<!--sizeo:6<span style=\"font-size:24pt;line-height:100%\"><!--/sizeo<!--coloro:#FF0000<span style=\"color:#FF0000\"><!--/coloro<b>BIG TIME SPOILER ALERT!</b><!--colorc</span><!--/colorc<!--sizec</span><!--/sizecWhere do I start? First off I want to say that I’m a Rob Zombie fan. I liked House of 1,000 Corpses, Devil’s Rejects is one of my favorite horror films and I thought the Halloween re-imagining was really good. I realize acknowledging that amongst die hard Halloween fans makes stomachs turn. It’s as if you’re telling them you like to watch little boys shower. They recoil at the sheer thought of someone enjoying a movie that borrowed their characters and name and updated it with a different perspective. I get that. I understand that to a degree but I also appreciate the fact that Zombie didn’t try to go back and remake the original. He tried something different and if a film was going to be made it should have been different and it was. After all if you like the original it’s always there on your shelf to watch. Just because they remade it and changed the story doesn’t take away from the original in my opinion. It is what it is and I thought it was a fun movie. I felt sorry for Michael and felt attached to the story and thought Rob did a great job while adding his own flare. Some people don’t like that I personally did.Now we fast forward to H2. Man the hype machine was there. Rob was going to finally be able to take the film into a direction that was all his own. Something that we hadn’t seen before and that excited me as a fan. I was ready as ever to see this film. I had read the earlier screenings, I had seen all the trailers, I had read the interviews, the banner ads are still flashing here on HorrorBid. I WANTED TO SEE THIS FILM, more importantly I knew I was going to love it. What’s not to love? Zombie has all the freedom in the world to make his own film here. To update the Halloween series and bring it into the 21st century. Did I say I was ready to see this film? <img src=\"style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/thumbsup.gif\" style=\"vertical-align:middle\" emoid=\":thumbsup:\" border=\"0\" alt=\"thumbsup.gif\" /> We catch the midnight showing on Thursday at our local cinema. The theater is about half filled, I was a little surprised by that but it is Thursday night and this is a rated R film. It’s a school night. I didn’t think much more about that except for the fact that we got there an hour and a half early to get good seats. Guess that wasn’t really necessary but hey, H2 was about ready to start and dammit I wasn’t going to let a half packed theater bother me. The film starts and whamo the white horse jumps at you practically though the screen. If you’re not familiar with the white horse than you probably aren’t a giant fan of this film so I won’t go into it. If you are a fan you know what I’m talking about. We all knew it was going to be there and it was. No biggie right? So we see a brief and I mean brief introduction of the new young Myers. Daeg (the original young Myers) was apparently to “heavy” to play this role now so they got a kid. My only beef with this was he looked a bit old to play this part, about what Daeg’s age is now. So I guess Daeg took himself out of this film in a way and that bothered me. I didn’t expect to see young Michael so much but he is plastered throughout the whole film. Again something that wasn’t that big of a deal but at the same time something that bothered me a bit as I watched the film. Then in a ho hum introduction we see the logo for Halloween 2 pop up. Wow is that it? IS this the opening of this movie? We get zero tension music in this film from start to finish and the opening could have really, REALLY used some. And you never hear the actual Halloween theme, in fact the only original music is saved for the last scene and put a smile on all our faces. Couldn't we have at least heard the Halloween theme somewhere? I mean I get this is supposed to be new but dammit it is called Halloween and besides the white mask the music is what basically made the movies. Again the whole movie is done with barely any background music, something that I didn't think I really would miss until it wasn't there. I missed it a LOT!!!!We are treated to a lengthy and I mean lengthy dream sequence. It would have been great if (A.) It was Nightmare on Elm Street or (B.) if we hadn’t seen all this in the dozens of trailers released. The first 20 to 25 minutes of the film was nothing I hadn’t seen before. And it was so choppy I couldn’t tell if what happened earlier (did Michael kill the paramedic?) was part of the dream. They kept saying throughout the film that they never found the body of Michael Myers but they didn’t say if he butchered one of the paramedics. I was just a bit confused. We are treated to more of Deboarh Myers, young Mike and that beautiful white steed. Again I lived with it and we moved on to the next chapter so to speak of the film.Act two consisted of Laurie basically continuing to go insane. She’s having nightmare, daymares and morningmares. The girl is f’d up. She doesn’t even know Mike’s her brother yet and they girl is a freaking mess. Wait till she finds that out. Sorry I’m getting ahead of myself. So we see Laurie, she’s now living with Annie and Sherrif Brackett at what looks like the house from Devil’s Rejects. Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowel) is a complete hiney now. He has did nothing to reach out to the victims. He is more concerned with pushing his new book “The Devil Walks Among Us” than giving two Sheeps about whether Laurie or Annie are ok. I understand that to a degree, he is famous now, but come on. In the first film Loomis has a heart. He is all about trying to help people. He goes through the whole film and golly gee willikers near get’s killed at the end. I’m not sure why he’s all the sudden a complete douche bag but he is. I knew from early screenings that they were doing this to the Loomis character but I thought they might at the very least show him having some compassion for Laurie who was Michael’s sister (a kid he tried to help) but he doesn’t. They make you hate Loomis and you do. This whole time Michael is wandering through the woods. He’s killing people and eating dogs. Hey he’s living off the land. You got to do what you do right? I really enjoyed one scene where these rednecks drive up with high beams pointed right at Michael out in this field. There drunk of course and pissed that Mike’s been squatting on their land. They call him a big dumb “coonoodletard” which got a laugh in an otherwise quite theater. They tease him a bit more than out comes the bats and tire irons. They beat him until he is down on the ground but it wouldn’t be Halloween if he didn’t stand back up. Kill said rednecks and then eat their dog, wait what? Yeah he ate Sparky. The guy’s hungry dammit. He’s like 7 foot tall and he doesn’t exactly get served at Denny’s so he eats what he has too. That was a cool scene. Maybe the only scene I truly enjoyed.Act three kicks up and Laurie finds out by reading Loomis’s book that she indeed is Mike’s sister Angel Myers. This freaks here the f out. She’s already insane, therapy isn’t helping and she’s hit with this brick. She throws a fit, runs out on Annie not telling her really why although Annie finds out later after father Brackett lets here in on the little secret they’ve been keeping from her. She goes over to hang out with these two female friends of her. Neither one I thought did a particularly great job of portraying they were indeed her friends. I just never felt the connection. She tells them the story, there like your Sheepting me, she’s like no serious, let’s go to a Halloween party. Lol! Ok that’s not exactly how it goes but it’s close. They end up at this Halloween bash and one guest that wasn’t on the list shows up. You guessed it. Mikey has come home. Haddonfield should not, I repeat NOT, throw Halloween parties. Friends start dying. Mike start’s a whooping some hiney and they run off back to Brackett’s house where they find Annie, you guessed it. Gasping for air. Mike beat them to the house. Dammit this guys fast for a 7 foot tall hobo. The other friend that hasn’t died is directed to go call 911, no more than gets off the phone before Mike’s knifing the life out of her. The death scenes are brutal in the film but it's the same death scene over and over. Stabbing, stabbing, stabbing. After you see it one time it looses the effect the next 7. I will say that the boot to the skull scene was also cool but left me wanting more of that. I never felt connected to any of these characters so I didn’t care that they were dying. It didn’t bother me in the least. Am I heartless or was this not done right? The final act! Laurie runs from the house. Mike chases her. She flags down some poor sucker jamming to the Rolling Stones. He tries to help but none of these characters ever actually let you speak. They just keep saying we have to get you to a hospital, we have to do this, we have to do that. LET ME FREAKING TALK JACKASS! If you do I can warn you about the 7 foot “coonoodletard” standing behind you with a hunting knife. Reality I think not. In real life I’m slapping the guy and saying listen bro, my brother is coming here and you’re hiney is 8 feet under if we don’t do something right now. Anyway back on topic. He puts Laurie er I mean Angel in the car and then dies. You knew it was coming. <img src=\"style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif\" style=\"vertical-align:middle\" emoid=\"
