A Neutered Beast
posted on Thursday, November 01, 2007 in Movie Reviews
One can feel, while watching this remake of the slasher originator Halloween, that writer/director Rob Zombie had really lofty goals. He wanted to take the classic and move it into modern times, all the while fleshing out the character of Michael Myers, making him more than just a killer in a mask. He wanted to truly explore psychosis, to let the audience look into the eyes of evil. But for all the lofty goals, Halloween just isn’t very good.
The film sticks pretty closely to the story of the original. Michael Myers is a murderous mental patient who escapes and goes back to his hometown to wreak havoc on Halloween. This time, though, more of Michael’s back story is explored. We get to see what his family life was like, how he was treated in school, and what he was mostly doing in the mental institution. These are intriguing additions to the original, but it just isn’t pulled off very well.
It works conceptually, but everything else just fails. The script just isn’t good enough to convey the apparent intention behind the film. There’s a sense that the film wanted to be realistic, but the script doesn’t do that. It makes poor leaps of logic and creates ludicrous situations.
The acting is pretty uneven throughout the film. The main girls in the picture are pretty horrible. Tyler Mane makes Michael Myers a real force to be feared, but really doesn’t do much else. The film is shot kind of shoddily, with poorly thought out frames and inconsistent movement.
So this film already has a lot going against, but it’s the cuts that ruin it. The version being shown here has been cut down to an R13 rating. That’s right. It’s a slasher film (and not just any slasher film: it’s Halloween!) without nudity or gratuitous violence. It’s obvious that this film was meant to be R18, so one has to ask the question: what’s the point? Without all of genre’s hallmarks, this film doesn’t even cater to the most hardcore of slasher fans.
So really, there isn’t any reason to see this new version of Halloween in the cinemas. It’s a little unfair, but it didn’t have to be neutered like this. This was meant to be R18, and that’s what we ought to have gotten. One could see it getting an extra star if it were uncut. As it stands, however, the film has been simply hacked to death.
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