Rob Zombie is a Total Hack
So I saw the new Halloween last night. And I’m going to preface this writing with a few things:
- Halloween is my favorite horror movie of all time. A lot of people feel the same way. It’s brilliant. You get chills when you hear that music.
- I worked in a movie theater for 2+ years. So it’s safe to say I’ve seen quite a few negative reactions to movies. But
- I’ve never seen someone walk out of a movie so furious that they actually kick open the theater door while walking out cursing the movie.
- Seriously, it was that bad.
The Original
What makes the original Halloween so awesome, so creepy, so scary, is that there is no explaination for his motives.
There is nothing more terrifying to us as terror without reason. Look at the first reaction (after of course, horror) to any tragedy that has happened in the last 20 years.
We look for the why. Everyone starts pointing fingers and tries to understand and rationalize what the reason is for someone snapping. There has to be a reason why. We have to understand.
There is nothing that scares us more than evil for evil’s sake. And that’s what (the original) Michaels Myers represents.
He comes from a seemingly well-to-do family. He’s just six. Yet, he kills his family. And no one can figure out why.
He doesn’t run after his victims. He has no emotion. He feels no pain. He can’t be stopped. He is our worst childhood fears, incarnate.
He’s the Boogeyman.
The Remake
Like many other fans, I was pretty pumped when I heard Rob Zombie was not only going to remake Halloween, but remake it as seen through the eyes of Michael Myers.
Who else could give us a look from the twisted perspective of an emotionless killer?
Seriously, how fucking cool is that? Relive the movie through the eyes of the Michael Myers? Sign me up!
But wait, Rob (can I call you Rob?), you’re known for gore. Halloween is not gory, it’s allusion and suspense. Gore is shock, not fear.
“I [Rob Zombie] plan to focus on character, mood and terror“
Oh really? Because the movie I just saw was ridiculously long on blood and pretty short on terror.
People were laughing, laughing! throughout the entire show. And not just one or two people, almost everyone (even the teenage girls). That is, when they weren’t audibly whispering about how corny the movie is.
No one was holding their breath. No one was looking away because they just can’t watch. They were laughing.
Because we’ve seen it before. You changed Michael Myers from a six year old from a normal family who is inexplicably, irrationally evil; The Boogeyman, to….
Wait for it…
An unusual long-haired outsider from a broken home (complete with abusive, alcoholic step-dad) who gets picked on at school.
Groundbreaking.
“Character, Mood and Terror”
Giving Michael Myers “character” is taking away everything that makes him terrifying. Giving us a reason why he kills is giving us a reason to not be scared of him. We can rationalize his actions.
Replacing the shy, slightly melancholy Laurie with a sassy, run-of-the-mill teen movie chick in short skirt and trendy art school glasses gives us nothing to feel sorry for.
There is “mood and terror” when Laurie is the quiet neighbor you sort of feel sorry for because she’s stuck babysitting while her friends are partying. You identify, you empathize. She’s the girl who sat next to you in class. YOU WANT HER TO GET AWAY.
You don’t care, can’t care, when the girl getting chased is the sassy, short skirt and trendy art school glasses that you’ve seen in every scary movie in the last 10 years. Hell, even Scream suspensefully sucks you in to Sidney Prescott’s life while making fun of the whole cliché slasher flick.
About a third of the way through the movie I got the feeling that they already had a slasher flick script written, but couldn’t get it greenlit so they plugged in Michael Myers as the killer and cherry-picked some memorable shots from the original to try and make it less a cliché slasher gorefest and cash in on the name.
Rob Zombie takes all the chilling, anxious horror of Halloween and replaces it with the predictable, mundane blood and gore he’s done before. And not even well. When teen girls are laughing at your “fresh, worthwhile approach” something is wrong.
Instead of offering a new twist on a classic story, we get another predictable weak Hollywood splatterfest remake with a memorable title bolted on.
Lame.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who hated this! First of all the original was a masterpiece, so the idea of not only redoing it but significantly changing the story is idiotic. Second of all when will people realize gore isn’t scary, suspense is scary. And suspense is more than “OMG there’s a bad guy right behind me!”
Also making the majority of his characters white trash, doesn’t do much in the way of making them sympathetic.
The lady behind me brought all of her children to this movie, including a 3 year old.
→ beth · 04/09/07 07:08 AM · #
While reading this I couldn’t help but think about how much you and my friend Brad would probably enjoy nerding out together about horror movies.
He writes about them, too
@Beth, I second that. Gore ≠ Scary.
→ Eric Wiley · 04/09/07 07:15 AM · #
@beth: That is what I think pisses me off the most about this, is that they didn’t have to change a thing to the story and could have made a pretty sweet movie. There’s nothing even to change!
I’ve seen pretty bad horror movies before but this is the first one where no one in the theater was remotely scared, even for a second. Like I said, they were all either laughing or wishpering about how bad it was.
@Eric: thanks for the link, I’ll be checking it out thusly
★ brendan · 04/09/07 09:10 AM · #
Wow! My buddy from Columbus saw it on Friday and said he completely loved it. Everything from the mood, the back story, to the music – he said nothing was wrong with it. And this guy loves movies as much, if not more, than me. That’s what I’m hearing though. You really love it or you really hate it. There’s no in-between.
→ Brad Eimer · 04/09/07 09:19 AM · #
A friend of mine saw it this weekend and thought it was the bee’s knees as well.
The ensuing argument was put into persepective for me when it came out that this same friend enjoyed Fantastic Four, thereby voiding any right he has to discuss the quality of movies.
But I’m fairly certain he would have liked it regardless of the Halloween title, he’s just a gore fan.
★ brendan · 10/09/07 07:06 AM · #