The early years of young Michael Myers and the events leading up to his fateful Halloween night murder rampage in the quiet town of Haddonfield, Illinois.
Ratings
Curator score: 1.2/10
IMDb: 6.1/10
Letterboxd: 2.79/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 28%
Metacritic: 47
TMDB: 6.2/10
Director
Rob Zombie
Production
Dimension Films, Nightfall Productions, Spectacle Entertainment Group, Trancas International Films
Cast
Malcolm McDowell, Scout Taylor-Compton, Tyler Mane, Brad Dourif, Sheri Moon Zombie, Daeg Faerch, William Forsythe, Richard Lynch, Udo Kier, Clint Howard, Danny Trejo, Lew Temple, Tom Towles, Bill Moseley, Leslie Easterbrook, Steve Boyles, Danielle Harris, Skyler Gisondo, Jenny Gregg Stewart, Hanna Hall
Curator Review
Verdict
A grimy, confrontational remake that works best as a brutal character study of abuse, alienation, and violence, but it also over-explains a figure who is usually scarier as a mystery. If you want a nasty, heavy-handed Rob Zombie horror movie with strong atmosphere and ugly energy, it has value; if you want the clean suspense and iconic minimalism of the original, this is likely a miss.
Best for
viewers who like bleak, abrasive horror
fans of slasher remakes with a strong directorial stamp
audiences interested in disturbed-family psychology
people who prefer raw brutality over elegant suspense
Skip if
you want Michael Myers to remain an enigma
you dislike vulgar dialogue and trashy tone
you prefer restrained, atmospheric horror
you are mainly looking for the original film's slow-burn dread
Overview
Rob Zombie’s Halloween is less a stealthy stalk-and-slash machine than a filthy, bruising descent into the making of a monster. The first half is the most interesting part: a portrait of neglect, cruelty, and damaged family life that tries to make Michael Myers feel less like a shape in the dark and more like the endpoint of a rotten environment.
Worth noting
That approach gives the film a mean, oppressive texture, and when the violence hits, it hits hard. Zombie has a gift for making spaces feel lived-in and ugly, and the movie’s best stretches have a nasty momentum that’s hard to shake. The problem is that the explanation can flatten the mystery that made the character endure in the first place.
Bottom line
As a remake, it’s divisive by design: louder, dirtier, more explicit, and far less elegant than the 1978 film. But judged on its own terms, it’s a serious attempt to turn a familiar slasher into a study of damage, with enough craft and ferocity to keep horror fans arguing about it years later.
Top Letterboxd reviews
amaya (4★) · 2356 likes
finally a halloween movie for people who DRINK BEER and HAVE SEX
matt lynch (3.5★) · 1119 likes
like a lot of folks i'm not convinced Zombie does himself any favors by fleshing out Michael Myers' backstory. he typically falls back on his cartoon trailer-trash rotten-tooth fetish, and frankly it just feels like an act. but when his Myers attacks it is punishing and simple, so much so that even the camera panics, shivering and scrambling for the nearest exit. there's a great beat here as Myers enters the Strode house and shuts the door behind him and Zombie keeps us outside, across the street, in the quiet, just for an extra second. placid on the outside and frantic, unvarnished brutality on the inside.
Cliff (0.5★) · 1080 likes
- "The whore with the big tits hanging down her knees?"- "Maybe I'll choke the chicken, purge my snork all over those flappy ass tits."- "I hope she likes cripples."- "Bitch, I will crawl over there and I will skull fuck the shit out of you! Oh, fuck you. Sit on my pole right now, bitch."
For the avoidance of doubt, Robert "Zombie" Cummings was 41 years old when he wrote this film, and not 14 like you'd assume.
A stultifyingly artless, one-note, dull and overlong remake.
adambolt (2★) · 925 likes
if I got bullied by Juni from Spy Kids I would probably also turn into Michael Myers
SilentDawn (3.5★) · 913 likes
*Was a 34, now a 65*
I may never love Rob Zombie's first re-interpretation of Michael Myers, but I've grown to respect it a great deal. What keeps it from greatness is still its adherence to the original source in the second half. The origin of Michael, with the grimy detail of his home and school life, and the eventual massacre inside the Myers house, is brutalizing and acutely observed. I especially love the re-working of the 'stand-still' moment of… more
2016 · Thriller, Science Fiction, Drama · 1h 44m · PG-13 · Curator 5.8/10 (1M ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
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