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MetaCritic: 47

I love great horror movies, but I’m also a big fan of the cheesy ones. I own at least five different Friday the 13th movies, two Halloween sequels, various zombie flicks, and assorted other gems from the $1 bin at the Record Exchange. I’m not exactly sure whether that means I have high or low standards for the genre, but we’ll just say that I appreciate both the awesome and the awesomely bad. About the only time I really dislike a horror movie is when it presents itself as a serious and I go into it expecting it to actually be a good movie, but it turns out to just be bland and predictable.

When I originally heard that Rob Zombie was going to be filming a remake of the original Halloween, I was intrigued but only allowed myself to be cautiously optimistic. As weird as it was, I did enjoy The Devil’s Rejects and appreciate the fact that Zombie is a huge horror movie connoisseur and respects the genre. John Carpenter’s Halloween was far and away the best of the series, and really the only one that didn’t fall into “awesomely bad” territory, so I was happy that Zombie would, at least, be working with a script/plot that works. So, I went into the new incarnation of the classic with as few expectations and preconceptions as possible.

One thing that I liked about Zombie’s version is that he spends a significantly greater amount of time developing Michael Myers back story. He does eventually become the soulless killing machine that we have come to know, but we are at least given a greater understanding of how he became that way, even if it isn’t fully explained. One negative about Michael’s increased back story is that we have to suffer through several scenes with the director’s talentless wife, Sheri Moon Zombie. Both she and the guy who played her husband totally overplayed their roles. I know it’s a Rob Zombie movie about a serial killer, but the “family dynamic” displayed between Michael, his older sister, his mother, and the step-father is totally and completely ridiculous. In addition to his struggles to accurately portray even dysfunctional family life, he apparently has absolutely no grasp on the conversational patterns of teenage girls. I understand that we live in a highly sexualized society, and that this is a slasher movie, but come on man; the dialogue between all of the film’s teenage characters is absurd.

While he did make a few changes from the original movie, Zombie made sure to keep all of the original horror movie clichés in tact, most notably the famous equation: Teens + Sex + Alcohol = GRUESOME DEATH!!! Of course these scenes are all over the top and ridiculous, but the plus side, for all us hormone driven young males out there, is that one of the girls in the film who made the mistake of participating in all this sinning is the lovely Danielle Harris. You may, but probably don’t remember Danielle Harris as one of the stars of Halloween 4 and 5 back in the day. She was a lot younger then, but it’s crazy to believe she’s 31 (as of June 1, Happy Birthday), because I would have pegged her at more like 21-25 on appearance alone.

Unfortunately, as we all know, being good looking doesn’t necessarily translate into tremendous acting skills. Neither Harris nor anyone else does a particularly impressive job with their role. The generic humongous guy who played Michael was appropriately menacing, but if you put that mask on anyone that big and had them walk around ominously it’d be almost impossible for them not to be.

All-in-all, Rob Zombie’s Halloween doesn’t make enough significant strides to separate itself from the original, or even match it in quality for that matter. At the same time, it wasn’t an embarrassment, and was better than the majority of horror movies coming out these days on the strength of the story of the movie it was remaking alone. I appreciate Zombie’s attempt to add his own flair to a classic, but I think he should stick to making originals that better fit his style like The Devil’s Rejects.

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