Halloween
Tags: murder, realism, violence, horror, insanity, humor, tragedy, sadist, home movie

Plot synopsis:
Unrated Cut
Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch), a ten-year-old boy living in Haddonfield, IL, is bullied at school and his family life is little better. His mother, Deborah (Sheri Moon Zombie) dances at the local strip club and constantly fights with her boyfriend, Ronnie (William Forsythe). Full of rage, Michael hides behind a Halloween clown mask and tortures and kills pets. He shows tenderness only to his infant sister. After Michael has an encounter with a bully at school on Halloween, Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) presents to Deborah evidence of Michael's abuse of animals and informs her that her son displays warning signs of sociopathology. Michael runs from school, follows the bully into the woods and beats him to death with a branch. That night, Judith refuses to take Michael trick or treating so she can stay home to have sex with her boyfriend when Deborah goes to work. Left to his own devices, Michael savagely kills Ronnie, Judith (Hanna R. Hall), and her boyfriend. After he is done, he tenderly cradles his infant sister in his arms.Michael is convicted of first degree murder and incarcerated in the Smith's Grove mental hospital under the care of Dr. Loomis. Deborah visits him weekly. Michael claims not to remember the killings and begs to go home. After several months of fruitless treatment, Michael snaps and kills a nurse (Sybil Danning). Distraught, Deborah commits suicide. Michael grows into a hulking adult male and remains locked in the sanitarium for the next fifteen years, speaking to no one and spending the time making masks. Dr. Loomis gives up on treating him and instead writes a best-selling book describing him as irredeemable evil.On October 30th Michael (Taylor Mane) is sitting in his cell making masks. Two orderlies at the asylum, who happen to be cousins, are on duty and are taking advantage of a new female inmate. They decide to have some fun in Michael's room, Michael is making a mask, once he finishes he slaughters the two guards and takes the keys, then escapes into the night. At a truck stop, he kills a driver (Ken Foree) in the bathroom and steals his overalls. By the next morning -- Halloween -- he has returned to his family home in Haddonfield, which has remained abandoned since his mother's suicide. There he retrieves the butcher knife he used to kill Ronnie and one of the masks he wore that night, which he had hidden beneath the floorboards.Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) is a good-girl student and daughter in Haddonfield. Her father is a real estate agent trying to sell the old Myers home, which local legend has is haunted. As a favor for him, Laurie drops some paperwork off at the Myers house. Michael sees her and is intrigued. He follows her to high school and watches her. Laurie's more outgoing friends Lynda and Annie (Kristina Klebe and Danielle Harris) are more sexually active than the boyfriend-less and frustrated Laurie, who spends her Halloweens babysitting ten-year-old Tommy (Skyler Gisondo). Annie persuades Laurie to babysit her own charge on Halloween night, Lindsey, so she and her boyfriend can fool around instead.Lynda, meanwhile, goes to the old Myers house with her boyfriend to party. After they have sex, Michael kills them. He then proceeds to the Strode house, and as soon as Laurie leaves for her babysitting assignment, he kills her parents. After Annie drops Lindsey off with Laurie and Tommy, she and her boyfriend begin to have sex at Lindsey's house. Michael enters and kills the boyfriend but leaves Annie alive after brutalizing her. A few hours later, Laurie walks Lindsey home and finds Annie naked and trembling and her boyfriend's corpse hanging from the ceiling. Laurie sends Lindsey back to Tommy's and then calls the police. Michael attacks Laurie but she manages to escape back to Tommy's as well. Michael follows her, kills the police who have arrived and abducts Laurie.Dr. Loomis has been informed of Michael's escape. After buying two high-powered handguns, he travels to Haddonfield and pleads with Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) to believe that Michael Myers has returned. Only after his call to the Strodes goes unanswered does Brackett fear the worst. He reveals to Loomis that Laurie Strode is Michael's sister, adopted by the Strodes after Deborah committed suicide. Loomis realizes Michael senses this truth but doesn't know what Michael will do about it.Loomis and Brackett go to Lindsey's house. There