New Rob Zombie Halloween!

the trailer is terrifying

I used the word creepy three times! It's creepy!

Weirdly a group of nearly 40 13-14 year old kids was there seemingly chaperoned by 2 19-20 year old couples!?!?!?! They screamed in all the right places.

I will say that I think Zombie made a mistake with how he portrays the adult Myers, choosing to make him more unstoppable inhuman superman (which yeah I know if basically keeping with the original 8 films) and completely ignoring the shattered man child aspect (which again he builds up well at the beginning of the film.)

I saw it tonight and didn't think it was toooooo bad... but I find it difficult to root for characters who are stupid or portrayed as entirely without any redeeming qualities. I haven't seen the original in years, but my recollection is that it is the better film.

I did like the use of the original creepy music composed by John Carpenter, and a couple of "jump in your seat" moments got me. Loved the symmetry of people watching the two different versions of The Thing.

Oh I didn't to imply that it's a patch on the first film.

Yeah the problem is definitely that by spending so much of the first film building up Myers as a character is that it kind of doesn't leave time to do much else with anyone else (and as I said above the film doesn't really do much with Myers in the end sadly.) I wouldn't say the characters from the original are necessarily less annoying, but you've grown a little bit more comfortable with their annoyingness at least by the time they get massacred.

but you've grown a little bit more comfortable with their annoyingness at least by the time they get massacred

lol - that's probably exactly right!

It was an interesting take on the original story. I think I've gotten so far away from the horror genre that I have trouble suspending my disbelief to an extent. I bought into the Michael Myers backstory - but I had trouble believing that the guy who was supposed to be a school psychologist continued to care for Michael for all those years at a sanitarium. Psychologist dude didn't seem very competent.

I did think it was interestingly filmed from a technical perspective.

Maybe the real test will be if I sleep well tonight!

Unfortunately the theater I saw it in had a really dim projecter bulb! The preview I just watched on Yahoo! looked cleaner! It didn't make a difference so much at the beginning of the film, but the last 45 minutes were very dark and kind of muddy.

I think that Malcolm McDowell was supposed to be a friend of the principal, but yeah he wasn't very competent (haha "you haven't said a word for 15 years, Michael, so I'm beginning to suddenly realise that perhaps you haven't gotten much out of our therapy sessions together so I'll just forward on your folder to a new doctor and give him a shot oh and don't worry about the bill for oh the last 9 years let's say good luck!")

BTW every b-movie actor ever is in this film!

Brad Dourf! Danny Trejo! The dude from God Told Me! Udo Kier! William Forsythe! Bill Moseley! Dee Wallace! Micky Dolenz! Sid Haig! Sybil Danning!

who?

ha, I have no idea who those people are, either! The person I went with to the movie last night is a hard core horror movie fan, though, and she said that a lot of the actors in the movie were in other Halloween movies.

i've been hearing VERY mixed reactions to this movie

I'm just not sure it makes sense to create empathy for the killer in a slasher flick. One character (his father or stepfather) was so over the top unredeemable that I literally leaned over and told the friend who was with me, "I can't WAIT for Michael to kill that guy!"

At the same time, it has a lot of effective moments.

Brad Dourf = is in everything from Dune to Wiseblood (he was the sheriff)
Danny Trejo = MACHETE! (he was the guard/janitor)
The dude from God Told Me = the dude from God Told Me, but he always plays the creepy guy in a lot of horror movies (was the principal)
Udo Kier = the arty European guy in every film ever (he was in Suspiria, the Kingdom, My Own Private Idaho) (some state official)
William Forsythe = Raising Arizona and a bunch of other stuff (the bastard stepdad)
Bill Moseley = the second Texas Chainsaw Massacre and both of Rob Zombies other films (one of the prison guards)
Dee Wallace = was the mom in ET (she's the mom in this too)
Micky Dolenz = the Monkees drummer (he was the gun salesman)
Sid Haig = every Jack Hill movie (he's the graveyard caretaker)
Sybil Danning! = Chained Heat! (she's also a prison guard)

Dee Wallace = Laurie's adoptive mom in this one (at first I thought you meant she was the Stripper Mom and I was all, "WAHT?!")

Dee Wallace also played the lead in Cujo, which scared the hell out of me when I rented it many years ago. Between that and ET, no wonder she looked familiar.

Haha no stripper mom is Moon Unit Zombie.

Dweezil Zombie.

Q: How do you feel about big budget remakes of Dawn of the Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?

