Happy October and welcome! All 31 days this month, I will be reviewing all the films I watch in the month of October. They’re mostly a selection of horror or suspense films in my own library or films and shows that have been recommended to me.
Please enjoy and leave a comment!
And if you missed any of our past reflections, take a look:
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Psycho (1960)
The Haunting (1963)
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
The Other (1972)
The Legend of Hell House (1973)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Halloween (1978)
Alien (1979)
The Shining (1980)
Halloween II (1981)
The Evil Dead (1981)
Halloween III – Season of the Witch (1982)
Ghostbusters (1984)
Teen Wolf (1985)
Aliens (1986)
Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
Predator (1987)
The Monster Squad (1987)
The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
The Lost Boys (1987)
Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn (1987)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
They Live (1988)
Beetlejuice (1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
Ghostbusters II (1989)
Predator 2 (1990)
The Addams Family (1991)
Alien 3 (1992)
Army of Darkness (1992)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
The Crow (1994)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
Scream (1996)
Alien: Resurrection (1997)
Scream 2 (1997)
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
What Lies Beneath (2000)
Scream 3 (2000)
28 Days Later (2002)
Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
The Ring (2002)
Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
Identity (2003)
AVP: Alien vs Predator (2004)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Snakes on a Plane (2006)
Alien vs Predator: Requiem (2007)
Our next film is…
WATCHING: Halloween (2007)
DIRECTOR: Rob Zombie, death metal rocker and one of the most overrated directors there ever was.
WHAT IS IT?: Sigh…we’re doing this…AGAIN.
Halloween (2007) is the beginning of the third “timeline” of Halloween films. This time, the franchise was rebooted by rocker-turned-director Rob Zombie.
THE PLOT: Yeah, this is where I usually do the plot summary.
Why bother?
I can’t. I simply can’t.
Director Rob Zombie spends the first half of the movie giving us a “Halloween” film John Carpenter was actively attempting to avoid showing to people, presenting us with Michael Myers’ home life which is horribly unpleasant to watch. Michael’s mom is a stripper (because of course she is), Dad’s a bigot and an alcoholic (because of course he is), his sister is promiscuous (yep, just like she was in the first film…we’ve come so far in 30 years, haven’t we?) and Michael, himself, is already showing psychotic tendencies, murdering his pets and, eventually, murdering his bully in cold blood…right before he goes nuts and murders his entire family, save for his Mom. This entire grimy, gory affair is done in the first fifteen minutes or so — and this is where you either keep watching or shut the thing off and go outside to spend some time looking at flowers and tell yourself that the world isn’t some dark, horrible place where bad things happen.
The next quarter of the film goes into Michael’s psyche and gives us Michael Myers as a tragic figure…which is fine, I guess. Thankfully, Malcolm McDowell takes the place of the late Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, who comes in to try to save Michael who, day by day, begins to vanish, his conscious self long gone, replaced by what Loomis says is a “shape”, and not a boy. Of course, things just get darker as Michael’s mom (Sherri Moon-Zombie, btw), who’s depressed after her boy murders a nurse while she’s visiting, puts a gun in her mouth and pulls the trigger, leaving little baby Laurie Strode and Michael as the sole survivors of an awful situation.
And it gets even darker than that as Michael finally wakes up from his catatonic state to murder two sanitarium guards who rape one of the female inmates. Sigh…before murdering the only guard who was ever good to him and treated him like a person.
Then he escapes the sanitarium and we spend the last half of the film sitting through a watered-down rehash of Carpenter’s classic film.
Oh, wait…forgot to mention that, unlike the original, Laurie’s nowhere close to who she was in the original. In Halloween (2007), she’s spunky, unnervingly outgoing, oversexed and horny, too, like her friends. Wasn’t Laurie more introverted and independent of her friends’ lusts and desires and — you know what? Screw this. I’m not gonna go on.
WHAT DID CRITICS THINK?: They hated it. What can you say? We already did this movie in 1978…not so much with the abusive, deadbeat parents and grungy hillbilly 70’s stripper vibe, though. Even John Carpenter, who served as an Executive Producer on the film, was not very impressed with the film and took issue with Zombie calling him “cold” during production.
WHAT DID I THINK?: I’ve seen everything Rob Zombie has to offer. You know what his best film is? “Werewolf Women of the S.S.”, the short, fake trailer from the film “Grindhouse” — and I am venturing a guess that if Zombie made that into a full-fledged feature-length film, it would have been as bad as just about everything else he’s done.
Ever the fucking edgelord.
I love that he has a soft spot for b-movie schlock and 70’s grindhouse pictures that barely saw the light of day but he’s as pretentious as they come when it comes to film. I hate saying that about any director but it’s the truth…ugh…and I still have the sequel to sit through…
Zombie’s remake of “Halloween” is needlessly violent, horrifying, dumb, exploitative garbage masquerading as a “nostalgic reboot”.
I mean, holy living fuck, Rob. Halloween (2007) only had to be better than “Halloween: Resurrection” and people might have sung your praises…
How in the hell did you fuck that up?
GRADE: F