The prequel portion also paints a world where young Michael, despite his heinous crimes, has a support system. If you’re enjoying this article, consider joining our fiend club on Patreon for only a couple-a bucks a month! All of our articles are FREE to read and enjoy, without limits. Nightmare on Film Street is an independent outlet. In the original, there’s never a reason given for young Michael’s sudden turn to sister-cide, but Zombie paints its murder as catharsis. Michael Myers’ early years plays out like an episode of Criminal Minds, with the 10-year-old the victim of sociopathic tendencies like killing animals, and the victim of the abuse and bullying from kids at school, and from family members in his own house. So the first problem with Zombie’s plan is that we’re supposed to care if there’s a reason why Michael Myers kills, and we’re supposed to care what that reason is. Someone thought they were writing a dissertation of the ancient traditions and symbols behind Halloween, but we only ever come to these things to watch Michael Myers kill people, we’ve never much cared why he did it. Looking back on the Halloween franchise, the lowest point is probably the sixth chapter, The Curse of Michael Myers, which tried to tie Michael to some centuries-old curse involving human sacrifice, Druid tribes, and the ancient pagan holiday Samhain. Zombie’s Halloween was once prequel and remake, designed to add more depth to Michael Myers than just a mute goliath in a painted Captain Kirk mask, but would anyone really care? His film would boldly revision the storyline of the original, with adult Michael Myers savagely hunting babysitter Laurie Strode and her friends, after a lengthy prologue that dived into the reasons why and what for young Michael became a killer. It’s almost impossible to say anything new about Carpenter’s original vision, so let’s jump right into Zombie’s. “In the original, there’s never a reason given for young Michael’s sudden turn to sister-cide, but Zombie paints its murder as catharsis.” Subtlety would be thrown out the nearest window, and if there was anyway to enhance the cheap thrills of nudity and gore, then he would surely do it. What John Carpenter made subtext in the original Halloween, Zombie would make text. It was the perfect job for Rob Zombie, who, at the time, was fresh off the one-two punch of The House of 1,000 Corpses, and The Devil’s Rejects. In this case, you start with a director who’s audacious, decisive, and with little interest in convention or good taste. It was like remaking Psycho, and look how well that went. Still, whoever was going to remake Halloween faced an uphill battle from the moment they signed the dotted line on the contract, this was not only a classic, it was *the* classic. Any discussion about remaking Halloweenhas to begin with the concession that any movie that features a masked killer chasing a teenage girl with a knife is an extant remake of Halloween, or at the very least they’re a descendant sharing the same DNA.
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