Attack of the 50 Foot Myers, Part 2

Over the past few years, Hollywood has really had a hard-on for remakes – particularly when it comes to horror films. The quality of said films have been very hit and miss, but nonetheless, I can’t fault the business strategy that the major studios have employed in making these movies. Horror fans are the most passionate, vocal fans in the world. We live, breathe, and die by our cherished genre. Hey, you don’t see fans of romantic comedy flicks designating an entire room of their house as the “Chick Flick Shrine,” complete with cardboard cutouts of Hugh Grant and an original poster of “Breakfast at Tiffanys.” Frighteningly, horror fans take the love of their movies to the nth degree, and when you meet another soul who “gets it,” it’s truly an epiphany that usually leads to an uninterrupted geek conversation.

Long story short, most horror remakes are successful, because we eat up virtually anything and everything that has the horror tag attached to it. Unfortunately, a lot of remakes are just unnecessary in nature; they’re glorififed, slicked-up versions of movies that were fun precisely BECAUSE they were dirty, grainy, and otherwise poorly produced; the Platinum Dunes remakes are the worst offenders, with their versions of “The Hills Have Eyes” and “The Hitcher” standing as nothing more than the original movies on steroids.

But the worst offender is the remake of, what I consider to be, the single greatest horror movie of all time.

“Halloween” (and, to a lesser extent, “Halloween II,” which I view as “Part B” of the same movie) is an absolute masterpiece, a flawlessly plotted, masterfully shot and wonderfully acted piece of cinema that has more than stood the test of time. More than that, it has aged BEAUTIFULLY, and today, the nostalgia factor makes the movie’s story even more creepy. The movie’s “comfort moments” are even more comforting today in an age of economic turmoil and tea party protests, and when the horrific scenes do hit, for first-time viewers, they can really knock the hell out of you.

More than anything, “Halloween” is a story about its PEOPLE, and that’s why it works. It’s the story of a courageous, moral babysitter named Laurie Strode, and as played by Jamie Lee Curtis, is the single best horror movie protagonist in the history of film. She’s insanely likeable, relatable, and tough; she is THE eponymous girl next door that every horror movie since has tried to replicate the magic of. Dr. Sam Loomis, the movie’s other protagonist, has also stood the test of time (and five sequels, no less) as the movie’s veritable Van Helsing, an obsessed, profoundly passionate individual consumed by the desire to defeat the film’s villain.

And what a villain “Halloween” has.

The version of Michael Myers seen in the first two “Halloween” films is the best villain in horror movie history, and a strong case can be made for Michael being the best villain in FILM history. He is not only brutal, but cunning, showing remarkable guile for evading detection and stalking his prey. The character is silent, stealthy, a kind of wraith; he is, to put it in the immortal words of Loomis himself, “evil personified.” But the most unnerving thing about Myers throughout that one long night that Michael comes home is that we simply don’t know; we don’t know why he is the way that he is, or why he does the things that he does. He just DOES them, and while “Halloween II” gives us some simple motivations for Michael’s wrath, nothing is ever spelled out. The movies serve us grade-A horror and RESPECT the watcher’s intelligence; they leave Michael’s history and psychology up to our imagination. After all, the unknown is always a million times worse.

If only Rob Zombie realized this.

The purpose of this rant? Come August, Dimension films will release “Halloween 2,” the sequel to Zombie’s slickified, roided-up version of the original film. To put it bluntly, the 2007 movie was an utter abortion, a movie that had much more in common with “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” than Carpenter’s original classic. While I have nothing against remakes that enact change, Zombie’s “Halloween” is the epitome of “change for the sake of change” – he took away what is, in essence, the perfect slasher flick, and replaced it with a bunch of senseless gobbledygook that was meant to be profound but in the end came out as haphazard, lazy, and just plain stupid.

And now Zombie has been granted free reign to expand more on the mythos of Michael Myers with “Halloween 2.” People, please, do not go to this film – we do not want any more of Zombie’s dumb, rednecky version of “Halloween.” We do not want financial support for a film that made a mockery of a classic, and I, for one, would rather that THIS particular fledgling horror franchise be put to rest before it reaches ridiculous heights.

