During the first 22 years of Halloween’s existence, it ventured into all sorts of territories and branched off into all manner of timelines. Eventually, someone was going to remake it. Rob Zombie stepped up and the result were reimaginings of the first two movies that still divide opinion to this day.
Halloween: Resurrection had effectively killed off the Halloween franchise as it was. Its release in 2002 undid the good work in Halloween H20 (but not Josh Hartnett’s hair), and generally felt like the most cynical, lazy use of the Halloween name to date. As horror itself was shifting into a heavy remake phase, it was probably the right time to start over.
It was just shy of the series’ 30th anniversary in 2007 when Zombie, the musician and director of gloopy horror hits such as The Devil’s Rejects, took on the task of remaking John Carpenter‘s seminal 1978 slasher. His original plan was to have the first film be entirely about the younger years of Michael Myers. You know, the stuff in between murdering his sister and coming back to murder his other sister.
That didn’t quite happen as planned (Weinstein involvement unsurprisingly caused issues with these films), so instead Halloween (2007) is that for half of the runtime, and then becomes a full remake of the first movie with a more violent twist. In Zombie’s version, young Michael is a troubled boy from a very broken home. It’s shown there’s something fundamentally wrong with him beyond his living situation, but the lengthy attempt to give a reason for Michael’s psychopathic tendencies doesn’t land particularly well. It feels needless for the character we know. The performance from Daeg Ferch as young Myers is good though.
A Masterclass in Brutality
Both of Zombie’s films are fine slashers in their own right, but as Halloween movies, they frustrate, like two very good slasher movies that happened to be draped in Halloween costumes.
If you can remove yourself from the connection to some degree, the latter half of the first film is a masterclass in brutality. Tyler Mane’s Michael Myers is a towering slab of terror that exudes an intimidating aura every time he shows up.
Halloween II follows similar beats to the original Halloween II in that it largely takes place in a hospital, but Zombie’s film strays further and further from being a Halloween entry and that builds frustration once more.
A key issue is Scout Taylor-Compton as an unlikable, annoying Laurie Strode (more so than in the first film). And Malcolm McDowell‘s Loomis is reduced to being a Gail Weathers wannabe whilst a slew of visions, while visually intriguing, fail to deliver anything of value. Zombie tries so hard to distance his take from the original in so many ways that it feels counterintuitive when he then turns around and plays Carpenter’s score or homages what came before.
The opening sequence could have been a great breaking-off point to take the film somewhere truly new by slicing through an established story, but it becomes clearer and clearer that it is going to bail on that promise. To the point, I actually sighed dramatically the first time I saw it confirmed.
Normally the remark made when someone complains about remakes is ”the originals still exist”, but that’s exactly what makes these movies so frustrating. It occasionally succeeds in doing something new with a very tired franchise, and Zombie’s love for Halloween is evident in many positive ways, but the balance between reinvention and remake is too volatile to settle into a new solid form.
The less precious you are about Halloween as a franchise, the more you’ll get out of Zombie’s versions. Halloween is probably the most divisive of all the slasher franchises out there, so at the very least, Zombie succeeded in making them feel like a familiar part of Halloween’s legacy.
