I’ve watched this movie, or rather, attempted to watch this movie, two fucking times already and can still barely remember it. The first time was when I tried to stream it online when it was still in theaters. I was broke, and couldn’t afford to go to the movies, but also wasn’t really sure I could sit through it. The second time had to have been on DVD, because apparently I had enough recollection of it to rate it on Netflix. If you’ve read my reviews of any other remakes, you’ll know that I could give two shits about remaking something, as long as you do something interesting. I didn’t really like Rob Zombie‘s first movie, House of 1,000 Corpses, but it showed some promise. Half of it was entertaining, the other half bullshit. I thoroughly enjoyed the sequel, The Devil’s Rejects, because it seemed as though he took everything that worked about the first movie, and made an entire movie out of those themes. Let’s see how he does with Michael Myers!

You’ve given Michael Myers long hair and a sidekick played by Danny Trejo….take THAT John Carpenter!

It’s Halloween and Michael Myers is a little kid who likes to kill, and possibly torture small animals. His mom is a foul-mouthed stripper and his older sister is kind of a slut, which is weird because she is played by Hannah Hall, which was the youngest sister in The Virgin Suicides over ten years ago. His mom’s boyfriend is also an alcoholic, so obviously things are tough for him. He has a violent altercation at school that escalates to Michael murdering a bully in the middle of the woods after school. On Halloween night, Michael snaps, kills his older sister, her boyfriend, and his mom’s boyfriend, leaving only his baby sister safe in the house. He is institutionalized and interrogated by Dr. Samuel Loomis, played in this version by Malcolm McDowell. Through repeated visits, Dr. Loomis and Michael’s mom try to figure out what’s happening, but she ends up killing herself and Michael stays institutionalized for another 15 years. Then he escapes and makes his way back to Haddonfield, IL, which is where his baby sister lives with a foster family. He stalks her and her friends, kills some people, but is eventually “defeated” by his younger sister, Laurie Strode.

“Shhhhhhh, calm down. I think it’s best if everyone forgets that this movie ever happened.”

Doesn’t sound that bad, does it? It is. It really, really is. My first issue with this movie is that it’s TWO FUCKING MOVIES. We see Michael growing up, we see his violent side, we almost empathize with him, and we see him kill his family members. From there, we learn how important masks are to him, while he’s institutionalized, and see him digress into just a huge, silent freak. We also see how important Dr. Loomis is in his life. You sit there, watching this, and as you think the movie is winding down or losing steam, YOU’RE NOT FUCKING HALFWAY DONE. You then have to meet Laurie and all that bullshit, and the movie tries to get you to care about brand new characters when you’re an hour in. If they were going to go in such a different direction with the movie in the first place, just stick with one concept and don’t worry about recreating the original. It would be like remaking A Nightmare on Elm Street and spending an hour watching Freddy Krueger building his claw hand and sewing together his sweater, THEN watching him kill things. Which comes to the other letdown of this movie….WHY ARE YOU EXPLAINING WHY MICHAEL IS EVIL?! As if the whole “Curse of the Thorn” bullshit wasn’t lame enough, his terror is watered down even MORE by spending a fucking hour showing that he is just psychologically disturbed. In the original Halloween, we see Michael kill his sister, and the next time we see him he is jumping on a car and driving back to kill the rest of his family, for reasons unknown to us. That’s scary shit! But now he is just some sad kid who had a crappy family and rage problems? I’ll just watch some show on A & E if that’s something I’m looking for. This film really gives John Carpenter‘s legacy a bad name. But at least Danielle Harris was in it, so that was cool? Albeit, confusing.

Wolfman Moon Scale