Customer Reviews
Classic with a new twist! - By: DD, 07 Nov 2008 
This film seems to be one that people love or hate? Generally I dislike remakes as pointless exercises that are pale imitations of the (often better) originals e.g. The Grudge, Assault On Precinct 13, Gone In 60 Seconds. However if they add something to the original they can be worthwhile.
The original Halloween is an absolute classic horror film & the grandfather of the slasher genre. What Rob Zombie does with his version is to give us an insight into Michael Myers, that is absentin the original. The therapeutic relationship between Dr Loomis & Michael is emphasised & the obsession with masks that facilitates his withdrawal from reality. This relationship doesn't cloud Lumis' perception of Myers; he knows that he is evil incarnate, but he has an understanding of him.
The violencein this film is extreme, as you would expect from Rob Zombie, but it isin context. Could the rape scene have been left out? Maybe, but it does serve to illustrate that cruelty & inhumanity doesn't always come from seven foot psychos!
I tend to rent films these days before commiting to buy. Will I go on to buy this film? Definitely. I feel that this is a worthy addition to any horror fans collection & my favourite Rob Zombie film so far.
3.5--Yes, I'm a fan of the original yet this has also gotten my attention - By: Jenny J.J.I., 08 Oct 2008 
The opening of the film is clever & deals with the events leading up to Michael's first murder. I was very happy with the back story of Michael Myers & how brutal his life was & you could almost see day by day how he was driven to kill almost his entire family.
Minor details that were simply Rob Zombie's way of putting his mark on the film include a white trash family that Michael allegedly comes from (even thoughin the original his mother & father seem to be pretty straight-laced, almost nerdy, people) & the fact that his mother is a stripper. Dr. Loomis is introduced early on,in the film, at Michael's school after some questionable things he done. I just feel that there was enough of a set upin the original John Carpenter film for Zombie to build off of, without going & adding the trashy nature of Michael's family & sympathy we are supposed to feel for him. On top of that it was great to see inside Smith Grove as well - Dr Loomis was far betterin this version - although the original is a classic this version had a lot more depth & rather intense ending.
Now, even though the film beginsin 1963 & then flashes forward 15 years to the night Michael escapes & returns to Haddonfield. Why, then, do the characters have cell phones & are there 1993 Ford Mustangs along the streets of Haddonfield? To me, this just makes the film seem sloppy & badly imagined. If you are going to take the time to "re-imagine" a film that is as iconic & famous as Halloween, these should be obvious things to deal with.
The "chase" scenes are well staged & Zombie throwsin some decent scenarios not foundin the original. The climax is an entertaining combination of classic 80's style horror where you are screaming at the female lead for being so dense & modern horror grisliness where you feel sick to your stomach after enduring it.
This film did go well with me & my biggest complaint, however, is with the sloppiness of the time differencein events. Aside from that Zombie's "Halloween" is a calculated gamble to add to these sequels, & it does pay offin the end, "Halloween" is perfectly watchable for any horror buffs so if you haven't seen it yet take the time to see it this month.
Its back and its bigger and better - By: David Byrne, 06 Oct 2008 
Why is everyone complaining about this film , calling it all sorts of names & then end up watching it anyway ? If you dont like remakes then stay away. This is the best Halloween ever made , period !!! I knew it was going to be wicked since Rob Zombie was making it. After seeing The Devils Rejects i just knew this was going to be the best Halloween ever & it delivered what i was looking for.
Depressing cash in, on a great character. - By: Mr. D. Bell, 02 Sep 2008 
Halloween is arguably one of the greatest horror movies ever made. To attempt to re-make, or "re-imagine" it, is doomed from the outset. When it was first announced that the film would be re-made I was sceptical, but still intrigued to see the end result. Sadly, what has been made is a deeply depressing & offensive film.
