Other movies in this series:
None (as this "reboots" the series)

The tyranist's thoughts
In the weeks leading up to the release of the remake of Halloween I said more than once that it was absolutely a movie that didn't need to be made. The original is just as scary today as it was in 1978 and it is still one of the finest horror movies ever made. Often imitated, never duplicated, and the father of an entire generation of horror movies, there is no reason to try to do it over. But I wanted to give Rob Zombie the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to believe that he could make a compelling movie that was frightening and not the least bit damaging to the original. After all, making this new one doesn't mean the original will be made unavailable to us anymore. Does it?
And that's where I get upset. Because from now on, when someone talks about Halloween the movie, they will be referring to the 2007 movie and not the one made in 1978. Kids in the coming generations will see the 2007 version and then only the intellectually curious and those in film school will seek out the 1978 version. And that is what is wrong with remakes. It doesn't take away my ability to love the original. It doesn't take away my ability to just watch the original. But it changes those things for all of the subsequent generations. And that bothers me a lot.
So from now on, you will only hear me refer to this as Halloween: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Zombie went in to a classic movie and tried to make us feel for the monster. Tried to make us understand him and perhaps even sympathise with him. Never, ever did I want to understand Michael Myers. Not once. Not for a second. That was part of what made him so damn frightening. He was a demon. He was evil incarnate. He never speaks. He never flinches. He is not human. He is just a monster.
But Rob Zombie thought differently. Apparently, in his universe, Michael is a mistreated, misunderstood little boy who only ever wanted to be loved and who struck out violently at anything that didn't love him.
I hate you, Rob Zombie.
An entire generation of kids will grow up not knowing the Shape, but knowing only that being treated poorly sometimes leads to the need to kill things. They won't be afraid of the Boogeyman. They'll be afraid that if they treat people poorly, those people might just beat them up.
Halloween was never about people who were being killed for a reason. They weren't targeted because of something they did. They weren't killed because they were mean. They were killed because John Carpenter was making a scary movie and understood that it is so much more terrifying to be hounded and threatened for no reason at all than it is to be attacked because you didn't treat a little boy right.
Halloween: Portrait of a Serial Killer misses on so many levels. I found it deeply disappointing. From the overlong exploration of Michael's development and early murders, to the insertion of characters simply to give him another stabbing victim, the movie has lost all of the menace of the original in favour of seeking our approval of Michael.
This movie never needed to be made and shouldn't have been made. Please, please, don't taint your experience. Even if it hadn't been a remake of one of my favourite movies, the movie is only average. Just rent the 1978 version and spend a quiet night with friends. You'll be so much better off.
Posted: September 3, 2007

