Rating: R
Run Time: 109 minutes
Director: Rob Zombie
Starring: Scout Taylor-Comptom, Malcolm McDowell,
Tyler Mane
When I first saw Rob Zombie’s
remake of the John Carpenter classic in 2007, I was not impressed. Like so many fans of the original, I
had been waiting with bated breath to see it, even though I had not been able
to stomach Zombie’s first two movies to that point. I should have known what I was in for
because I knew exactly what Zombie was about already, and I did not yet
care for it. I still held
out hope, though, because I also knew he was considered an auteur of sorts
within the genre, and horror cinema can use one desperately; if blood were talent, ingenuity,
or originality, horror cinema would be absolutely anemic. Anyway, I wanted to see the spin he
would put on it. Except,
and here’s the thing, I didn’t want that at all. I wanted Zombie to re-create the movie
from Carpenter’s original whole cloth. I
just didn’t know it at the time.
So when Zombie did put his spin on it, I hated it,
absolutely despised it. But
what else was he to do? If
he had done otherwise, I and everyone else would have eventually gotten around
to calling him a talentless hack (without ingenuity or originality, either);
after all, Zombie’s remake was firmly entrenched within the same time period
that saw remakes of every other iconic ‘80s slasher/cannibal franchise and none
of those films (The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre, Friday the 13th,
The Hills Have Eyes, & A Nightmare on Elm Street) were really
terrible, they were just no great shakes (there was some talent for filmmaking,
and some nice images, but
no arresting imagery, not too many original ideas, or
interesting twists on old themes).
Yes, the remakes were slick and
replete with better overall visuals, makeup, and special effects, but they left
most of us cold nonetheless. Now,
whatever he is, Zombie is not a hack; nor were the other filmmakers,
necessarily. But unlike
them, his gonzo style of filmmaking (just like his gonzo style of music-making)
will not leave you cold; hot under the collar, a bit pissed off, a little
disgusted at the apparent (apparent, I say) lack of socially redeeming
merit, maybe, but not
cold. He will provoke a reaction in you. Foremost, it is a given that the
violence in a Rob Zombie movie, whether colorfully garish as in House of 1000 Corpses or more somber
and brutal in tone as in The Devil’s
Rejects, will be wratcheted up a notch or two. And so it was.
But beyond that, what was he to
do? Given that it had to be done, that a Halloween remake was inevitable (which
I do not accept as a given: Carpenter’s Halloween should have been out of the
figurative public domain, as I believe should Spielberg’s Jaws or Coppola’s Godfather
saga; this I understand to be Zombie’s take on remakes as well, by the way), I
cannot think of any other course than the one Zombie took. He deepened the backstory explaining
Michael Myers’s character and showed us why he became the remorseless killer we
see in the second part of the movie. In
so many words, he humanized Myers.
The problem with doing this is
that, by explaining him, you destroy the essence of what made the original so
incredible. One of the
things, if not the thing, that made Michael Myers
frightening was his inexplicability. There
was no appreciable backstory for him and no explanation for why he was
killing. He was the boogeyman, an incarnation in
ostensibly human form of all that is sinister, destructive, and malign. But not mindless, not mindless at all
in the same way as other indestructible slasher killers. His evil and intelligence are both
active. He releases the
other inmates at Smith’s Grove to create the diversion that allows him to
escape. He knows how to
drive a car. He plots and
toys with his victims in some sense. Have
you ever really thought that maybe all of that “playing possum” shit he pulls
is just plain fucking with Laurie?
I have seen Carpenter interviewed
regarding Michael’s character, where he identified a tendency in the viewer to
project onto the killer the viewer’s own sensibility and, by extension, a very
personal interpretation to explain Myers and his motivation (it’s like the
criminalist Alphonse Bertillon’s quote Thomas Harris uses at the beginning of Red Dragon: one sees only what one observes, and
one observes only that which is already in the mind…or some shit). I may be guilty of doing this very
thing above. But I think
I’m close. In the original,
Michael’s face is almost never seen; the pale white William Shatner mask
personifies perfectly the soulless, remorseless entity that he is (or, It, as
Donald Pleasance’s Sam Loomis described him). To me at least, and to others as well,
the mask is, in some sense, his true face.