Brackett finds the sobbing Annie, who is his daughter. Meanwhile, Loomis goes to the Myers house. Michael has taken Laurie there. Michael gives Laurie a photograph of them as children and drops his knife. Laurie stabs him and escapes into the backyard. Michael pursues her and corners her in the empty swimming pool. As he advances into the pool to retrieve her, Loomis appears and pleads with him to stop repeatedly, after this fails he shoots Michael in the back several times. Loomis and Laurie try to escape, but Michael rips Laurie from the car before they can. Loomis pleads with Michael to stop and tells him to give Laurie to him, Finally Michael gives in and releases Laurie to Loomis. As Dr. Loomis and Laurie walk away Michael drops the knife and the police that have arrived on the scene led by sheriff Brackett, open fire on Michael repeatedly until he falls. Loomis pleads with them to stop as Laurie cries. The scene fades black as it replays the sounds of a taped session between Michael and Dr. Loomis.* * * * * * * * * * (THEATRICAL VERSION)* * * * * * * *Ten-year-old Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) is tormented by his family, and school bullies, as well as showing an interest in masks and killing animals. It is Halloween and he has an incident with a bully at school. His mother is called in for a discussion of Michael with the school's psychiatrist. Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) presents to Deborah (Sheri Moon Zombie) a dead cat and photos of dead animals as evidence of Michael's abuse of animals. He informs her that it represents warning signs of displaced hostility and aggression. Loomis wants to evaluate Michael further in order to make an accurate assessment.However, Michael runs from the school, follows the bully into the woods and beats him to death with a large tree branch. That Halloween night, Michael is home getting ready to go trick or treating, but is bullied by his mother's boyfriend (William Forsythe). Afterwards, he goes and kills his pet rat. His mother works as a stripper and is getting ready to go to work. She and her abusive boyfriend have a loud and violent argument and Michael's frightened baby sister cries. Michael's mom lets him know she cares for him and tells his older sister to take him trick or treating as she goes off the work. Michael's sister wants to have sex with her boyfriend instead and tells Michael to go by himself and that he's too old anyway. Michael comes back home and eats some crummy candy that he got thinking of his next move. Michael ends up slicing his mother's boyfriend's throat by taping him down and gagging him. His sister Judith (Hanna R. Hall), and her boyfriend are going at each other upstairs. The boyfriend being its Halloween wants to do it in a William Shatner mask. Michael ends up killing the boyfriend and taking his mask. He wears the mask when he kills his older sister in a violent knifing.Michael is convicted of first degree murder and taken to Smith's Grove Sanitarium, where he is placed under the supervision of Dr. Loomis. For the first eleven months, Michael cooperates with Dr. Loomis, claiming no memory of killing anyone. His mother Deborah visits him regularly, where he shows her the masks he has been creating. Upon some advice from an orderly, Michael closes himself off, and does not speak to anyone. After an incident where Michael attacks and kills a nurse (Sybil Danning), Deborah Myers, unable to cope with all the tragedy, takes her own life; her infant daughter is put up for adoption.For the next fifteen years, Michael (now played Tyler Mane as an adult) continues making his masks and not speaking to anyone. Dr. Loomis' experience with Michael allows him to write a book, and give seminars on what he deems as the look of a true psychopath. On the eve of Halloween, Michael is to be transferred to a more maximum security prison. While there he kills two asylum guards, and takes the keys from them and escapes. Later that night, Michael kills a trucker and steals the man's overalls. He returns to his home in Haddonfield where he finds the knife he killed his sister and mother's boyfriend with, and the mask he stole from his sister's boyfriend.The story shifts to Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton), and her friends Annie Brackett (Danielle Harris) and Lynda Van Der Klok (Kristina Klebe) on Halloween. Throughout the day, Laurie witnesses Michael watching her from a distance. Dr. Loomis comes to Haddonfield looking for Michael, picking up a .357 Magnum handgun in the process. He teams up with Sheriff Brackett, Annie's