Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007/2009)

Director: Rob Zombie

Screenplay: Rob Zombie

Cast:

Halloween:

Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Samuel Loomis, Brad Dourif as Sheriff Leigh Brackett, Tyler Mane as Michael Myers, Daeg Faerch as Michael Myers (age 10), Sheri Moon Zombie as Deborah Myers, Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie Strode, William Forsythe as Ronnie White, Danielle Harris as Annie Brackett

Halloween II:

Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie Strode, Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Samuel Loomis, Tyler Mane as Michael Myers, Chase Wright Vanek as Young Michael Myers, Sheri Moon Zombie as Deborah Myers, Brad Dourif as Sheriff Lee Brackett, Danielle Harris as Annie Brackett, Brea Grant as Mya Rockwell, Howard Hesseman as Uncle Meat, Angela Trimbur as Harley David, Mary Birdsong as Nancy McDonald

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Rob Zombie's remake/reimagining of the Halloween franchise was always going to be divisive. I was even an admirer of Halloween 2 (2009) originally, as the film defended as being a powerful and underrated work. Returning to it however, even that has fallen in lustre for the sense that you can be too nihilistic that it actually undermines the virtues of the films, that and the fact that this tone would have made sense for a more riskier, less crowd pleasing horror film, not how to continue the Halloween franchise as a crowd pleasing franchise and still needing to complete the checklist for this. There is a sense that, for me, if Rob Zombie did not have to have the gore and the body count, we would have gotten a superior work that just happened to use the Michael Myers character. People would still hate these films, others will defend them, and they would still be grim, expletive filled takes that is not glamorous about a child who became a serial killer, but why ultimately these films do not work for me is that Rob Zombie needed a striped down version of this premise like Halloween H20 (1998) in structure. Instead, its contractual agreement and his interest in still being a gristly slasher film becomes an albatross around its neck.

The first film is an ugly new take for the time on Michael Myers' childhood. His stepfather is abusive, eyeing up his older step-daughter, whilst Michael himself is being bullied at school about his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) working at a strip club. From the get-go you also see the era this film was made in too in tone; when Zombie was transitioning to film directing from his music career from House of a 1000 Corpses (2003), we had a run of more extreme horror films from the United States even if the theatrical releases were altered and Director's Cut/Uncensored versions were a popular selling point for DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray releases. Remakes to The Hills Have Eyes to The Last House on the Left also came at this point, and a lot of the era has been described in terms of post-9/11 mood, the result of September 2001 and the Twin Tower attacks, alongside the resulting second Gulf War. This was said to have left the horror films from the United States to reflect the time period in the likes of the "torture porn" sub-genre and more bleaker films, more grimly toned and lacking less hope for its characters to survive, but to have significantly less trauma after the end credits roll.

Brutally, however, I think this era is going to age so much more badly than even the nu metal/pop rock of the early 2000s due to their bleakest being found wanting and grim dark at times. These films can be grim at points to the point of comical levels, like Michael killing animals whilst listening to the band KISS, which poses an issue that the more interesting and emotionally rewarding moments are undercut by the moments which do not work. The most rewarding details of these Halloween films find the right balance between their nihilism, contrasting Rob Zombie's eccentric tastes against moments of quiet pain and psychological damage. Everything in the first act of the first film, Michael's childhood, is actually good despite the points that try too hard, Myers as a psychologically damaged kid from a rough family who is allowed to become a psychopath without intervention to prevent this. Some of the more interesting details reflect too that Zombie was raised as a seventies kid, just from the soundtrack between both films from Nazareth's Love Hurts to Blue Oyster Cult, but also because he grew up in the decades of serial killers that became an obsession in American culture. From Charles Manson (name checked in the film) to Ted Bundy and his ilk by the time the band that made his name originally, White Zombie, formed in 1985, we see him using Halloween to clearly deal with them as a pop cultural concept. We lost a great Zombie film as a result, between grim thriller and sick humoured satire, about serial killers and the culture around them, Zombie able to stop and allow characters to show grief of the loss of loved ones between both films, as we recreate Myers rampage in Haddonfield twice, but also showing there being the fixation of them in unhealthy ways after the survivors are left picking up their psychological pieces.

The controversial decision to turn Dr. Sam Loomis, his psychiatrist, into an alternative world version who sold his soul was clearly meant to depict this. Malcolm McDowell's Loomis becomes one of the actual successes of both films for me, and we forget that Donald Pleasence's take was distorted in later sequels, so a sacred cow was already undercut. McDowell's trajectory is one of the strongest aspects even in its slightness; able to see a young Michael Myers in an asylum, devolving behind his own crafted masks, it does not feel like it is fetishing serial killer iconography, instead the first film meant to be a tragedy as Myers loses what is left. It becomes one including of Sheri Moon Zombie's mother figure, which is heartbreaking with her playing it beautifully, and how McDowell's take becoming an ill fated turn that adds a newer weight, that of if Loomis had not become the noble hero of Donald Pleasence's version. With Loomis as a child psychologist whose heart effectively died, whose first marriage lasted less than the fifteen years working with Michael, the arch of him fully selling out by the sequel is compelling. 