The subject of masks and true
faces segues nicely into a brief aside regarding something Zombie did with his
spin on the character that I thought was pretty cool. From the first introduction to Michael
as a young child in Zombie’s film, he is wearing a clown’s mask. He has, in fact, a bit of an obsession
with wearing the thing. He
is played by Daeg Faerch (who is a damned
creepy-looking kid; if I were his real parents, I would sleep with the lights
on, one eye open, and a gun within easy reach). His obsession with masks never
ends. People are constantly
telling him to take the damn thing off and he won’t. At one point, he tells his mother
(Sheri Moon Zombie) he does so to hide his ugly face, although he is not
disfigured. It reminded me
of (again) Thomas Harris’s serial killer, Francis Dollarhyde, from Red Dragon. Dollarhyde has surgery to correct a
cleft palate. The surgery
is successful and the scar and condition are barely noticeable, yet he
continues to hide his face from others, as if the deformity were still there
and as if that were his true face. That’s
the way I remember it; on the other hand, I could be making shit up.
Yet it seems like reasonable shit, so let’s keep on truckin'.
When he is institutionalized,
Zombie’s Michael continues to make masks, seemingly hundreds of them: bright,
colorful masks, creatively-designed masks. It seems as if, being a more human
character to some degree, Michael uses the masks to hide his true face, which is that of a
psychopath (not really; please read on); he is not of mythical status as was
Carpenter’s Myers.
This got me to wondering if Rob Zombie was
familiar with Cleckley’s The
Mask of Sanity, an early 20th century
work on psychopathy. I’ve
begun but not finished the book, but I read far enough to understand
Cleckley’s title was intended as metaphor. Psychopaths are often capable of
mimicking normal behavior that has been modeled for them at some point. The behavior or behaviors they exhibit
to imitate or parody normality constitutes the mask.
Now, I do not think the
description of Myers as a psychopath in either Carpenter’s or Zombie’s film is
at all apt; in fact, it is just wrong. He
is not a psychopath in the clinical sense
of the term as I understand it. I
am a layperson with regard to the mental health profession; I have read
sections of the DSM IV (which does not use the term at all) but do not claim
to have truly comprehended what I read. But I think any and every mental
health professional would probably agree with me on this. The word, psychopath, as a descriptive
term, has been misused by all of us for so long now that appears to
have lost its meaning. This is primarily due, I think, to the
advent of our cultural fascination with serial killers and slasher movies and
books and all the other attendant nonsense.
Here is what I understand:
psychopaths generally do not kill; they are not usually or necessarily prone to
violence at all. They are
superficial and shallow. Their
affect or expression, if they are not yet adept at mimicking appropriate
responses, is strange or weird. Their
behavior is often more self-destructive than it is harmful
when directed at others (other than their attempts at manipulation). In other words, while they may be
shallow, they are not empty vessels for evil; their expressions may be unusual,
but they are not void of them wholly. Simply,
neither the Michael Myers of John Carpenter or Rob Zombie is a psychopath; he
is something else entirely.
Sorry for the digression, but I
think it speaks to an important point. Whatever
negative influences that operate in the life of the young Michael Myers,
together with any pre-existing biological underpinnings at play, do not create
a psychopath at all, but something much worse and far more monstrous. The Michael Myers of Rob Zombie’s
imagination is a raging Id externalized and set loose on the small township of
Haddonfield, Illinois. This
is even more evident when this movie is viewed in tandem with Zombie’s Halloween II. His rampage is fueled not by a mere
lack of empathy for the suffering of others, but by a pathological hatred (of
any and everything) that is unbounded.
Anyway, I wonder if Zombie too
sees Michael’s masks as metaphorical, hiding the depraved mind of a homicidal
maniac? He is pretty sharp
in his use of imagery elsewhere in his movies, so my money is on the
affirmative. I sincerely
want it to be, because otherwise the sight of Tyler Mane (who makes Kane Hodder
and Gunnar Hansen look like pussies) wearing that orange mask is just asinine.
Anyway (for those who are still
with us after that rambling diatribe), we open in the Myers’ home, at a point
in time where Michael, at ten, is already killing small animals. He and his family are living in
squalor. His mother is both
Madonna and Whore, loving and affectionate with her children on the one hand
and working as a dancer in a strip club on the other. I’m not suggesting the two are
mutually incompatible, but one gets the feeling she doesn’t work there by
choice and her job causes her son to be ridiculed by bullies. His sister is already sexually active
and the object of his step-father’s lascivious attention. Step-dad is played by William Forsyth,
and he is vile.
There’s a little bit of this and
a little bit of that, and then, before we know it, it’s killing time. Michael does a number on one of the
bullies, his sister and her lover, and step-daddy. He spares Mom and his infant sister
(“Boo”/Angel). Then he is
institutionalized in lieu of prison and placed under the care of a psychiatrist
whom we briefly saw earlier during a conference between a principal of
Michael’s school and Ms. Myers. And
who do you think it is, long hair in a pony-tail and all hippy-dippy? Dr. Samuel fucking Loomis, that’s
who! The mind reels.