father, (Brad Dourif) in an effort to locate Michael before he can kill anyone else. That evening, Lynda and her boyfriend Bob (Nick Menell) travel to the abandoned Myers' home, a regular occurrence for them, so they can have sex. Michael kills the two of them, and then walks to the Wallace home, where Annie is babysitting Lindsey Wallace (Jenny Gregg Stewart). Annie convinces Laurie, who is already babysitting Tommy Doyle (Skyler Gisondo), to watch Lindsey, so that she and her boyfriend Paul (Max Van Ville) can be alone. Annie and Paul return to the Wallace residence, where Michael is waiting. Michael kills Paul, and stabs Annie repeatedly. Sheriff Brackett informs Dr. Loomis that Michael's baby sister is Laurie Strode. Laurie calls the police, and Dr. Loomis and Sheriff Brackett head to the Wallace residence to find the girls. Michael kidnaps Laurie and takes her back to the Myers' home where he tries to show her that he is her older brother. Laurie fights back, injuring Michael, but he corners her in an empty, in-ground pool. Loomis arrives and shoots Michael before he can kill Laurie. Before Loomis can drive away, Michael grabs Laurie again, dragging her back to the house. Loomis gains Michael's attention, and convinces him to release Laurie. He then strangles Loomis as Laurie tries to hide in the Myers home. Michael follows and soon corners her upstairs. After a brief struggle, the two fall off of a balcony. When Laurie regains consciousness, she finds Loomis' gun on the ground near her and crawls to her seemingly unconcious brother. He grabs her arm right before she shoots him right in the face. Exhausted, injured, and covered in blood, Laurie screams as the police arrive. Before you watch this, consider the MPAA rating. It's right.

Review: Zombie tries to go back to the character's origin and reinvent him - it's a recent trend in Hollywood ("Batman Begins," "Casino Royale," the upcoming "Incredible Hulk," etc.), so it's not quite surprising that Hollywood greenlit the project and it got the push it received.But the problem that arises while doing this with "Halloween" is that it comes into conflict with the concept of Michael being purely evil.
Zombie cast his wife in the role of Michael's mother, and she can't act at all.Donald Pleasence got stuck with the most unfortunate lines from the original film, but we were willing to forgive bad dialogue because of how well-made the film was otherwise.
The whole Loomis character should have been dropped from the remake if all Zombie wanted to do with him was use him as a deus ex machina, by the way.Overall, this feels like a redneck version of "Halloween," which is going to offend some people, but I can't think of any better way to describe it.
I have nothing against it, and I think it may work with some films - I can imagine him making a good re-do of "Natural Born Killers" (although I hope it never, never happens!).However, when you're remaking an iconic, legendary, incredibly influential horror film - don't cheapen it by "reimagining" it with horror movie clichés and shock-value material.
The very worst aspect of this remake is that it simply isn't scary at all - it's a typical slasher flick, a homicidal-man-on-a-rampage flick, which ironically is exactly what Zombie said he wanted to avoid.The first film was eerie, spooky, and unnerving because Michael's motivations were cloudy and we weren't sure whether Laurie was right or wrong when she said he was the boogeyman.
We only knew one thing: he wasn't entirely human.But ever since that original movie, the filmmakers have attempted to keep expanding upon Michael's history: the second film developed a motivation for his killings (Laurie was his sister), the fourth offered more clues at his background, and now we come full circle with a complete remake of the original film.Michael's true demonic core - the natural horror element of the series - is stripped bare and all that is left is a disturbed, abnormally tall redneck with greasy hair who hasn't showered in years wearing a silly mask going around killing people because he had an abusive family life as a child.
While it certainly surpasses Carpenter's version in both content and intensity, Zombie practices some restraint in how much violence is shown, leaving much of the horror to sound effects and imagination.I honestly don't understand why people are so hard on this movie.
I'm not a big fan of the recent trend of remaking all the classic horror films of the '70s and '80s, but I decided to go see the new "Halloween" anyway, if for no other reason than I'd never seen any of the original films in a theater.
