Horror Extreme Movie Review - Halloween

Halloween 2007 is Rob Zombie's much needed take on the Halloween franchise. Not really a sequel or a prequel this is more of a standalone interpretation of the life of Michael Myers.

It follows the life of Michael from a mask obsessed child with a tendency to hurt animals through his fifteen years institutionalisation to his escape. As a child he is tormented by bullies, his drunkard father and his promiscuous sister and her deadbeat boyfriend, the only people he cares for is his loving mother and his little baby sister. He decides to eliminate the bully problem by following his enemy into the woods and beats him to death with a stick. His taste for death rears its head again on Halloween where he disposes of his family problems.

He is locked in a mental institute where he stops talking and becomes fully obsessed with his mask making (plus grows into a monster of a man). Soon his mother stops visiting and his only friend is Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), after years of Michael's silence even his doctor gives up on him and Michael is left with nothing but his masks.

One Halloween night a couple of hospital workers decide to rape one of the new female patients and decide that it would be fun if they did it in front of the "freak" Michael Myers. Quite a mistake as once he beats the two hospital workers to death, Michael escapes to return home to his now derelict house to retrieve his knife, his favourite mask and then to find his now adopted little sister, killing anyone who happens to be in the way.

Once again Rob Zombie has created a masterpiece. This movie takes the concept of the original Halloween movies and puts it in a much realer context making the violence so much more brutal and emotionally stirring. There is a real sense of the sickness inside Michael Myers, plus an insight into how he became such a monster, the part of the movie after he escapes the institution is typical slasher style teens-and-a-madman but is complemented by the first part of the movie that makes it all the more frightening. The sound effects are at either extreme of volume to ensure that your heart is pounding when it is supposed to be and the loud parts coincide with some horrific brutality.

The original Halloween was an outstanding movie but the concept got stretched very thin with a plethora of increasingly silly sequels, this version has given Michael Myers a modern update and has reinforced how influential the Halloween movies have been on the slasher movie genre.