#7 – Halloween (2007)
I consider the original Halloween to be a classic. Rob Zombie’s 2007 re-imagining of it, however, is not. Some of my favorite films, both inside the horror genre and beyond it, are remakes, so I don’t fault the film for not being the original. I really only fault it for not being itself.
I could go on for a while about how I think Zombie misunderstands the character of Michael Myers from a franchise standpoint, but that’s not really important within the confines of Zombie’s work. Halloween ranks dead last for me because it feels compromised. Zombie’s fingerprints are certainly all over the end product, but his sensibilities feel muted. This especially holds true during the third act, which plays like he was creatively stifled and forced to retread large chunks of the original.
In the first half of the film, for better or worse, Zombie pretty much does his own thing. Right up until the film jumps ahead to Michael being an adult, I find the narrative path being charted to be interesting. Not necessarily “good”, but certainly interesting. Once the time jump occurs, the film sadly becomes a sped up Cliff Note’s version of the Carpenter film and it loses me. And, at least in my opinion, it loses Zombie as well. That last act has a dispassionate feel to it in my eyes, like Rob had checked out creatively. This, above all other reasons, is why I consider it to be his worst film.
