young age thoroughly displayed character development and gave a grim mood for the audience. After Michael finally cracks, he kills a school bully brutally, goes home, and kills his step dad, his older sister and sister’s boy friend, Michael is sent to a mental institution for life. I wont reveal any more of the plot, although, the rest of the movie is somewhat empty, lacking an interesting story.
When the story goes to Michael as an adult, it begins to become uninteresting and kind of repetitive. At about one hour into the movie, new characters are introduced, but this is somewhat of a weak tactic because it leaves no room for any more character development so really, you don’t care who dies. Also, the killing Michael does as an adult is way too repetitive. Some scenes were played out the exact same way, just with different victims, and sometimes you couldn’t tell why he was killing these specific people. Near the end of the movie, things start to get dragged out way too much, like the amount of times people think Michael is dead and them saying, “Oh, its over now, don’t worry.” But then Michael comes back and chases them around again. So, at then end of the movie, I thought the movie was just average, maybe a little better than average because of how well done the beginning was, it shows sadistic, cruel things to get you prepared for the rest of the movie, but then last half of the movie is empty and doesn’t deliver as much as I was hoping it would. So, if you are a diehard Halloween fan, watch this movie, if you are wanting to watch a good horror movie, watch this. The only people who shouldn't watch this movie are people who absolutly hate horror movies. This may not be the greatest horror movie out there, but I feel more people need to recognize it. Over all, I give this movie a 7/10 for the following reasons below.
(To the right is a photo of Tyler Mane who played Michael Myers at age 10, Rob Zombie and the adult Michael Myers.)
Positive Points:
- Movie has a very grim tone which is needed in a decent horror movie.
- Character development in the beginning is spot on, doesn't hold back anything and full out shows the terrible beginning of Michael Myers life.
- The movie overall has a lot of great suspence, not just cheap scares, the horror actually stays with you.
Negative Points:
- The last half of the movie was rushed and had zero character development.
- Michael kills off random people for no aparent reason, pointless violence, but what do you expect, its Rob Zombie.
- Last 20 mins of the movie is dragged out was too long.
Note: If you are wondering why Halloween came out in late August like it says on the movie poster, it didn't come out on Halloween because it was said that the people who made the movie were too nervous to go up against the annual 'Saw' film that comes out on Halloween every year.