Far from having complete disregard for the source, it feels a widening of the possibilities in the source material, where there is a mocking of the fetishisation of serial killers in Loomis' book tour in the sequel, the book signing scene in that film both with the fan way too into Myers as a person is as well as the father of a slain victim from the first film pulling a gun on him. Zombie rebuts the danger of himself fetishing these types of figures, which slasher films do not tend to do, and it is here where the grim tone can work fully. Where they lose their power is when their relentlessness becomes their ultimate failure, as they numb the pace and emotional weight by their final acts. Zombie managed to do more not in the numerous murders and stalking scenes in Myers, but getting a pointed criticism of media culture on celebrities even in a very silly piece of stunt casting, with musician "Weird Al" Yankovic as himself on a talk show helping to mock Sam Loomis. With one joke, he got a far more compelling take on the lingering nature of gristly murders at the same time.

In their best forms, these films would have allowed more moments of levity if not able to stop the horrors of Michael Myers. Levity comes in moments such as Ken Foree in the first film, with mutton chops and reading porn on the can, but he still dies, levity fleeting in a way that works to emphasise the tragedy Rob Zombie was clearly reaching for. Some moments for the sake of them - one of the guards in the asylum Myers is in during the first film lets his cousin try to rape a new female patient, letting Myers escape - dangerous veer into edge lord territory when there is enough misery and pessimism to work with. There is also the issue that, when it comes to remaking the original 1978 Halloween in the second act, I stopped taking notes and started to switch off.

This proves an Achilles' Heel for the Rob Zombie films as it is important to set up one of the more admirable aspects of these two films, setting up how this world's version of Laurie Strode, played by Scout Taylor-Compton, develops PTSD she has to cope with through Halloween II, and we follow both her at her best coping with the trauma and the worse when she cannot. This is also the one time, when dealing with this, playing as a traditional slasher film succeeds, in how it recreates the original 1981 Halloween II as a fake out dream to establish said trauma. We get to see the aftermath in the hospital of Laurie having her wounds treated even in the dream structure, forcing one to see this, and I will still respect the film, despite my new misgivings, for its use of Nights in White Satin by The Moody Blues, which is exceptional. We also see the flaws still of Zombie overdoing the misanthropic aspects, as whilst I can appreciate the surrealism of Michael Myers' escape from a morgue wagon because it crashed into a cow, having the driver and attendant talking about having sex with the female corpses however undercuts this. In one hand we see one of the best ways to use the slasher structure for a reason, and in the other, there are still the issues that plague the two films.

My problems become that the entire remake project was an ungainly work for a director far more interesting when he is not shooting stranded horror and gore scenes. The whole journey of Laurie is absolutely sympathetic, the White Zombie singer not the first person I would have ever shown such heart in his work, but showing it admirably in how we see her on medication and struggling in therapy, something I have to respect him for. When certain characters die between both films, it is tragic and Zombie actually shows grief. Despite the stunt casting, that fits still; beyond the curious sight of Udo Kier and Clint Howard in the first film sharing the same screen with McDowell, it also leads to one of the best aspects being Brad Dourif, given a great deal to do in terms of a rich performance for a slasher film.

It sucks that, for all these virtues, I have to be a Debbie Downer about how too bleak tonally this becomes. Even if Zombie deliberately changed the film stock used for the sequel to emphasise the grimmer reality, the violence becomes number to the point of not registering emotionally or causing me to question why certain moments were even necessary. There is the sense of the slasher template not helping at all, as Zombie's thesis on trauma is pointless when he has to have random by bystanders killed, like a horny older strip club owner wanting to get it on in a Frankenstein's mark with a female dancer, to keep to the body count high. Even the deeply surreal moments of Halloween II that I initially liked felt bolted on this time, with Sheri Moon Zombie as an apparition with a white horse visiting Michael Myers, because there is no set up for this in the prequel. When seen close to each other, it sticks out from the film two years earlier; despite the fact it gives us one weird, almost Guy Maddin-like dream of pumpkin kings at a dining table, the kind of moment I am into within an instance, it is the only moment of overt surrealism and thus loses power. Bringing this nightmarish side to the film, but never capitalising on it, felt like an abrupt Rob Zombie music video that appears, never meaning anything to the plot trajectory.

None of the deaths are "fun" in these films, all uncomfortable and all awful. There is not enough, even with moments of humour, to separate from the inevitable, the death and tragedy of the characters. But you can overstate this and grind a viewer down to the point this theme itself is lost, which is the issue with the Rob Zombie Halloween films for me. It is to the point they lose their virtues, and Halloween II was not financially good enough to continue on to a third film either, so it lost a few people as well. By Halloween II, it feels for me that for the films which still came out in the early 2010s that continued this trend, this era of edgier horror films from the United States lost their ground by this point. Saw's last entry, before its reboot, was in 2010, and telling a far more financially success horror film in terms of box office in 2009, when the second Halloween reboot film was released, was Paranormal Activity. Still a film with a ghoulish ending, it was not as nihilistic and upfront in its violence, instead capturing peoples' imaginations in terms of supernatural horror. It was also one of the first horror films of note produced by Jason Blum, whose Blumhouse Productions would be a monolith for the US horror cinema into the 2010s onwards. The lasting irony is in knowledge he would be a producer of the next attempt to reboot the Halloween franchise with 2018's Halloween with David Gordon Green, where we close off another part of this franchise's many strange dimensional turns.