American writer Dorothy Parker is famous for the line “Oh, what fresh hell is this?” Parker’s well-known rhetorical occurred to me when it was announced some time ago that the wags at Dimension Films, the genre subsidiary of the Weinstein Bothers, had decided to remake the prototype slasher film Halloween, the film that showed killers everywhere that babysitters made sexy prey. Although the sequels devolved from satisfactory to Busta Rhymes, the original remains a powerful and complete horror masterpiece.



Then they threw the reins for the remake to nouveaux horror auteur and old school hard rocker Rob Zombie and suddenly ‘fresh hell’ in a dismissive voice became ‘fresh hell’ in a more jubilant voice of anticipation. No one can overstate the B-movie delight of Zombie’s last movie The Devil’s Rejects, it was more Grindhouse than Grindhouse. The thought, I guess, was that if Zombie was involved then there might be something new and different enough to justify encroaching on sacred ground. After all, not all remakes are bad, original Halloween director John Carpenter proved that when he lensed The Thing, which many film-o-philes agree is a good remake that’s arguably better than the original.



Zombie’s flourish serves him well. In fact it quite nearly makes this a case of justifiable remake. In the nay column though is the fact the Zombie chose to centre such a large piece of his film on the early days of Michael Myers, the film’s indestructible boogeyman. We see a young Michael (Daeg Faerch) try to cope in his white trash home: his drunken step dad (William Forsythe), his stripper mom (Sherri Moon Zombie), his promiscuous older sister (Hanna Hall) and his baby sister he affectionately calls ‘Boo’.



So I guess there was still some stuff from Rejects that Rob was trying to work out, because if I came from Michael Myers’ background as presented in this film I’d probably get knife happy on anyone and everyone too. I guess Zombie forgot that the title of the original Halloween script was “The Babysitter Murders” meaning that the focus was the girls not the ghoul. I don’t need to know the zoological evolution of Gill Man in order to enjoy The Creature from the Black Lagoon, nor the precise astrological coordinates of the aliens’ home world so that I can watch War of the Worlds in peace.



After we leave young Michael on the psych ward, we flash-forward 15 years to when the real story gets underway as the big man (now played by Sabretooth Taylor Mane) heads home to find baby sis Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton), which is a real interesting twist because we didn’t find out until Halloween II in the old series that Laurie and Michael were sister and brother. Zombie settles in to a kind of mode for a while where he seems to be doing the Gus van Sant thing with his shot-by-shot remake of Psycho. Then Zombie manages to find his gumption and take the remake to some exciting new places.



That’s the frustrating thing with this movie: it is always in the cusp of true goodness only to falter again in a failed delivery or scene. We get treated to some great stuff, some cool jumps and some inventive camera work. Cool cameos from the Zombie repository players like Danny Trejo, Bill Moseley and Sid Haig help give the film a genuine Zombie feel, but like I said, the thing seems caught between being Carpenter’s Halloween and Zombie’s. And some of the Zombie spins are a tad bizarre and bizarrely questionable including Michael’s trademark mask being inherited from his dead sister’s boyfriend, who we see earlier in the film wanting to have sex with her while wearing it. Is there some next level Fraudian analysis going on and is it intentional of unintentional?



While the psychology of a killer can make for interesting watching (see Silence of the Lambs or TV’s Criminal Minds), there’s then a scene where young Michael sits by the side of the road with an empty trick or treat bag while his Mom strips and his sister has tawdry sex upstairs while the tune “Love Hurts” by Nazareth plays in the background. And to make matters worse, the inspired casting of Malcolm McDowell as Doctor Loomis falls somewhat short as McDowell is totally one dimensional and ineffectual in the part.



I think Michael Myers worked better when he was known simply as ‘The Shape’, which was the moniker he was referenced as in the original Halloween. He’s an inhuman monster that just randomly one night slaughtered his sister, not reacting to years of emotional, and probably physical, abuse, which makes his anger and blood lust a little easier to comprehend. I’ve heard 30 Days of Night creator Steve Niles say that we have a tendency to humanize or monsters and make them our friends and I think that’s what Zombie is trying to do. The question is, I guess: do you want a humanized Michael Myers?



All-in-all, Zombie’s Halloween is a mixed bag, but it’s got enough good parts to it to be worth recommending. I admire Zombie’s zeal and his rather fearless approach to the material in making a Halloween he wanted to see, but again, improving on perfection is an oxymoron. I hope Zombie returns to his original material next, and I hope that Hollywood money men learn to leave well enough alone. I should point out that only one of these wishes have any chance of coming true.