Halloween:The Director’s Cut

Director: Rob Zombie

Roadshow

R4 DVD

The choice of Rob Zombie to remake Halloween was a brave one, his approach to music and film-making tends to polarize audiences and this is much the same with Halloween, you will either rave about it or hate it. To be honest I was never a fan of Rob Zombie, until now. In my own humble opinion I think Halloween is a masterful achievement, it has brought up to date a classic horror/slasher film and given it a depth which was not found in the original.

This, of course, is a controversial opinion; the original Halloween is held in high esteem and worshipped by cult film addicts. I certainly agree the original was a great film and was highly effective for its time, but I should emphasize the end phrase, for its time. There were various follow-on films but nothing truly revolutionary. Today the original films are clearly outdated and a new version of the myth was needed that could breathe new life into the story of Michael Myer and I believe this film does so. There have been complaints about the brutality and certainly this is a brutal, vicious and violent film, but the myth of Michael Myer was always just that.

The slow development of the background to how Michael Myer becomes a killer is powerful and the depiction of a dysfunctional family is unflinching and at times painful to watch. The consistent process of feeling empathy for a disturbed child (and then adult) and then repulsion for his violent rage is what provides the film with a visceral emotional impact. The way in which the film explains the way the psyche of a killer develops is impressive and I especially liked Malcolm McDowell as the psychiatrist.

There are lots of little touches that helps make this a highly successful film. I think the exploration of the nature of masks is interesting. The way in which the young Myers kills with the same mask which will later become his signature is meaningful, as is the fact that though he is a child, it is an adult sized mask – it is as though the underlying message is that through this act of killing his is branded for life, the mask has stuck, he cannot escape. The mask in this version of Halloween also has a more “Frankenstein” look which emphasizes the fact that he is a product of the environment around him. He is a boogeyman, a collective zeitgeist of the dysfunction in which he developed. This “social” background to the Myer legend is far more developed in this film and this gives the character far more depth. Certainly, in some way, it removes the mystery of the legend but also humanizes the character which makes it even more confronting, the viewer regularly identified with both the killer (as victim) and the victim (as another form of victim) and hence this makes Halloween a very confronting experience.

While certainly the sheer ferocity of the films violence cannot be underplayed, I do not believe it can necessarily be simply seen as gratuitous as some reviewers have claimed. The original film was violent and the only reason it’s violence was limited was due to the time and social context in which it was made. I believe that if the original Halloween had been made today it would have been just as violent, that’s the nature of the present day, regardless of whether we like it or not. To make this film “real” requires a certain higher level of emotional and physical violence than the original and I believe it utilizes these in a creative way to great effect. To understand the nature of Michael Myers we must appreciate the violence that created him, the violence around him and, of course, the resulting violence of his actions.

It is too easy to see the original film through some sort of nostalgic fantasy, remembering smooching in a drive-in, while forgetting the originally furor caused by such films. Slashers were highly controversial in their time as this film is today. Just like the original this film breaks new ground and pushes “the edge of the envelope” to get the desired effect.

This is an intelligent, powerful and confronting adaption of a classic horror film, it offers a truly innovative version of the Michael Myers mythos and mixes suspense, violence and a truly bleak view of the world to create a unique visual experience.

Special Features:

Audio Commentary by Writer/Director Rob Zombie

Alternate Ending

Re-Imagining Halloween documentary

Conversation with Rob Zombie featurette

Meet the Cast featurette

Screen Tests

Bloopers and more!