\" border=\"0\" alt=\"rolleyes.gif\" /> Then Michael flips the car with her in it. She blacks out, he carries her to this shed out in the woods. Has he been living in this thing or what? We really don’t know. The cops are on the way, they surround the building. Bracett’s pretty pissed because Mike butchered his daughter Annie. The whole time you see Debra Myers and young Myers standing there coaching Michael on. Apparently Laurie see’s them too and is actually being restrained by young Michael. She’s nuts, we get it. Loomis see’s all this happening on tv and finally decides to come and try to help. I didn’t feel like it was because he cared though. It was because he was being humiliated on tv and ostersized because of the book he wrote profiting off of the death of hordes of people. In a flash of an eye Loomis appears at this shack in the middle of no where. I’m not sure how in the hell were supposed to know how he got there so fast. One minute he’s standing in a high rise drinking Champaign and literally the next second he’s right there with the firing squad. Doesn’t make any sense. He barges into the shack. Doesn’t help the situation out at all. Just pisses Mike off more. Mike kills him and I mean kills him, stabs him like he stole money or something. As he is doing that one of the snipers gets a clean shot at his shoulder and takes it so Mike’s down for the count. Laurie runs over and starts petting him saying how she loves her brother. With what little strength he has left he lifts the knife up. Is he going to stab her? golly gee willikers I thought we might see a little compassion but no he drops the knife because he’s hurting. She picks it up and just starts going ape Sheep on his chest. DIE, DIE, DIE! He’s dead. Michael Myers is dead. No doubt about it. She then comes walking out of the shed with his mask on (which looks so bizarre because the mask looks to be 40 sizes bigger than her head) I mean this thing is almost down to her knees. She falls on the ground staring at her hands. Has she become her brother? We then see a completely white room. Laure is in all white. It looks to be a mental institution. She’s gone mad because guess who comes hoping down the hall way. Her mother and that golly gee willikers white horse. She lets off a grin and the movie is over. People in the theater look pissed! I’m dumbfounded because I was hoping for some swerve at the ending. Something to tie up some of the loose ends. I get nothing. All in all I get what Joel is saying. He writes fantastic freaking reviews by the way but I just can’t get behind this movie. I never once felt for any of the characters. The only person that would have really bothered me to die was Brackett and he doesn’t. In the end this could easily be deemed an entire dream and we could see H3 starting off where this one should have. Do I think that will happen? No. But it wouldn’t surprise me. I won’t let this movie sour my taste for Rob Zombie movies but I do understand a bit better now why some people are so against them. He basically keeps the same vibe to all his films which was cool when it worked, I’m just not sure it worked here. It’s as if it was a joke to see how many times they could use the word “FU&%” in the film which doesn’t bother me but it seriously seemed like Rob made a bet with someone saying I bet I can squeeze the word FU%$ in this scene. There is even a poster behind Laurie at one point in the movie that has the word FU*& hidden in a poster. That really makes me think it was on purpose. It definitely had a dirty, gritty feel to it but again I think it was a stretch. The Devil’s Rejects worked so well with this gritty feel. Halloween really doesn’t. It’s middle class America, not deep south Texas.Maybe my reaction will be different in a few days. I again really wanted to like this. More importantly I wanted it to be good enough to say to the haters, hey this is a good film. You’re not giving it a chance. But that’s not the case. If you don’t like Zombie’s Halloween you will HATE this film. Casual horror movies fans won’t appreciate this either I’m afraid. Our beloved franchise appears to be finished. We will always have the memories of what led to this point and this movie shouldn’t sour anyone on the franchise. They took it in a different direction. It might work for some and it might not for others but at least the next generation of horror fans will now be able to go back and watch the classics and compare the two. It’s never a bad thing to get new fans involved and hopefully all this hype has made a younger generation excited to see what Michael Myers is truly all about.PS: Zombie definitely takes a jab at the online Horror/Fan boy community with the whole Chett: Bringer of Death character? You can tell this was a jab at the uber Halloween nerd fan. He is wearing a "WWMD (What would Michel do?) t shirt and he is acting like a complete goober when he asks for his autograph from Loomis. I guess this is the way we all act in real life. <img src=\"style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/confused.gif\" style=\"vertical-align:middle\" emoid=\":confused:\" border=\"0\" alt=\"confused.gif\" />