Zombie: I feel it's the worst thing any filmmaker can do. I actually got a call from my agent and they asked me if I wanted to be involved with the remake of Chain Saw. I said no fucking way! Those movies are perfect- you're only going to make yourself look like an asshole by remaking them. Go remake something that's a piece of shit and make it good. Like with my movie (House of 1000 Corpses) I have elements of Chain Saw in it because I love that movie so much, but I wouldn't dare want to "remake" it. It's like a band trying to be another band. You can sound like The Beatles, but you can't be The Beatles.

Haha OOPS!

Stripper Mom Zombie made me feel sad about my abs. ;_;

xpost - lolz

You think Rob and Moon Unit ever just sit back with some Chinese takeout and watch Grey's Anatomy?

I am a huge William Forsythe fan and didn't recognize him as stepdad! I kept looking for him throughout the movie too!

I thought this was alright. Definitely worth a rental.

what a mess! it was good that it tried to do something different, in fact robbing Michael Meyers of his mystique may be the most original and even (dare i say) subversive thing about this movie. but it's just too unfocused and all over the damn place to work.

also i was NOT expecting a blade runner homage in a halloween remake.

should I go see this or Kevin Bacon's Death Wish IV?

'death sentence' please, and dont forget to report back

Really falls off with the adult half, when it's less a Rob Zombie Joint than pretty boring slasher flick. Definitely makes you appreciate Jamie Lee Curtis - none of the kids in this one made much of an impression and the poor man's Lindsay Lohan didn't have much going for her.

agree that this was real uneven but that zombie did bring an interesting angle to the table. "explaining" michael meyers behavior is a tricky thing, but that's not what he does, it's more like an exploration of his condition. what do you do with a psychopath for whom there are no treatment options?

second half is not as interesting as the first, but the end circles back nicely.

there are actually three very different versions of this floating around (workprint, theatrical cut, director's cut). although I can't say I loved the movie I'm sorta interested in checking them out.

yeah this was not exactly good but i really did like the deconstructing of michael mayers as an invincible, inexplicable monster.

Didn't care either way about the "deconstruction" of Michael Meyers. The kid chosen to play young Kirkface was such a piss-poor actor that the psychological exploration died in its tracks. Kid certainly looked the part, and did fine as long as he stuck to wounded silences and monosyllables, but wasn't up to anything more. Sherri Moon as mom was even worse. So while the first half was superior to the insanely boring and poorly-paced second, it still wasn't that great. A genuinely terrible movie.

zombie was a very good choice for this. he makes violent psychopaths sympathetic without minimizing their atrocities. the lazy path is to make the victims super-annoying, which he does do at times here (e.g. the stepfather), but he also kills off sympathetic characters **SPOILER AHEAD** like the asylum janitor. supposedly he had to battle the studio on that one.

the film doesn't pander to the audience's sadism, but makes it confront it in a way that's much less annoying than, say, michael haneke's approach in funny games.

I wish he'd had the chops to pull off the second half. zombie's very good at executing tableaus, but when it comes to plotting his style leans too much on procedural exposition. he's not very good at shortcutting, and the pace and suspense suffer for it. but there's a good chance he's going to make a great movie someday.

"but there's a good chance he's going to make a great movie someday"

I hear he's going to be remaking Lawrence of Arabia.

and yeah, a better cast to work with would've helped. but horror movie fans are very forgiving when it comes to acting. I mean, the original halloween's a classic, and it didn't exactly cart the SAG awards home in a wheelbarrow.

"but there's a good chance he's going to remake a great movie someday"

Big Joe Grizzly was the best part of this movie

the acting in cronenberg's films is pretty terrible up until the fly or maybe the dead zone, but there are interesting ideas at work. I don't think zombie's on the same level as cronenberg, but he's also not completely facile in his approach to horror material. he asks / expects more of it than most practioners of the trade do.

My problem with the movie wasn't the acting, it was just how unentertaining the last 45 minutes or so ended up being.

but there's a good chance he's going to make a great movie someday.

Me, I genuinely liked House of 1,000 Corpses. While it failed in almost exactly the same was as the Halloween remake, it got by on entertaining performances, genre enthusiasm, and low-rent/sleazeball charm. Seems like with each successive film, though, he's sacrificing his best qualities for his worst. Each film is more "serious" and narrative-dependent than the last - therefore worse.