For those who haven’t seen the film, the chronological, blow-by-blow complaint list of Zombie’s 2007 remake of “Halloween”:

1) Too much profanity - Rob Zombie's script just reeks of "profanity for profanity's sake." Zombie has a lot of weaknesses as a screenwriter, but I have to say that dialogue is the weakest. Don’t misunderstand me - I don't have a problem with realistic dialogue and profanity, but it's not even remotely how real human beings talk. "Fuck, I fucking hate this fucking house! Fuck!" = frighteningly typical line from this movie.

2) Zombie’s EXTREME Hard-On for Rednecks and Skanks – There are, in essence, two characters that Rob Zombie knows how to write – and it’s not just “Halloween” where this is apparent. His earlier movies, “House of 1,000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects,” are equal opportunity offenders. I had thought that he MIGHT tone down his predilection for “Hillbilly Deluxe Suite” character-fest for “Halloween,” but I was wrong, and it was apparent in the first reel, when Michael’s childhood family consists of a series of ridiculous trailer-park stereotypes that don’t inspire an ounce of sympathy from the audience.

3) Attack of the 50-Foot Myers – After I saw this movie, I called my good buddy Kory up, who wanted to see it, and one of the first things I mentioned was how ridiculous the switch was from the pudgy little kid version of Myers, who looks like he MIGHT top out being my height, into “Kane from the WWE” Myers as an adult. He didn’t believe me; he said that it COULDN’T be that stark of a contrast. And after he saw the flick – yeah, we talked for a good thirty minutes about the laugh-out-loud moment that was Michael’s adult reveal. Nonetheless, making your villain a hulking monster when precisely what made him scary in the original – that he wasn’t – is something to avoid.

4) Needless Cameos – You know, it’s one thing to respect horror history and the faces of horror’s yesteryear, which Zombie does. But this movie packs in the cameos like nobody’s business, and in not one case did said cameo have anything to do with, you know, the actual QUALITY that the actor might have had with the given role. They exist just so that horror nerds can say “hey, look, it’s Brad Dourif!”, and quickly forget about it. If anything, they take you OUT of the movie.

5) Laurie Strode, Version 2.0 – As mentioned before, Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode is very likeable and engaging. And while Scout Taylor Compton gives it her damndest, she just can’t compete with the moronic script that she’s given, particularly since the first scene that she’s in calls for her to make a stupid sexual joke with a bagel. Her friends are even worse offenders; the original movie’s Annie and Linda characters, even though they weren’t as virtuous as Laurie, were sympathetic, and I didn’t WANT them to die. This movie? I couldn’t WAIT for these three annoying teenyboppers to get it.

6) Really, really unscary “Horror” Scenes – The original movie was a classic example of the slow burn being played to perfection. Michael would target a victim; he’d stalk them and stalk them, wait and wait, watching and plotting…and just enough time would pass that we’d relax a little and believe that the character might be out of the woods. And THEN the movie would spring its surprise on you. Zombie’s strength isn’t subtlety; his build-ups don’t last longer than five seconds. He has no concept of inception and payoff; for him, it’s all about multiple stabbings and crashing through walls. And while the chase sequences in the original were very tense, I found myself BORED with the chase scenes near the end of “Halloween 2K7.”

7) A phenomenally dumb final twist – A frequent complaint leveled against slasher films in general is that the heroines are stupid. While normally I disagree, the remake of “Halloween” has perhaps the most idiotic decision a horror character has ever made; after Michael captures Laurie near the end of the film, he kneels down before her, prostrate, letting her know that he won’t kill her. So what does Laurie do? She immediately picks up Michael’s knife and stabs him, thus pissing off the monster who has just crashed through five walls to capture her. Yeah, good thinking.

While all of the above is very negative, I actually do feel that Rob is a decent film-maker; he has his own visual flair, and is obviously a huge horror fan with respect for the past, what with all the cameos of genre vets. And while some fans believe otherwise, “Halloween” WAS his dream project; he loved the original movie. But somehow, some way, the absolute worst-case scenario for it came true, and I have no doubt that it will for the sequel.

So the point of this rant is this – don’t see “Halloween 2,” no matter how packed said theater may be beckoning you with its call of conformity. Instead, write Dimension and tell them to give Rob the REAL movie that he was destined to remake – “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” a movie that Platinum Dunes should have stayed the hell away from. Zombie would have done a smash-up job with “TCM” – after all, every movie that he’s ever directed essentially is “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”