Friday evening, Ness and I caught the 7:20 showing of Halloween over at the Richmond mall. Ness’ absolutely loves the Halloween series. In fact, we’ve been watching the series on and off for the past couple of weeks. As soon as Ness found out that there was going to be a re-make of Halloween, she started getting ready to go.

Pre-game

Ness and I started renting the Halloween series to prepare for the release of Rob Zombie’s Halloween. I had only ever seen Halloween 1, Halloween 4, and parts of Halloween 5 and Ness thought that I should see them all. First, let me say that I’m not a fan of horror movies. They don’t scare me, most are poorly written and/or executed, and most I think are just stupid. Halloween is probably the only exception to my “I hate horror movies”.

Starting the week we decided to see the movie, I had heard varying opinions on whether or not the movie was actually any good. My feed reader was inundated with blog posts about how crappy the movie was, while some friends said that it was absolutely amazing.

Whenever I see a remake of a movie, I always look at it as a movie on it’s own. Very rarely do the remakes actually remake the actual movie. Most of the time, the new movies offer a different perspective, add or delete scenes, and “update” the movie for the current generation.

The Movie

We were lucky to get a theater that only had a few people in it. But a few of the girls in there were talking through the movie and that was kind of annoying. But for the most part, that didn’t bother us.

One of the cool things in the movie was that Danielle Harris, who plays Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, plays Annie Bracket in the new Halloween.

The biggest problem I had with the new Halloween: all the blood and gore. As people have said, blood and gore does not equal scary. In most cases it equals disgusting and ridiculousness. But it was Rob Zombie and I expected it. However, it was still over-the-top. In the original Halloween, they didn’t need blood and gore to scare the shit out of everyone that watched it, so why would you need it now?

Ness will disagree with me on this, but the remake didn’t scare me at all. I know Ness will disagree with me on it, because she was squeezing my hand through most of the movie. There were very few suspense scenes in the movie and I found that I could predict what would happen.

Rob Zombie decided to change a few things in his version. First, he gave Michael Myers more of a back story, which was predictable and stupid. Second, Michael Myers is now ten or so instead of six. He also introduced the fact that Laurie Strode is Michael Myers’ sister, which in the original series didn’t happen until Halloween 2. I have to admit though, that this makes more sense, the way he introduced this plot twist. But it wasn’t really a plot twist this time around, as it was in Halloween 2.

Rob Zombie also decided to switch some of the scenes locations around. For example, the final scene between Michael, Laurie, and Dr. Loomis took place in the house where Laurie was babysitting in the original. In the remake, this scene now takes place in the old Myers house and surrounding area.

My Verdict

Rob Zombie’s Halloween was predictable, like most other horror movies made now. He didn’t butcher the movie, but his additions to the original just didn’t do anything. It wasn’t scary for me, while the original was. The girls in the theater thought it was scary otherwise they wouldn’t have kept screaming, but for me it did absolutely nothing.

If you want to see it, wait till it comes out on video. There’s no point in spending $9 to see a crappy horror movie when you can wait to rent it for $3. But I’d say that about any horror movie, not just this one.