Cronenberg comparison does Zombie no favors. Lots of directors make a virtue of wooden performances. Not Zombie. His films work best when the performances are the most colorful and dynamic. Take out all the great character-actor dialogue bits from his movies, and you'd take out a lot of the appeal. Plus Zombie doesn't have the ideas (abstract or formal) that make Cronenberg so fascinating.

Alex in SF OTM. Acting didn't help, though.

"genuinley" - hee

Let's face it, Zombie doesn't really have ideas (great or original.) He also doesn't have a clue about plotting/pace. If he makes a great movie it'll be by accident. That doesn't mean that he won't make some good ones though.

have to disagree about the ideas part. I never thought rob zombie would progress much further than making dopey videos for his 3rd rate groove metal band, but I have to admit that his first 3 films mine a set of themes that he owns and explores in a specific way; the relationships between social outsiders, their families, and their psychopathic sadism.

a cronenberg comparison is only valid in that if you looked at his first 3 movies (shivers, rabid, fast company) you'd see someone struggling with the mechanics of moviemaking but with some interesting ideas he hadn't yet reached the bottom of. plus, his movies got worse before they got better.

all I'm saying is that once zombie's grasp of mechanics catches up with his themes, he has the potential to hit one out of the park. it might even be as simple as directing a script he didn't write.

his first 3 films mine a set of themes that he owns and explores in a specific way; the relationships between social outsiders, their families, and their psychopathic sadism.

it's easy to recognize cronenberg's ideas for what they are, now that he's made 20 films exploring them. but at the time the brood came out, cronenberg was regarded as something of a romero retread (shivers=night of the living dead, rabid=the crazies) with a bonus pervo angle.

also, I'm not making a qualitative comparison between cronenberg and zombie.

Shivers/Rabid/Brood >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> House/Devil's/Halloween

I could add about a million of those > signs frankly.

ALSO I'M NOT MAKING A QUALITATIVE COMPARISON BETWEEN CRONENBERG AND ZOMBIE

Okay ideas in Shivers/Rabid/Brood seem >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> intereresting than ideas House/Devil's/Halloween. And not just retroactively either.

I'm with Alex in SF here. In the wake of The Brood, Cronenberg was being reviewed/critiqued as a potentially significant auteur (sorry) with unique POV, ideas and method. The fact that basically nobody regards Zombie that way is not some mysterious injustice - his films are much less substantial. He trades more in shopworn cool/tough serial-killin' hillbilly tropes than any real insight into the human condition (tropes that are beginning to seem a bit 90s-retro, to put it kindly).

...hillbill tropes MORE than any real insight...

Jeezis key-riced. Fuck a typing. Anyway, understand that you're not trying to say Zombie is as good as Cronenberg, Edward, but now that the comparison's on the table...

and I'm with both of you. zombie's ideas are not as interesting as cronenberg's. to say he has no ideas, or that his wins are all stylistic quirks, doesn't quite capture it, either.

also, I do think rob zombie is regarded differently than say, eli roth.

I don't think Eli Roth is going to make a great movie either.

And Shivers/Rabid/Brood >>>>>>>>>>>>> Cabin Fever/Hostel 1 & 2

you don't say

I can't decide whether to get you a deafhorn or glasses for xmas

I don't really think that true btw. I think most people regard both as hacks.

also, please to correct

Shivers/Rabid/Fast Company >>>>>>>>>>>>> Cabin Fever/Hostel 1 & 2

I don't count Fast Company. It's so clearly a paycheck movie.

for a sleazy exploitation flick, it's surprising the devil's rejects was critically acclaimed at all. but it was, and most critics who trashed it were objecting to the content and not his filmmaking ability.

Fans may be interested in this Glenn Kenny appraisal:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2010/02/the-zombie-halloweens-or-taking-the-nathan-lee-challenge.html

The now semi-retired film critic Nathan Lee, when writing at his most unfettered, is one part connoisseur, one part provocateur, one part contrarian, and three parts...well, probably best not to go into that.

Scat fan.

HOW MANY OF YOU GUYS REMEMBER THE MOVIE," WEEKEND'S AT BERNIES"?
RUMORS ARE FLURRING ABOUT A NE REMAKE OF THE MOVIE, INSPIRED BY THE SONG," MOVING LIKE BERNEY"!
CHECK IT OUT!
http://bit.ly/movinlikeberney
WWW.ISAFANS.COM

http://gawker.com/5812579/rob-zombie-has-made-a-woolite-commercial

torture-porn detergent commercial!

weird that he did this tho