A defense of Rob Zombie's "Halloween"
posted September 13, 2007
*** Contains Spoilers! ***
Critics have been slamming this film, and so have die-hard John Carpenter fans. Since I'm sick to death of remakes, and loathed Rob Zombie's film "House of 1000 Corpses", I expected to hate it, as well. But there seemed to be an odd disconnect between what the critics were saying and the box office figures, which are decent, if not stellar. Also, users on rottentomatoes.com and IMDB are rating the film moderately highly.
So I went to see it yesterday. And I loved it.
Certainly, the film has flaws, but many of the so-called criticisms I've heard turned out, in my opinion, to be the film's strengths. About half of the film takes place BEFORE the events depicted in the original 1978 film, showing us Michael Meyers as a young boy and his descent into becoming a psychopathic killer. While this seems to be the main point that fans of the original film hate -- and I do mean HATE -- many of those who like the film (myself included) consider it to be the most interesting part of the film.
Yes, I'm a big fan of the original. I've been re-watching the classic horror films lately, being disappointed in the dreck Hollywood has been putting out, and "Halloween" is one of the few from that time period that I think really still stands up to serious scrutiny. (How anyone ever thought the original "The Hills Have Eyes" was frightening is completely beyond me.) But I don't worship Michael Meyers. I don't lay awake at nights, fearing that someone will create a movie that "ruins" him. All of this "destroying an icon" crap that people keep wailing simply irritates me.
Seeing the origin of Michael Meyers was, to me, fascinating. I went through a phase of being fascinated with serial killers when I was in college, and read a lot about Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and the like. And what I read convinced me of one thing - serial killers are not made. They are born. The early history of many of them shows them to be disturbed at a very young age, often torturing and killing animals in secret as young children. Yet, they frequently have siblings who are raised almost exactly the same way, yet these siblings exhibit none of this behavior. Yes, they might have family troubles - abusive parents, perhaps (although often not), difficult childhoods (although divorce and family arguments are hardly adequate explanations, in this case) - but millions of other kids grow up in similar circumstances WITHOUT become psychopathic killers. Upbringing isn't the whole puzzle.
Similarly, I don't think Rob Zombie's depiction of Michael's troubled childhood is an EXPLANATION of what he later becomes. Michael is clearly psychotic from the first moment we meet him. He simply APPEARS to be an innocent child. His home life is pretty awful, and he's bullied at school, but this is not adequate as an explanation. It simply serves as background detail.
When young Michael crosses the line from killing animals to killing his first human being, it is truly horrifying. The scene is the best in the film, depicted with stark brutality, in an incredibly realistic fashion. Not gory - the critics who lamented the gore in this film were apparently so shocked by the brutality of some of the killings that they saw something that isn't there. This film is bloody. We see gallons of it. But very little else. (I think there was one decapitation scene.) What is shocking is hearing this ten-year-old boy screaming in rage, as he hacks over and over again at someone with a knife or a branch or a baseball bat.
After killing a nurse in the asylum (which always seems oddly empty of anyone but Michael, Dr. Loomis and a few guards), Michael withdraws completely and stops speaking. As he grows older, he becomes obsessed with hiding his face behind masks, and he is allowed to wile away his time making disturbing masks reminiscent of Leatherface. Unfortunately, as Michael stops speaking, he becomes less interesting. By the time he escapes (in a rather implausible scene), the film has descended into the standard slasher film formula.
Another element of the story that is upsetting fans of the original film is that Michael Meyers occasionally shows elements of humanity, even as an adult. Admittedly, not much. But when he kills his family, as a child, he spares his mother, who treats him kindly, and his baby sister. And when he returns to his childhood home, now abandoned, to seek out Laurie Stroud, we discover that she is his baby sister. After his mother committed suicide, she was adopted by the Stroud family. And when he first kidnaps her, Michael is tender towards her - until she screws it up by stabbing him. (Although you can hardly blame her.)
This variation of the original film storyline has fans frothing at the mouth. Frankly, I don't care. Within the context of the Zombie film, it works perfectly well. (Although how he managed to track her down is completely glossed over - presumably, he simply recognized her somehow.)
As we plod through killing after killing in the second half, the film does get a little tedious. I happen to believe this of most slasher films, but that's beside the point. John Carpenter did handle this part of it better. But the ending, I think, redeems the new film. After Laurie is trapped in the empty swimming pool behind the Meyer house, in a scene which I think is suspenseful, despite rants that Rob Zombie was able to elicit no suspense in the film whatsoever, we go through a fairly stock crawling-through-the-walls-as-the-villain-breaks-holes-in-it sequence (I can't remember the first time I've seen this, but it doesn't provide much punch for me), ending with Laurie and Michael plummeting out of the upstairs window together.
I won't completely ruin the ending, except to say that the last minute or so made the movie for me. (Well the first murder was pretty memorable, too.) It's the most realistic reaction to being chased and tortured all night by a psychopath that I've ever seen in a slasher film, and I think it's perfect.
I don't think the film is fantastic, but it's pretty good. The hand-held camera work is generally very effective, although it often started to give me a headache, when I was watching it. And it had an intensity which too many horror films lack these days.
Lastly, the film struck me as sexist, with women's breasts everywhere and not a single naked man in sight. I appreciate that Zombie is a heterosexual male and this is what heterosexual males like, and it's also a staple of slasher films. But there were at least two or three scenes in which men and women were having sex - together, in fact - and the camera really seemed to be going to great lengths to AVOID showing us any male nudity, so we could focus on the women. That's the point at which it gets silly, to me. If two people are having sex in a scene, they should both be naked. Even if you assume (wrongly) that no gay men will be watching the movie, a good percentage of the audience is female, so why be so one-sided?