\" border=\"0\" alt=\"rolleyes.gif\" /> Then Michael flips the car with her in it. She blacks out, he carries her to this shed out in the woods. Has he been living in this thing or what? We really don’t know. The cops are on the way, they surround the building. Bracett’s pretty pissed because Mike butchered his daughter Annie. The whole time you see Debra Myers and young Myers standing there coaching Michael on. Apparently Laurie see’s them too and is actually being restrained by young Michael. She’s nuts, we get it. Loomis see’s all this happening on tv and finally decides to come and try to help. I didn’t feel like it was because he cared though. It was because he was being humiliated on tv and ostersized because of the book he wrote profiting off of the death of hordes of people. In a flash of an eye Loomis appears at this shack in the middle of no where. I’m not sure how in the hell were supposed to know how he got there so fast. One minute he’s standing in a high rise drinking Champaign and literally the next second he’s right there with the firing squad. Doesn’t make any sense. He barges into the shack. Doesn’t help the situation out at all. Just pisses Mike off more. Mike kills him and I mean kills him, stabs him like he stole money or something. As he is doing that one of the snipers gets a clean shot at his shoulder and takes it so Mike’s down for the count. Laurie runs over and starts petting him saying how she loves her brother. With what little strength he has left he lifts the knife up. Is he going to stab her? golly gee willikers I thought we might see a little compassion but no he drops the knife because he’s hurting. She picks it up and just starts going ape Sheep on his chest. DIE, DIE, DIE! He’s dead. Michael Myers is dead. No doubt about it. She then comes walking out of the shed with his mask on (which looks so bizarre because the mask looks to be 40 sizes bigger than her head) I mean this thing is almost down to her knees. She falls on the ground staring at her hands. Has she become her brother? We then see a completely white room. Laure is in all white. It looks to be a mental institution. She’s gone mad because guess who comes hoping down the hall way. Her mother and that golly gee willikers white horse. She lets off a grin and the movie is over. People in the theater look pissed! I’m dumbfounded because I was hoping for some swerve at the ending. Something to tie up some of the loose ends. I get nothing. All in all I get what Joel is saying. He writes fantastic freaking reviews by the way but I just can’t get behind this movie. I never once felt for any of the characters. The only person that would have really bothered me to die was Brackett and he doesn’t. In the end this could easily be deemed an entire dream and we could see H3 starting off where this one should have. Do I think that will happen? No. But it wouldn’t surprise me. I won’t let this movie sour my taste for Rob Zombie movies but I do understand a bit better now why some people are so against them. He basically keeps the same vibe to all his films which was cool when it worked, I’m just not sure it worked here. It’s as if it was a joke to see how many times they could use the word “FU&%” in the film which doesn’t bother me but it seriously seemed like Rob made a bet with someone saying I bet I can squeeze the word FU%$ in this scene. There is even a poster behind Laurie at one point in the movie that has the word FU*& hidden in a poster. That really makes me think it was on purpose. It definitely had a dirty, gritty feel to it but again I think it was a stretch. The Devil’s Rejects worked so well with this gritty feel. Halloween really doesn’t. It’s middle class America, not deep south Texas.Maybe my reaction will be different in a few days. I again really wanted to like this. More importantly I wanted it to be good enough to say to the haters, hey this is a good film. You’re not giving it a chance. But that’s not the case. If you don’t like Zombie’s Halloween you will HATE this film. Casual horror movies fans won’t appreciate this either I’m afraid. Our beloved franchise appears to be finished. We will always have the memories of what led to this point and this movie shouldn’t sour anyone on the franchise. They took it in a different direction. It might work for some and it might not for others but at least the next generation of horror fans will now be able to go back and watch the classics and compare the two. It’s never a bad thing to get new fans involved and hopefully all this hype has made a younger generation excited to see what Michael Myers is truly all about.PS: Zombie definitely takes a jab at the online Horror/Fan boy community with the whole Chett: Bringer of Death character? You can tell this was a jab at the uber Halloween nerd fan. He is wearing a "WWMD (What would Michel do?) t shirt and he is acting like a complete goober when he asks for his autograph from Loomis. I guess this is the way we all act in real life. <img src=\"style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/confused.gif\" style=\"vertical-align:middle\" emoid=\":confused:\" border=\"0\" alt=\"confused.gif\" />
