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| A mask that seemingly holds back a mass of bothersome memories lights up this well-made poster for Rob Zombie's Halloween |
Escaping after 17 years in a sanatorium, murder convict lunatic Michael Myers escapes and returns to Haddonfield and his little sister Laurie...
Halloween is written and directed by Rob Zombie (The Devil's Rejects (2005)), remaking John Carpenter's great slasher classic Halloween (1978). Zombie adds content to tell of Myers' almost comical childhood and his mask fetish, but seemingly only because most other areas of the Halloween universe have already been covered in the franchise's 8 preceding films.
Halloween features no real sense of character development or scene building, as everything is shot shakily and ultra-close in gritty images with a continually stressful quality. There is lots of blood but little in the way of actual, dazzling special effects. Worst for the film is that we are not made to care about a single one in it. This is an awfully bad remake.
Related posts:
Rob Zombie: 2007 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2007 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
The Devil's Rejects (2005) - Zombie's crazy serial killer Americana
Hear the theme for the film here, - which naturally reuses Carpenter's legendary original 1978 ditto
Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 80.2 mil. $
= Big hit (5.34 times the cost)
[Halloween was released 31 August (North America) and runs 110 minutes. Carpenter is a friend of Zombie, and when Zombie informed him of the remake plans, he urged Zombie to "make it his own." Shooting took place in California, including Los Angeles and in the neighborhood Carpenter shot in for the original film, from January - March 2007 with reshoots in June. 4 days before the release, a workprint, which Zombie stated was an older version of the film, was released online. The film opened #1 to a stellar 26.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 2 weeks in the top 5 (#2-#5) and grossed 58.2 mil. $ (72.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 3.6 mil. $ (4.5 %) and Italy with 3.4 mil. $ (4.2 %). It is the highest-grossing Halloween movie to date, unadjusted for inflation. Zombie returned with the much less successful Halloween II (2009). Halloween is rotten at 25 % with a 4.1/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Halloween?
