Why Rob Zombie Got It Wrong
Feb 20, 2012 14:37:45 GMT -8
Post by simon on Feb 20, 2012 14:37:45 GMT -8
First off, I'd like to say I enjoyed the Rob Zombie remake of Halloween. Having said that, here's why the original is far superior, and why Rob Zombie should have followed the original more closely.
In the remake, we see Michael growing up in this nasty, abusive, dysfunctional white trash family, which is the director's way of explaining how Michael became psychopathic. What Rob Zombie didn't understand, (much like post-Carpenter Halloween directors before him), is that a lack of explanation is exactly what makes Myers so scary in the first place.
If we see Michael as a child in a house full of malice, hatred and violence, then we can point to that as the cause of his psychopathy. It gives us something we can understand as a reason why he became a stone cold killer. Sure, that's pretty scary, but it's nowhere near as scary as having no explanation at all.
In the original, Michael Myers was an ordinary little kid, from an ordinary family, living in an ordinary little town...and one Halloween night, he just picked up a huge knife, and brutally murdered his sister with it. Just like that. Nobody saw it coming. Nobody could have predicted it. And there was no explanation. It was just random chaos, an act of absolute evil, which Loomis' dialogue stresses over and over again. The Shape is "evil on two legs". Evil doesn't need a reason or a justification; it just does horrible, horrible things.
THAT is scary. It means that an evil force just welled up inside this kid and lashed out, without warning or provocation. And it could happen to any of us.
In the remake, we see Michael growing up in this nasty, abusive, dysfunctional white trash family, which is the director's way of explaining how Michael became psychopathic. What Rob Zombie didn't understand, (much like post-Carpenter Halloween directors before him), is that a lack of explanation is exactly what makes Myers so scary in the first place.
If we see Michael as a child in a house full of malice, hatred and violence, then we can point to that as the cause of his psychopathy. It gives us something we can understand as a reason why he became a stone cold killer. Sure, that's pretty scary, but it's nowhere near as scary as having no explanation at all.
In the original, Michael Myers was an ordinary little kid, from an ordinary family, living in an ordinary little town...and one Halloween night, he just picked up a huge knife, and brutally murdered his sister with it. Just like that. Nobody saw it coming. Nobody could have predicted it. And there was no explanation. It was just random chaos, an act of absolute evil, which Loomis' dialogue stresses over and over again. The Shape is "evil on two legs". Evil doesn't need a reason or a justification; it just does horrible, horrible things.
THAT is scary. It means that an evil force just welled up inside this kid and lashed out, without warning or provocation. And it could happen to any of us.