Critics have been slamming this film, and so have die-hard John Carpenter fans. Since I'm sick to death of remakes, and loathed Rob Zombie's film "House of 1000 Corpses", I expected to hate it, as well. But there seemed to be an odd disconnect between what the critics were saying and the box office figures, which are decent, if not stellar. Also, users on rottentomatoes.com and IMDB are rating the film moderately highly.
So I went to see it yesterday. And I loved it.
Certainly, the film has flaws, but many of the so-called criticisms I've heard turned out, in my opinion, to be the film's strengths. About half of the film takes place BEFORE the events depicted in the original 1978 film, showing us Michael Meyers as a young boy and his descent into becoming a psychopathic killer. While this seems to be the main point that fans of the original film hate -- and I do mean HATE -- many of those who like the film (myself included) consider it to be the most interesting part of the film.
Yes, I'm a big fan of the original. I've been re-watching the classic horror films lately, being disappointed in the dreck Hollywood has been putting out, and "Halloween" is one of the few from that time period that I think really still stands up to serious scrutiny. (How anyone ever thought the original "The Hills Have Eyes" was frightening is completely beyond me.) But I don't worship Michael Meyers. I don't lay awake at nights, fearing that someone will create a movie that "ruins" him. All of this "destroying an icon" crap that people keep wailing simply irritates me.
Seeing the origin of Michael Meyers was, to me, fascinating. I went through a phase of being fascinated with serial killers when I was in college, and read a lot about Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and the like. And what I read convinced me of one thing - serial killers are not made. They are born. The early history of many of them shows them to be disturbed at a very young age, often torturing and killing animals in secret as young children. Yet, they frequently have siblings who are raised almost exactly the same way, yet these siblings exhibit none of this behavior. Yes, they might have family troubles - abusive parents, perhaps (although often not), difficult childhoods (although divorce and family arguments are hardly adequate explanations, in this case) - but millions of other kids grow up in similar circumstances WITHOUT become psychopathic killers. Upbringing isn't the whole puzzle.
Similarly, I don't think Rob Zombie's depiction of Michael's troubled childhood is an EXPLANATION of what he later becomes. Michael is clearly psychotic from the first moment we meet him. He simply APPEARS to be an innocent child. His home life is pretty awful, and he's bullied at school, but this is not adequate as an explanation. It simply serves as background detail.
When young Michael crosses the line from killing animals to killing his first human being, it is truly horrifying. The scene is the best in the film, depicted with stark brutality, in an incredibly realistic fashion. Not gory - the critics who lamented the gore in this film were apparently so shocked by the brutality of some of the killings that they saw something that isn't there. This film is bloody. We see gallons of it. But very little else. (I think there was one decapitation scene.) What is shocking is hearing this ten-year-old boy screaming in rage, as he hacks over and over again at someone with a knife or a branch or a baseball bat.
After killing a nurse in the asylum (which always seems oddly empty of anyone but Michael, Dr. Loomis and a few guards), Michael withdraws completely and stops speaking. As he grows older, he becomes obsessed with hiding his face behind masks, and he is allowed to wile away his time making disturbing masks reminiscent of Leatherface. Unfortunately, as Michael stops speaking, he becomes less interesting. By the time he escapes (in a rather implausible scene), the film has descended into the standard slasher film formula.
Another element of the story that is upsetting fans of the original film is that Michael Meyers occasionally shows elements of humanity, even as an adult. Admittedly, not much. But when he kills his family, as a child, he spares his mother, who treats him kindly, and his baby sister. And when he returns to his childhood home, now abandoned, to seek out Laurie Stroud, we discover that she is his baby sister. After his mother committed suicide, she was adopted by the Stroud family. And when he first kidnaps her, Michael is tender towards her - until she screws it up by stabbing him. (Although you can hardly blame her.)
This variation of the original film storyline has fans frothing at the mouth. Frankly, I don't care. Within the context of the Zombie film, it works perfectly well. (Although how he managed to track her down is completely glossed over - presumably, he simply recognized her somehow.)
As we plod through killing after killing in the second half, the film does get a little tedious. I happen to believe this of most slasher films, but that's beside the point. John Carpenter did handle this part of it better. But the ending, I think, redeems the new film. After Laurie is trapped in the empty swimming pool behind the Meyer house, in a scene which I think is suspenseful, despite rants that Rob Zombie was able to elicit no suspense in the film whatsoever, we go through a fairly stock crawling-through-the-walls-as-the-villain-breaks-holes-in-it sequence (I can't remember the first time I've seen this, but it doesn't provide much punch for me), ending with Laurie and Michael plummeting out of the upstairs window together.
I won't completely ruin the ending, except to say that the last minute or so made the movie for me. (Well the first murder was pretty memorable, too.) It's the most realistic reaction to being chased and tortured all night by a psychopath that I've ever seen in a slasher film, and I think it's perfect.
I don't think the film is fantastic, but it's pretty good. The hand-held camera work is generally very effective, although it often started to give me a headache, when I was watching it. And it had an intensity which too many horror films lack these days.
Lastly, the film struck me as sexist, with women's breasts everywhere and not a single naked man in sight. I appreciate that Zombie is a heterosexual male and this is what heterosexual males like, and it's also a staple of slasher films. But there were at least two or three scenes in which men and women were having sex - together, in fact - and the camera really seemed to be going to great lengths to AVOID showing us any male nudity, so we could focus on the women. That's the point at which it gets silly, to me. If two people are having sex in a scene, they should both be naked. Even if you assume (wrongly) that no gay men will be watching the movie, a good percentage of the audience is female, so why be so one-sided?