(That, and I figured they couldn't do much worse than the god-awful "Halloween: Resurrection", the most recent entry before this remake.) IMHO the original "Halloween" is one of the greatest horror films ever, and certainly the best "slasher" movie (unless you count Hitchcock's "Psycho", but that's another topic.) I really expected to be let down, even though I haven't seen any of Rob Zombie's other movies.For the first five minutes, I thought, "Great, they took this classic American slasher flick and turned it into a white trash festival." But once Michael started talking (which he never does in the original film) something clicked, and I was hooked.
The new film takes the Michael Meyers "mythos" (if you will) and fleshes it out, giving the audience a frightening insight to the true horror that exists all around us before eviscerating us with the shocks and gore we really paid to see.The movie loses some of its momentum when it jumps to the present day, when too often it reverts back to simply restaging some of the trend-setting scenes from its predecessor - Laurie staring out the window at school and seeing the weirdo in the coveralls and the white mask staring at her, only to vanish seconds later.
The movie gives less focus to Lori Strode and much more focus on Michael and his progressions from 10 to 30.Zombie makes the smart call of not completely taking his own new plot line, but also not creating an exact carbon copy, leaving in specific scenes and details but still skipping over some of the more memorable ones.
Reading the other reviews, it really makes me realize how many posers exist in this sad little world of ours.As I begin with this pixelated comment/review, please give us a moment of silence to mourn the loss of intelligence in this world.If you are indeed a true Halloween or even Friday the 13th fan, you may enjoy this film, it goes beyond regular slashing and screaming and blood and guts everywhere, it goes beyond stupidity.Rob Zombie, obviously has not had the best of luck with the film industry, but this may be the film he needed to kick-start his directing career.Pleasantly mixing Slasher, Horror, a bit of gore and an in-depth look at Michael, I can appreciate this movie, and be proud to say that I enjoyed it.As funnygy had stated, Halloween (2007) could, and will never replace the original Halloween, but it is indeed a wonderful, enjoyable remake.The thing I enjoyed most, is it actually gives you a small yet slightly disturbing glimpse into the mind of Michael.My thoughts exactly, I highly recommend it IF you are a true Halloween fan.If you dislike this movie, it's your choice..but do not insult something that is simply different, or more in-depth..
Like many of the horror fans out there I went through my phase of being angry and disgusted that they would remake Halloween and especially that Rob Zombie would be the director to do it.
I am a fan of Rob Zombie and as it got nearer to the release date I came to believe that I would probably enjoy the movie, although I figured it still wouldn't compare to the original.
This isn't to say that he is a bad filmmaker, he just seems to be out of his element with this movie.Although I thought the back story was decent and entertaining enough, I still tend to find Michael Myers a more interesting character with less back story and more mystery like in the original.I appreciate the effort put into the movie and I have given it a rating of 5 because I still think it was probably better than what they would have made with a different writer and director, but this movie just didn't work for me.Luckily I got to see this at a drive-in theater along with the original Halloween and Grindhouse, so the night was still pretty great..
Writer/director Rob Zombie does an okay job of making the movie but the lack of originality, real scares, suspense, and character development are what weigh it down the most.
Overall Halloween is a flawed horror thriller with bloody deaths, some scares, suspense, and decent performances by the cast but the movie could've been a lot better because it ended up being a disappointment..
There is absolutely no sense of mood or atmosphere that made the original so wonderful; no suspense, no surprises, no likable characters (the worst being Laurie, Linda and Annie...these 3 belong in a biker chick film, not a Halloween film), no clever use of foreshadowing or music, just an overlong waste of everyone's precious time.
HALLOWEEN 2007 is a slap in the face to any true fan of the series, or horror films in general, and Rob Zombie should feel complete and utter shame..
Worse still, his obvious weaknesses in writing dialog and making his actors play naturally become apparent in a story as dependent on suspense and likable characters as this one.The whole idea of making this movie part prequel, part remake of the original is stupid.
