Common Sense Media Review
By Charles Cassady Jr.
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Teen slasher flick remake is brutal and bloody.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 18+?
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Where to Watch
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Halloween (2007)
Parent and Kid Reviews
Based on 23 parent reviews
Based on 68 kid reviews
Kids say that this remake contains excessive sexual content and graphic violence, making it unsuitable for younger viewers. While some believe it's a better version than the original due to its deeper exploration of the main character's backstory, many criticize it for its overabundance of gore and lack of compelling storytelling.
- overwhelming sexual content
- graphic violence
- not suitable for kids
- deeper backstory
- divisive opinions on quality
Summarized with AI
Summarized with AI
What's the Story?
Early on, it seems like director Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN (2007) is trying to do for Carpenter's blank-faced mass-murderer Michael Myers what Hannibal Rising did for fiendish Hannibal Lecter, showing viewers his upbringing and explaining how he came to be a monster. Michael starts out as an innocent-looking, blond-haired 10-year-old (played by Daeg Faerch) living in a family that includes an exotic dancer, her abusive live-in boyfriend, and a hyper-sexed sister. Bullied at school near Halloween, Michael ambushes and fatally batters a classmate (though that's not his first victim -- he's already killed plenty of small animals as practice). And then, after trick-or-treating on October 31, Michael slices up his stepfather, his sister, and his sister's boyfriend, sparing only baby sister Laurie. Police lock up the maniacal kid, who claims to remember nothing, in an institution. The plot then skips to 15 years later. Michael's mother has killed herself, and his longtime psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) has given up on him as a hopeless, unreachable psychopath. The adult Michael (Tyler Mane) is a hulking, silent figure obsessed with wearing masks. Near the October anniversary of the murders, he escapes, slaughtering several guards and even a gentle orderly who befriended him. Dr. Loomis believes Michael is heading home to kill again on Halloween, and he guesses the target is his surviving sister, Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton). Now a teenager, Laurie was adopted into a stable family years ago -- but she still has plenty of sex-minded girlfriends to hang around with, providing Michael with a plethora of victims as night falls.
Is It Any Good?
The violence in this film is appallingly in-your-face. 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
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about which types of horror movies are scarier -- ones like Halloween (2007), that show all the gruesome details, or those like the original 1978 Halloween, which left more to the imagination. Why? Why do you think audiences are drawn to gory movies in the first place?
How did the movie incorporate elements of the original Halloween movie, and how did it find a new way to tell the story?
How did this version of Halloween use music to set the time and place and create and build suspense?
Movie Details
- In theaters : August 31, 2007
- On DVD or streaming : December 18, 2007
- Cast : Malcolm McDowell , Sheri Moon-Zombie , Tyler Mane
- Director : Rob Zombie
- Studio : Weinstein Co.
- Genre : Horror
- Run time : 109 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- MPAA explanation : strong brutal bloody violence and terror throughout, sexual content, graphic nudity and language.
- Last updated : July 27, 2022
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