Halloween (2007, USA)

Rob Zombie's Halloween is terribly unpleasant. I'm not a big slasher movie fan (it's the repetition that gets me more than the blood spilled), but I've been interested in Zombie as a filmmaker ever since I heard him give a great interview on NPR a few years back about censorship and the studio system. As a writer/director, he can certainly bring the nasty - the first ten minutes or so of Halloween are incredibly horrible, even though no one actually dies until a little while later. It's Zombie's sense of atmosphere that's so strong, bringing out the grime and awfulness of Michael Meyers' lower-class upbringing. The intent is to inject some kind of meaning into Meyers' decent into murderousness, and while Zombie certainly pulls together a complete picture of an abusive childhood, he never entirely discounts Meyers' internal disfunction as a root cause.

Unfortunately, Zombie's atmospheric sensibility can only go so far, and the movie ends up being too long and drawn-out to really sustain any momentum. Slasher films might be all about seeing the bodies hit the floor, but tightening up the second half and losing a kill scene or two would have really helped balance the movie, especially as the establishment of Meyers' character takes up a good hour of the film's outset. By the time the final chase sequence was even halfway through, my attention was wandering.

I'd be remiss not to mention the awesome cast that Zombie assembled for this project. Forget all of the cute teenage girls without their tops on - Malcolm McDowell? Brad Dourif? William Forsythe, Clint Howard, Danny Trejo and UDO KIER? It's like a convention of b-movie character actors and bit players from the last three decades.