Halloween

Very few movies get me out to the theater for the midnight showing on opening night these days. But such was my love for the original Halloween, my reverence for the work of Donald Pleasence and John Carpenter, that I was excited to see the remake.

So there I was last night at midnight eagerly waiting to see Rob Zombies take on the film. I admit I had some reservations, Zombies skills thus far have been largely in making people squeamish and disturbed through scenes of pure brutality and stark questions about the dark, scary recesses of the HUMAN mind. Halloween, to me, has always been (yes I know it's a "slasher" flick) of the more subtle variety. Carpenter scared me more with the brilliantly crafted scenes of Meyers hiding just out of sight, in broad daylight and surrounded by leaves and an overcast sky. He built tension with Meyers staring up at Laurie Strode from the yard and then vanishing just as quickly. Carpenter is brilliant at that kind of tension. The killings in the first film were brutal enough, terrifying enough, but they accentuated the myth and the inherent evil that Meyers was built into, they weren't the center of the whole movie.

Anyway, I don't like cover bands much. And for a reason. Songs in their original form were written and sung for a specific reason by the artists. The tone and tempo of the music can evoke moods and feelings, can make you nostalgic or upbeat or sad or what have you. Songs, in total, are created to compliment the intention of a lyricist that has a vision of what the songs about. So when a cover band, no matter how talented, takes a great song and turns it into a punk piece, to me, something is lost in translation. The song no longer truly represents it's original intentions. So for classic songs, cherished songs, you shouldn't stray too far from the original work. Tweak it, adjust it, but don't throw it away and start again.

But that's a little bit what Halloween felt like to me. It felt like a cover piece by an extremely talented band, but not quite what it was meant to be. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Rob Zombies work--his camera work in this film was spectacular once again--but rewriting John Carpenter is a real tough task. Carpenter is a one of a kind writer/director. All other attempts to remake his films have been total disasters, culminating with last years abysmal The Fog. But Zombie felt up to it and took a shot, who can blame him, I'm sure he knows how talented he is.

But what should have been like a world-class, highly skilled artist adding a few brush strokes to a da vinci and trying to add his once-in-a-lifetime gift to a masterpiece instead became something like a skilled apprentice starting with a blank canvas and referencing a masterwork. There's elements left of Carpenters brilliance, there an essence of evil and terror and there are some spooky and gratifying shots, but overall Zombie is just not there yet as a writer and he strayed way too far from the original classic for my taste.

I don't want to spoil the film for you so I will avoid any specifics here. But it's safe, I hope, to tell you that Zombie has decided to give Michael Meyers a back-story here. The first hour plus is an origin piece and the bloody battle in Haddenfield is the end of the film and not the centerpiece. In a way it's a ballsy move and I respect the shot he took here, but in truth I preferred Meyers as a soulless and evil being with no explanation. Just an evil fucked up soul out for a murderous rampage, something inexplicable and all the more daunting because of the mystery. If you had to give Meyers a backstory and try to attribute some environmental reasons for his behavior what would you expect? A terrible upbringing, drunk father and stripper mother maybe? What's original about that? Lot's of run of the mill psychopaths are defined and created this way, tons of books and movies have done this and created killers using their shitty home lives as a backdrop. Why make Meyers a run of the mill serial killer? Why not just let it be that he was born evil and we just can't explain it? Isn't it scarier to believe that random evil souls can just be created and sort of fall into our laps form time to time? To me it is surely is.

Sure, Zombie does try to let us know that Michael Meyers is a 'perfect storm' of factors, some, presumably, just pure evil and some environmental. But that's just too much explanation for me, it wasn't needed.

Zombie also took liberties with Dr. Loomis, played brilliantly my Malcolm McDowell, and gave his character some unnerving qualites, had him attempt to capitalize on his work with Myers by publishing a book and hitting the lecture circuit. Where the original Loomis had an eerie connection with Myers, could see the pure evil within and was obsessed with what he considered to be an evil entity and not a man. The original Loomis came to be convinced that Myers must be destroyed. His connection to the evil within was frightening and powerful, intriguing and compelling--it convinced me that one or the other of them must die, both could not survive. If Myers was inexplicably evil then Loomis had some bit of inexplicable good in him. The Loomis character in Zombies version is not as compelling, not as convinced that he is dealing with evil and not man. Although I loved McDowell's performance I don't think his character was written well or gave him much to work with.

The rest of the cast is OK, not great, not bad. Really not all that essential. Scout Taylor-Compton was a bit of a disappointment as Laurie Strode, I just didn't think she pulled off the terrified for her life teenager as well as Jamie Lee Curtis did. Curtis had a way of showing us this very primal fear, this thing that morphs into a survival instinct, you could see it in her eyes. Compton is a competent performer and plays the whole bookish, good girl thing well. But she never taps into that primal terror, never shows us this unexpected strength that Curtis did.

The film is full of clever shots, holy shit moments, things that are absolutely creepy. Zombie is deft at creating scenes that look scary, like Myers peering from a window on an overcast night with leaves swirling around him, scary scenes. But in my mind those scenes were done for him and all he had to do was stand on the shoulders of John Carpenter to create them. I mean, how hard is it to take Myers, a fall night, some leaves and an old house and make something LOOK scary. I'll bet half of you could do it. The trick is to take the slam dunk scary shots Carpenter gave you and do more with them. And the hard part is building suspense and creating a character that scares you. Making a hero so reluctant in Loomis that we know he's not acting to be heroic but rather that he feels he has no choice, it's self-preservation, it's trying to stop a town from being slaughtered. It's a gnawing feeling that Myers must be removed from the earth, those are the compelling reasons Loomis acts. I didn't get that sense this time, never really fel the obsession or bizarre connection between the two.

When I left the movie I didn't hate it, and I still don't. I think it was a Hell of a try and there's some really excellent stuff in there. I did feel a little too much like it was a Devils Rejects spin-off, I think I have the whole white-trash vibe understood now, let's get back to something supernatural, eh?

If you loved the original and are familiar with Carpenters assorted works and love them, you're not gonna be happy with this. If you can view it like it's a different movie, sort of set aside your memories of the original, you can enjoy it. There's enough good work and direction to make it enjoyable, enough Rob Zombie exploring the inherent evil in people to be compelling. It's really a mixed bag of a movie. Not enough wrong with it to hate, not enough right with it to believe they nailed a remake of a brilliant classic. It may seem like a chicken shit answer but the movie left me conflicted; not loving it, not hating it, but certainly able to appreciate it. Rob Zombie has some awesome skill, I look forward to his next outing. A for effort here, if you don't mind tossing out the original, go see this one.

But next Halloween, with the lights off and the leaves swirling around my own house, will I reach for my DVD of Rob Zombies Halloween? Hell no. I'll stick in the 1978 original. For me, Halloween is not Halloween without Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence and the kind of soulless evil that only John Carpenter can master.