Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of The Dead, The Hills Have Eyes, and now Halloween. All originals were independent productions made with limited budgets that found worldwide success due to the fact they were simply well made original films. Leave it to Hollywood to do some sloppy cut n paste jobs with some hack/poser directors cashing in hard earned name recognition, basically they see something so old making more money consistently over the years when their modern dull horror flicks fail to be remembered once they're out of theaters so they create some mock-ups with the same name and cut in front of line. All these new horror remakes are BORING to their very core, the violence isn't even "XTREEEME" as they try to make it out to be, even if there is more blood than the originals (well Dawn of The Dead remake was no where near as graphic as the original on top of being moronic/annoying).
Well here's Rob Zombie's Halloween. Rob Zombie is a terrible writer and a lousy director, he belongs directing Saw movies or some straight to DVD horror flicks, this is easily the worst horror remake since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre but it might be even worse than that one. The film has vague character outlines but nothing much else, and don't say it doesn't matter because a good hour of this movie is devoted to fall-flat-on-its-face character development that is nonexistent. There is setup, location, some empty lines, and well its so amateurish, either the door is wide open for some real talent to save horror or it really is over for the genre.
The payoff at the end of the film is very cut n paste. Its no better or worse than any Halloween sequel, well its not even as good as 2 or 4. Since its a new movie the camera is constantly shaking around and there's that fake "realistic" brutality/dying/screaming acting that is so forced its just annoying. There is nothing worse in my opinion than something that believes it is truly shocking and in your face when in truth it is very plain and kind of dull. Every minute of this movie is like that down to the throwaway horror cameo characters, which are haphazard cussfests that attempt to be funny but are just, I dunno, lame. Zombie's downtrodden "everyone is stupid" modernistic attitude kills every frame of the movie, as if none of the characters he wastes over an hour on matter because MICHAEL MYERS is coming and this time he seems to be based on professional wrestler Kane or The Undertaker. Which is fitting, this is a very modern mall goth approach to story telling, and Rob Zombie is mall metal with an audience that could never hope to name the origins of horror film samples found in his music so I don't know. Michael Myers jumps out and stabs lots of people but its nothing too graphic or interesting, there's no suspense, buildup or pay off. Its just kind of there.
John Carpenter's early films were minimalist, Rob Zombie films are excessive, so its only ironic his film comes off as an empty exercise in generic slasher fare. The late 80s are back I guess.

The 1st thing I noticed about this movie was it was from the point of view of the hunter instead of the hunted. For the 1st time wee see what Michael sees not what his victims see. This version does an extensive build up of the Michale Myres character from his child hood of abuse- how his step dad mentally and physically abuses him and how his sister ignores him. We learn how he was picked on at school to the point this small 10 yr old snaps. We also get to learn about his obsession with masks and how he dealt with being in the mental institution as well as how he escaped and the storyline of how he became the monster he was in the previous movies. The 1st part of the movie gets the viewer to see exactly what happened to this small child to push the right buttons to create the perfect killing machine.
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The cinematography was great from the film color dating the movie back 20 yrs. With some modern changes to how high school kids act now a days to add to the realism. The blood wasn't over done or digitalized. Zombie kept a sense of realism that made the movie that much more believable raising the scare factor.

Of course if you follow zombies previous films you will see a hand full of actors and actresses make an appearance from time to time. The children actors did an amazing job as well. The other thing I liked was I never got bored. I remember the old slasher flicks like the Freddy and the Jason films as well as the old Halloween movies- during scenes of character development there was a lot of boring dialog that slowed the movies down to a crawl and lost my interest until another sex scene or another killing depending on the film I was watching. This movie manager to negate all that boring sluggishness development and still create a character on the screen.