It has just been a bad idea all along and the outcome isn't even good enough to be a throwaway, by-the-numbers slasher-flick, let alone a remake of the mighty "Halloween".Rob Zombie is to blame most of all.
Add to that more than a few obvious continuity errors and some scenes that are downright laughable (for instance, when young Michael tapes his sleeping stepfather to a chair and the guy doesn't even wake up) and you got yourself one of the messiest horror movies of the year.I like Rob Zombie for his passion about horror movies, but let's face it: the guy isn't a good director.
After the insight and the institution days (which in my opinion, brilliantly tie some knots that Halloween fans should be pleased with) the movie cuts right to the chase, having an aura of the original and a fresh new feel at the same time.
As for the style of the film, I personally like Zombie's directing style, I think its unique and very much his and I was happy that he wasn't trying to copy Carpenter like so many other past directors have tried to with the Halloween Sequels.
But he was not just remaking it, Rob Zombie also made a back story for about a good 40 minutes and explained more about how Michael went wrong.
Rob Zombie either has no understanding at all of the Michael Myers character, or he just doesn't care and wanted to cash in on all the dumb little mall rats who will flock to this movie and say "d00d I totalie identifi wit Michael Myerzzzz..
This destroys the ideas of hatred and hopelessness that were so important to the Myers/Loomis relationship in the original.Honestly, I thought that of all people, a person like Rob Zombie who was always professed an undying love of horror movies would have understood that it was these ideas that made the 1978 Halloween work so well.
Our hero Michael is supposed to be an immortal killing machine, an urban legend, punishing teens who do wrong, but instead looks like a member of Slipknot that got lost and wandered into the wrong music video.Thanks Rob, for getting rid of that annoying "suspense" and "implied violence" and "shadowing" that the original was so full of.We get it.
Hollywood, please get Michael Bay to do the remakes of Nightmare on Elm St, Friday the 13th, Evil Dead and Poltergeist so that old fans like me will know it's not worth wasting the time to watch...I honestly wish I'd been getting a root canal instead of watching the Halloween remake.
While I acknowledge John Carpenter's classic original as a good and important horror film, I never thought it was "excellent", and that was partly why I didn't mind checking out Rob Zombie's variation.
The best thing about having seen it was that I have been running Carpenter's classic over in my mind, and it now fares stronger than ever in comparison.HALLOWEEN 2007 can be summarized as two halves: the first tries to cover all-new territory by showing us the dysfunctional family life of adolescent Michael Myers, and how he deteriorates into becoming a deranged killer; he's got a stripper for a mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) and an abusive bum for a father figure.
But it was a sin to have the patented "Halloween Theme" (plus other standard cues) and "Mr. Sandman" strewn about, as if to remind us that this was supposed to be like the other movies.The first half where we follow Michael's predictable path to becoming a full-fledged madman is the more interesting one, and at least Zombie attempted to try something different; yet at the same time, with so much back story of Michael's upbringing and the various clues as to why he became a demented slasher, doesn't that give us too much information and take away the mystery we've come to associate with this "Boogeyman"?
Look, parents let their kids wander up and down the streets alone on Halloween to get candy from strangers!) I enjoyed Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Loomis, as he's more restrained than usual and seems more like a clone of Donald Pleasance (who played Loomis in most of the original movies), which is good.
I was not at all happy when I heard there was going to be a remake.Zombie's "House of 1,000 Corpses" was kind of decent, and I loved "The Devil's Rejects," so I was looking for a remake that butchered the original but was at least interesting to watch, which is more or less what I got.In RZ fashion, it was intense at times, and beneath the un-needed profanity, blood, and nudity there was a captivating story, but there was ZERO SUSPENSE, and ABSOLUTELY NO REAL SCARES.
