Having avoided the remakes of John Carpenter's Assault On Precinct 13 and The Fog, and actively dreading the "re-imagining" of Escape From New York, I nonetheless headed out this weekend to see the latest Carpenter retread, Halloween because...well, it's what Mom would have wanted.
This incarnation of Halloween, of course, was written and directed by Rob Zombie, and man, oh man did Mom love the Zombie. She caught a White Zombie performance on Letterman, went crazy for the music and, more importantly, for The Man Himself. She, uh, apparently thought he was hot, and that creeps me out on so many levels...let's move on.
The point is, she dug the man and his music, and when he started directing, well, so much the better. Seeing The Devil's Rejects was literally one of the things that rejuvenated Mom after her cancer was discovered (Rob Zombie, Life Force...Who knew?), so clearly she'd have wanted to see his latest opus, even if it is a pointless remake.
Well, not entirely pointless. The first half of Zombie's Halloween crafts an origin for Carpenter's seemingly motiveless killer, as a kid from a white trash family with a pure love for his momma and baby sister and a growing hatred for everything else in his wretched life. The psychological underpinnings of Zombie's script are as subtle as his cracker aesthetics, but they're believable and, occasionally, moving. The writing and filmmaking here can't be faulted, and the performances by Sherri Moon-Zombie and Daeg Faerch as a mother and child with a bond that is almost stronger than death are simply outstanding. If only the whole movie had been this good, it would have ranked alongside Jonathan Kaplan's Over The Edge or Tim Hunter's River's Edge as a study of alienated, invisible youth.
Unfortunately, it turns into just another slasher movie, complete with characters who know things they couldn't possibly know. Zombie's staging remains competent, but the material is so familiar (it is a remake, after all), and the action ultimately so tedious, that it finally leaves a bad taste.
Still, the final scene ties the film back to its opening sequences in an almost sentimental style, and I suspect Mom would have loved it. Hell, she might even have cried. You never could tell with her.