In a way, this is an interesting
alteration from the original itself, in the sense that it now introduces a
mental health professional who can provide some perspective on Myers that is
entirely distinct from the Sam Loomis of Carpenter’s movie. I think Malcolm McDowell to have been
perfectly capable of the same take on the character as was the great Donald
Pleasance, but that is not the character as written by Zombie. To Carpenter’s Loomis, Michael is
something not entirely human against which society must be protected at any
cost. Zombie’s Loomis is
still a bit of a character, but Rob Zombie’s B-movie is not the same as John
Carpenter’s B-movie. Zombie
is ostensibly interested in what motivates Michael’s actions or makes Michael “tic.” Therefore, his Loomis, importantly, likes and
sympathizes with Michael. Actually,
that’s a big fucking mistake, but hey…
Except Loomis doesn’t end up
illuminating us with that much-needed exposition at all, and this is where
Zombie’s vision fails to deliver what is promised. There are a few bullshit
sessions that accomplish nothing, something about black being the absence of
light (which was, I admit, kinda cool), Michael’s mom visits once or twice, and
then Michael, for no fathomable reason, kills a nurse (Sybil Danning, who does not flash her boobs) with his lunch fork;
I’m sorry because I hate it when sanctimonious critics pick apart every
implausibility or continuity error like the second-guessing asses they are,
but, come on, who would give that motherfucker a fork?!?
(not a plastic spork, either, by the way but an honest-to-God four-tined
metal fork). There is much
sturm und drang and then the scene ends with a freeze frame of Michael’s face,
contorted with rage.
Before moving on, I want to talk
about why I think Zombie’s Loomis (Zombie’s Loomis…that sounds like some weird
infection the living dead are vulnerable to) fails. To me it’s simple: Malcolm McDowell is
let down by the contradictions in the script. You can’t have a new-agey,
compassionate Dr. Loomis who morphs mid-way into Donald Pleasance’s modern-day
Van Helsing. It’s jarring
and doesn’t work. In my
fantasy world, where I am king, I kept hoping McDowell would don a black bowler
and white jumpsuit and suggest that he and Michael head on down to Haddonfield
and do some serious ass-whupping to the strains of “Singing in the Rain.” That would have been some truly
inspired insanity. It didn’t happen.
Flash forward fifteen years,
where Loomis is telling the behemoth that is now Michael Myers (Tyler Mane,
R.J. from The Devil’s Rejects, still
wearing the damned orange mask) about how he’s sorry but this is going to be
his last visit to Michael and how he feels like Michael, who apparently hasn’t
said a frickin’ word in fifteen years, is his best friend. Come again?
I think I get where Zombie was
going. Much as in Stoker’s Dracula, where Van
Helsing admires the intelligence and courage of the medieval Dracula but
recognizes the necessity for destroying the monster he has become, Loomis has compassion
for Michael but knows what and how dangerous he is. This (to my mind) failure to establish
an essential character’s plausibility illustrates well a credible complaint so
many have had with the movie: that what we have here is two mini-movies that
are incompatible as parts of a whole.
Anyway, pretty soon, Michael
kills the shit out of several B-movies cameos and heads home to Haddonfield
(sorry about the alliteration)…
The last hour pretty faithfully
follows the first film. The
deaths are much more violent (there was no blood in the original, of
course). The first time I
saw the movie, I was pissed about this. I
thought it was an uninspired use of gore for gore’s sake, and there is some
truth to this, I think. But
in another sense, the second version probably does, whether we like it or not,
more realistically depict the violence that would be inflicted by a seven foot
thirteen inch monster. Plus,
I think that’s just Zombie’s thing. Somehow,
the violence he stages looks a lot like the real thing.
Tyler Mane makes a dangerous
Michael Myers. Not at all
the same way that Nick Castle was menacing, but scary nonetheless simply
because of his size. I have
heard some critical disapproval that the humanizing aspects (?) of the first
forty-five minutes made it difficult for them not to continue thinking of
Michael as a person with human motivations. Let me tell you, I did not have that problem. Once he donned the coveralls and mask,
he became a monster, and a very brutal one. But even that is problematic, because I don’t know
that Zombie intends that we forget Michael’s humanity, even here at the end.
Random Thoughts/Interesting
Tidbits
I would like to introduce my
corollary to the Jump Scare Doctrine. There
are jump scares, when you get that frisson of fear where your upper body
freezes with nervous shivers and you say, “shit!” And there are Jolt Scares, where you
freak out, drop or spill whatever you’re holding, jump half a foot into the
air, and scream, “fuck!” very loudly.
There was one very good jump
scare and two great jolt scares in this movie that are almost, in retrospect,
worth the price of admission.
The
Horror Inkwell Rating: 5/10
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