But after watching Halloween I figured out that zombies are brain-dead and you didn't need any brains to watch because it's all blood, gore & violence so that's why Rob's second name is Zombie and it doe's suit his personality.Overall it was a good & entertaining movie that didn't had a single boring or useless scene but had a very unexpected ending that makes you ask yourself "Is that it?" If I haven't seen the original then I would have given it a 10 out of 10 but since it's really similar so I'm giving it a 9 out of 10.
Rob Zombie's take on the memorable horror film tries to distinguish itself from the standard slasher genre by exploring the killer's origins but is only interesting for about ten minutes; it fails to ever really get inside the mind of the main character (or anyone else's for that matter) and inevitably turns into a sleazy, senseless barrage of gore propelled by unappealing characters and stupid dialogue.
If you've seen the original Halloween and are looking to Rob Zombie's movie as a prequel, you're wrong.
I wish they would make some original movies instead of constantly remaking(Badly!)classic films like this one.How many times do we have to pay to watch old movies remade and not even remade well just to fill cinema seats with people hoping to see upgraded versions of there favourite films.i was looking forward to seeing this film and was gutted to have to sit through utter garbage!Don't touch a tried and tested formula by giving pointless background info to a slasher.Michael Myers an escaped serial killer who's nuts that's it!
That was a big mistake on my part because it's one of the worst horror movies I have ever seen, and a disgrace to the original.Everybody knows the story of Halloween.
While I'll give Rob Zombie some credit for "re-imagining" the popular 1978 horror classic (he spends half the film on Michael Myers' childhood and lock-up time) instead of merely remaking it, the end result is unfortunately an incohesive mess.
I suppose movies these days are too controlled by producers who think the entire film-going community wants Saw-like shocking gore and not a decent script, meaningful characters and modern icons of horror.
Rob Zombie's Halloween is not a remake as much as it is a 'revision' of a classic horror movie.
After seeing this remake, I started to appreciate the original version a little bit more, since Rob Zombie turned the story and its characters into a vulgar mess.The original film mostly focuses on the life of Laurie Strode going on about her business and interacting with her friends for the most part, while we see the mysterious Michael Myers stalking her, appearing from out of nowhere, and we never really get to know why (without taking the sequels into account).
In this remake, Rob Zombie attempts to explore little Michael Myers' psychology, giving our villain a soul and establishing the roots of his evilness, taking away all the mystery and darkness surrounding the character.
The audience doesn't want to be spoon fed and I think it's clear that one of the main reasons why the original villain was scary, it's because Michael Myers remained as an enigmatic character from the beginning until the end.
This overexposure of Michael's early years lasts about 40 minutes, which gets tedious, it makes the villain more pitiful than frightening and in the end, they don't really manage to establish a point about his insanity all that well either.Rob Zombie seems to borrow things from previous film, "House of 1000 Corpses", since the characters in this remake are swearing most of the times and while I have nothing against swearing, I think it gets artificial and silly when we hear the characters yelling and saying the f-word every five seconds.
Now change the story--make the child older, put a family in the town of Haddonfield where they were complete misfits, give us a left wing explanation of how to create a psychopath, develop no characters, make me indifferent to the towns plight, change the film into a slasher movie but add a new dimension--pure sadism and you still haven't got a complete picture of why this film fails.I don't want an explanation of why Michael Myers is evil, it only hurts the horror dimension of this genre.
is a total stinking pile and had I instead used that ten dollar bill to wipe my own rear end it would have definitely served a higher purpose.This is coming from someone who saw the original in the theater at the time of release in 1978, someone who gets it, like I thought was the case with Rob Zombie.Not only did the derivative, lackluster plot changes leave a stain on Carpenter's masterpiece but Zombie desperately needs to stop putting the same old tired troop of actors in every single movie he makes by way of gratuitous cameos and grossly blind miscasting.
Cons: Acting, Dialogue, Back story, completely losing every aspect of the 78 film that made it a classic of the genre and ROB ZOMBIE's "direction" Bottom Line: Don't waste your time, buy the original on DVD..
The story is slow, the acting is bad and i feel that the original Halloween is much better.I really did think Zombie would make this movie AMAZING.