Rish's Reviews
Ah, Halloween 2007. Shoot, this may be a long review. And when I say long, I mean The Messengers long. I apologise in advance.
First and foremost, tyranist is the bigger fan of Halloween of the two of us. He owns many of the sequels and rates it near the top of his All-Time Favourites list. Don't get me wrong, I really like the film too, I just don't revere it like he does. I do recognise it, however, as the most influential horror film of all time.
Yeah, let me repeat that, to ensure the hate mail comes straight to me: Halloween is the most influential horror film of all time. Hey, The Exorcist's up there, as is The Shining, Nosferatu, Scream, Jaws, Frankenstein, The Haunting, and Blair Witch. But even Psycho has to come in second to Halloween.*
So, it takes a lot of huevos to remake Halloween, and Seņor Zombi was the one to have them. And Zombie is even more ballsy by telling the story through Michael Myers's point of view, explaining away his origin, his motivations, and getting into his head enough (or almost enough) to make him sympathetic.
I was afraid of this movie, yet really wanted to see it, more so than the remakes of The Omen, Dawn of the Dead, and Amityville Horror. I don't know why, even now. I guess I was just curious as to how he'd go about it. Curious enough that we went on its opening day.
The film did very, very well (setting a Labor Day Weekend record . . . though these records mean absolutely nothing today, with tickets costing more and more, and less and less people going to theatres . . . except, of course, those with very small children. But I digress), and somebody was wise to release it in August rather than October when I would've put it out.
Tyranist had a great deal to say about the film afterward. I've no idea what his review will look like, but if he didn't mention his feeling that this film was unnecessary or his alternate--and brilliant--suggestion for the film's title, then I don't know him at all.
I thought it was certainly interesting, the way Zombie went about making this, and the changes and emphases he chose to make. I wouldn't mind sitting down with the man and talking about his motivations, but I neither appreciated nor liked the movie, and wonder why it was I wanted to see it so badly.
One of my big complaints was the reuse of the John Carpenter score (not the theme, boys and girls, track after track after track after track of the 1978 score), not reinterpreted, and not really altered from the original. As that score as one of the most innovative and memorable aspects of the original, it was hard not to be reminded of when they played each track in the first film, who was onscreen, what the shot looked like.
Halloween 1978 doesn't scream The Seventies to me (it's got a surprisingly timeless quality). In fact, this film, including its cellphones and CGI and c-word, feels more at home in that decade than this one. The music, the clothing styles, the filmmaking techniques, and mostly the FEEL of the remake are very 1970's.
I am an admirer of Rob Zombie, having met him and found him intelligent, respectful, and insightful (and just between you and me, I was Rob Zombie for Halloween last year). But this'll (probably) be the last of his movies that I see. His style is just not my style, and the feel he generates in his films are the opposite of what I go to horror films for.
And man, this was rough going. A couple of the murders were so brutal and realistic-seeming that my body wanted to crawl right out of my seat. People talk (more and more) about this new subgenre of Horror called "Torture Porn" (which I've complained about before), but are movies like Saw or Hostel somehow more despicable for being made today than Silence of the Lambs or Marathon Man when they came out (or Casino Royale, now that I think about it)? You can say what you want, but if anything is worthy to be branded with a hateful epithet, it's this film, along with the films that inspired it, like Last House, Texas Chainsaw, Cannibal Holocaust, and Zombie's two previous films.
It would be nice if I never had to hear that term again. But then, it would've been nice had the parent who brought her shrieking infant to Halloween 2007 not arrived, or the family that brought their whole batch of elementary school-aged children thought to leave them at home.
But hey, I ranted about that when I saw Vacancy, and I don't suppose I need to do it again this year.
The brutality of this film was really hard for me to watch, especially Michael's first kill. Zombie said of his last film that he didn't want to be accused of glamourising murder, of making it glossy and attractive, and yeah, it certainly turned me off. But perhaps I've got a bit of humanity left when it really disturbs me to hear a girl beg for her life as she's stabbed in the back seventeen times.
In Halloween 2007's defence, there is a great deal of (quite-explicit) nudity. It seemed, when it was over, that the only female character who didn't take her clothes off was the one who was supposed to be a stripper. Maybe I'm reaching when I call that irony.
There were also many, many familiar faces in the film (from horror movie staples like Danny Trejo, Clint Howard, Ken Foree, Richard Lynch, Sid Haig, and Udo Kier, to modern icons like Brad Dourif, Dee Wallace and Danielle Harris, who's been in almost as many "Halloweens" as Jamie Lee Curtis) Somebody even said Adrienne Barbeau was in the movie, but I certainly didn't see her.
I quite liked Malcolm McDowell as Doctor Loomis (as long as I could be rid of the spectre of Donald Pleasence in the back of my mind). I even liked Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie Strode, though I don't imagine she'll make our Scream Queens list.
The film was well-made. It was actually pretty scary too. It's possible that people--especially young people--will like the 2007 version better than the 1978 version. But then, there are probably some who prefer Psycho '98 to Psycho.
I constantly rail against remakes, since many times, they supplant the originals, and certainly for younger viewers, they make the originals seem dated or unnecessary. I hope that doesn't happen with Halloween. It didn't happen with Psycho, didn't happen with "The Twilight Zone," and didn't happen with Night of the Living Dead. So I can hope.
I'd Recommend It To: Please, don't bring your children or infants to horror movies. I don't know how much longer I can keep the raging beast inside me at bay.
*And maybe I wouldn't say that if I were fifty years old. But maybe I'd say it louder.
Posted: September 14, 2007

Total Skulls: 29

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film		Halloween
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie		White Zombie, House on Haunted Hill, The Thing from Another World
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?