Horror fans claim, not without reason, that the original
Halloween wasn't just a sicko slasher movie that caught on, but an artfully suspenseful masterpiece that expertly played on viewers' nerves. You barely see any real violence or blood -- you just
think you do. Not so much this time around. This graphic HALLOWEEN remake from rock musician-turned-filmmaker
Rob Zombie is positively drenched in blood and carnage, along with smashed faces, impalings, bashings, strangulation, crude sex, and vile language, all in shaky-camera close-up. In other words, it's full of everything that original director
John Carpenter merely hinted at, letting our dread and elemental fear of a lurking marauder in the dark fill in the blanks. There have been worse slasher movies than the original
Halloween (the first
Friday the 13th, for one): Carpenter's finesse with the film's uncluttered, low-budget plotline made it look so easy that all kinds of hack moviemakers (many lacking even Zombie's level of directorial acumen) filled theaters with knives and butchery throughout the 1980s. The 2007
Halloween, besides pushing the gore to dare-you-to-look extremes, seems to want to cadge some sympathy for the ghastly Michael, making his victims (at first, anyway) foul sadists who deserve no mercy. But then characters who are inoffensive -- and even kind -- to Michael die just as gruesomely, so what's the point? Probably the dollar figures brought in by the combined earnings of some seven or eight (depends how you do the counting)
Halloween sequels -- that's the point, and this movie's open ending leaves the door open for further installments. Judging by the movie's record-setting opening weekend, there will be an audience. Ugh.