How a Zombie Killed Michael Myers September 4, 2007
Posted by Ian W in : Rants & Raves , trackbackThis isn’t a review, for that check out The Devil’s Manor, I doubt you’ll find a better review anywhere on the web. This is just me having a little rant about what went wrong in the hopes of getting it out of my system, after all Halloween is one of my favourite horror films and I can’t let someone fuck it up this badly without some comment. You should be aware before you read on that there are a couple of spoilers, so don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Rob Zombie is obviously a fan of the original (there are numerous references to it) and yet he seems to have no understanding of what made Michael Myers work as an iconic horror character. When the original Halloween came out the idea of a suburban kid killing his sister was shocking and, while it wouldn’t seem quite as horrific today, it would still have more power than a stereotypical trailer trash kid doing the same. Even upping the body count doesn’t change that. By developing the Michael character (at the expense of Laurie and friends) he de-mythologises him. Loomis may deliver virtually the same line at the end of the film but this isn’t the bogeyman, he’s just a man, albeit a big, nasty, brutal one.
I also got the impression that Zombie sees Michael as the hero. His victims are all unsympathetic, either because they are written that way (William Forsythe) or because they aren’t developed enough (Dee Wallace and Pat Skipper as Laurie’s adoptive parents). The ending shows us whose side Rob is on as much as anything in the film. He must have grown up feeling sorry for Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster and Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man and there is nothing wrong with that (I did myself) but this isn’t some misunderstood creature, this is a brutal psychopath and in taking his side Zombie makes his biggest mistake. We don’t want to empathise with Michael or Jason, they are blank slates on which we write our own fears. That’s why they’ve lasted so long and why Rob Zombie has succeeded where countless teens failed, he’s killed Michael Myers both literally and figuratively.
If you want to see Halloween do yourself a favour and watch the original instead and if it’s a film about a cold blooded psychopath you want, wait for Uwe Boll’s infinitely superior Seed.
Comments»
It comes to something when Uwe Boll can be considered to be making better films than someone else…
Shame about Halloween if your opinions are accurate. I do really like the original (although it took me a couple of viewings in the early days to start getting into it) and thought Rob Z might end up doing a good job.
P.S.
Ian, don’t know where you saw it (hopefully you didn’t download it because, as a film fan I can never condone that on moral grounds) but I’ve just been reading a review over at Horrorview and they had some interesting comments to make regarding significant differences between the workprint (which was downloadable) and the final theatrical print. The review of the latter was highly favourable. You can read it here:
http://www.horrorview.com/Reviews/H/Halloween_2007.htm
An interesting alternative perspective I reckon!
While I’d agree that downloading films is wrong, watching a workprint is a little different to watching your average pirate DVD. There’s an interest in seeing a director’s earliest vision of a film (if there wasn’t Warners wouldn’t be including a work print in the forthcoming Blade Runner box set) but few get any kind of official release and even when they do its often a long wait (again look at Blade Runner).
As for Halloween, in my view the workprint is truer to Zombie’s vision, with any changes forced on him by the studio. Both versions are equally bad though, as they both suffer from the same problem - Michael Myers is now just another nut with a knife.