Director: Rob Zombie
Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Sheri Moon Zombie, Tyler Mane, Scout Taylor-Compton
Have I Seen it Before: Ugh. Yes. Let’s start with a note before I even begin this screening. There are few films which have annoyed me more over the years. But this time, I’m going to try and take the film in under its own terms and see if I can’t come to some kind of peace with the film. Let’s see how it works.
Did I Like It: I want to start the review proper with the things that are good, or at least I can get behind in the film.
After a litany of director-for-hires making under protest films they really didn’t want to, Rob Zombie is a director offering a vision of the material.
Malcolm McDowell is legitimately terrific casting for the new Sam Loomis. He has close enough to Donald Pleasance’s energy, with just a pinch more sinister cynicism and a bit less campy magic to make him a new presence.
Zombie’s depiction of violence is visceral. It’s impossible to be desensitized by this film, if for no other reason than its primary goal from moment to moment is not to entertain, but to provide discomfort.
I’m trying to find other things, and I will admit that I probably didn’t viscerally hate the movie on this screening, but I still don’t like it. Ultimately, I’m not a fan of Zombie’s aesthetic, and it is here in spades. He recasts Myers (Daeg Faerch as a child, Tyler Mane as an adult) not as the boy down the street who inexplicably became the visage of evil. Here, the kid meaner than the meanest bully becomes and even meaner person as time progresses. Myers is so over-explained, and in such a pedestrian way that I honestly can’t tell—despite all of the nauseating violence on display—whether or not Zombie wants us to root for the shape.
And that startling new vision? It’s more often than not watered down, usually collapsing under either a need to have four or five different climaxes, or just aping the scenes from the Carpenter original.
I’m not a purist, or at least I try not to be, but I find making Myers just another psychopath with a checklist of every little element in the DSM.
And that’s what Zombie is, ultimately. Cheap.
After all that, I need a break before I even dream of taking in Halloween II (2009)…