The film starts with an unnecessarily long back story to establish why Michael Myers ended up as a deranged serial killer. Part of the appeal of the original is the fact that the viewer is thrown straight into the story and, not knowing what made him into the killer he has become, makes him more frightening. To add more layers to the character simply ends up diluting a lot of the fear that was felt 20 odd years ago. The same thing happenedin "Hannibal".
The fact that this film is directed by Rob Zombie should give you some idea of what isin store. House of 1000 corpses & to a lesser extent Devils Rejects were enjoyable enough, as long as you could stomach some of the violence. Halloween takes this to a whole new level with a particularly disturbing & graphic rape scene. In the right context I believe filmmakers should have the right to film what they want to & leave it up to the audience to decide whether it is offensive or not. Irreversible had a nasty rape scene but it is justifiedin the context of the film. Halloweens feels as though it is there just to titillate some sick individuals. There is no reason for it to be there & adds nothing to the story.
Overall Halloween is a deeply depressing film. The original was shocking for all the right reasons. It was full of tension, it had a genuinely scary villain, it had good acting and, for a horror movie, it had a decent script & well written, believable characters. The re-make has none of this & is just a poorly made cash in, on a well established character.
Happy, happy Halloween... - By: Mr. P. A. Watson, 18 Aug 2008 This isn't a slasher moviein the traditional sense. There is a lot more to it. The depth displayedin this film by Rob Zombie is amazing to me. I loved the Devil's Rejects, but I felt that maybe Zombie would go over the top with the gore here, & just go for the gross out effect. But the first half of this film is a good character study of Michael Myers & bases it firmlyin reality. It's really what Texas Chainsaw Massacre The Beginning should have been for Leatherface. We don't see exactly what makes Michael into a monster but we get a glimpse of the world he's livingin & the people he has to livein it with, none of whom are sympathetic. It humanises himin a way that took me by surprise. We meet him just before he goes over the edge & spend almost an hour with him after his arrest for the killing of his family, & follow his incarceration for some of the fifteen years he spendsin the sanatorium before his escape & rampagein Haddonfield. There is no supernatural element whatsoever, it's all psychological.
My only problem with it really is the lack of a satisfactory ending, which is the kind of thing most of these movies suffer from. In this case there is an alternate ending, or what was the original ending, on the disc too. I think the original ending was better because for a moment I thought Michael was going to allow himself to be returned to his cell. I think that would have been revolutionaryin a film centred on one of horror's modern icons. This film has already humanised him to a degree that I didn't think anyone had the balls to try, & that alone made me think that there was actually a slasher movie that wouldn't end with the villain going downin a hail of bullets but going meekly to a prison cell. Butin the end Zombie resorted to the old villian-gets-shot-and-we`re-supposed-to-think-he's-dead-but-he-isn't ploy. The second half of the film suffers a little from having to keep up with the stalk-and-slash of the original Carpenter film & it does keep a few of the gags from that film. I'm torn as to whether it's better than the original because the first hour is fantastic, simply stunning that it was done at all, but also done well, yet hampered still by the fact that the second half can't compare with the originalin the minds of people like myself who've had it engrainedin their movie-memory for decades.
The film has a good cast, a couple of my personal fave'sin Malcolm Mcdowell, Brad Dourif & William Forsythe, & Tyler Mane did well as the adult Michael. I think just about everyone who wasin Devil's Rejects wasin this film, with a few exceptions, & that's fine by me since they did a good job there too. It's like the old days when Hammer had all the same actors showing up over & over again. Zombie obviously knows what he wants & who he can get it from. Sybil Danning shows up as a nurse who unwisely pisses Michael off, &in the deleted scenes Adrienne Barbeau gives Loomis a hard time, & Mickey Dolenz sells him a gun.
The violence (which let's face it is why we were attracted to Halloweenin the first place) is handled realistically, not overblown like Devil`s Rejects. You can easily buy into a guy the size of Tyler Mane doing these things. There's something down & dirty about the way it's handled.
The extras are a bit disappointing. The commentary isn't as illuminating as you'd hope, & neither are the extras. The deleted scenes are good though.
Great film. Average disc.
