Director: Rob Zombie
Rating: 0 out of 10
Well, Rob Zombie, you did it. You took a franchise that started with a horror classic in 1978, spawned seven sequels ranging from pretty darn good to ambitiously mediocre, and rebooted itself with you at the helm with modestly servicable results....and you killed it forever. You've successfully made the worst installment in a series that had nine previous films. Let me say this: it's not just the worst Halloween movie, or one of the worst horror movies ever: it's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I struggled with the rating on this one. A zero is pretty far down, and I never thought I would ever give out a zero. But after thinking about it, there just isn't anything redeeming about the movie at all. And I LOVE the Halloween series. I even enjoy Halloween 6!
Here is what's wrong with Rob Zombie: he thinks this franchise is his, which I guess was signed off by the Weinsteins and/or the Akkad family. Thinking back, the only reason his first attempt at a Halloween movie was even remotely watchable was because he had some source material to go off. Here, it's all Zombie. Let me just throw out a few of the awful ideas he came up with: the film opens with a 20-minute dream sequence (cut it!), Michael grunts every time he kills someone (all of the sudden), he eats a dog on camera (unnecessary), his main motivation for killing is the apparition of his dead mother and a white horse (WHAT??), he walks around the majority of the time without his mask on, and Dr. Loomis has been turned into a money hungry, media savvy shark.
I'm going to focus on these last 2 points. The mask: one of the most iconic images in all of horror is the plain white, expressionless mask of Michael Myers. Zombie set-up Michael's obsession with masks in his first installment. In that flick Michael made masks with his bare hands while he was locked up in Smith's Grove and was never seen without one on. The walls of his room were covered from top to bottom with homemade masks, and he was very protective of them. He wouldn't even take it off when his mother came to visit him. Cut to two years later and all of the sudden he doesn't need a mask, often times walking around freely without it, looking like a homeless person or a Hell's Angel. Zombie should have just made a whole different movie and had Tyler Mane be the maskless killer if he wanted to show his face so much. It still would be a bad movie, but at least he wouldn't have put a dagger in the heart of this franchise.
Ok, the last, and most insulting, point: the betrayel of the character of Dr. Loomis. Real quick: these aren't your characters, Rob!! You can't shape them into something they're not, and Dr. Loomis is not what you made him in this movie. According to Rob Zombie, Dr. Loomis' sole motivation is selling books, making money, and getting laid. Again, Rob, make a different movie where the killer's antagonist is an asshole, scumbag that nobody cares about, just don't put Halloween anywhere near the title. We get to watch Loomis routinely be an asshole to everyone for the majority of the 2-hour running time (wayyyyy too long, again) and then come to his senses in the last 3 minutes of the film. By that point he's been written off and all I want is for him to go away or be shot by the sheriff. The same goes for Laurie, who's turned into a goth-punk uber-bitch since the first one. I sat there thinking "When is she going to die so I can focus on someone else?" That's not a good thing. You know how you're supposed to root for the protagonist in movies? Not this movie, you're pretty much comfortable with everyone dying here.
I wish I didn't own this film. I hate every shred of it. Rob, I hope you never make another movie again.
Next: Unsure.....
No comments:
Post a Comment