Rob Zombie’s Halloween: A Script Review

Rob Zombie’s Halloween

A Script Review

By Scott Carelli

A lot of people don’t know this about me, but I am a huge horror buff. Whether it’s the creeping feeling of dread when you know a character is about to bite it, or the tension right before something jumps out at you (even though you saw it coming…), the whole experience always leaves me satisfied. From The Evil Dead to Nightmare on Elm Street, I love it all, Zombies, Vampires, Werewolves, and everything in between. But there has always been one type of horror film that I’ve always favored above all: the slasher flick; and there has always been one film that has always stood out as my favorite above all of the greats like Friday the 13^th and Scream: John Carpenter’s Halloween.

Halloween is, in my opinion, the perfect slasher film, and Michael Myers continues to be one of the most iconic characters in the genre. From the opening scene of Michael as a child, murdering his sister in that all too familiar POV shot; to the bloody finale, it is pitch perfect, and everything a horror film should try to be. Being such a big fan of the film, you can imagine my disdain when I learned that it was being remade by none other than writer/director/musician Rob Zombie.

Zombie’s first foray into film was with House of a 1000 Corpses, a film that I did not enjoy, but I’m aware is very popular throughout most of horror fandom. His follow-up, The Devil’s Rejects, a sequel to Corpses, was also met with very mixed reviews. Both films seemed to have a very “Love it or Hate it” relationship with its viewers. Zombie’s directing style leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion, and both films felt like a glorified music video. Neither film captured the sense of urgency or suspense that one would associate with a horror film. It seemed as though he was much more interested in making his films as sick and twisted as possible. So when I got a copy of Zombie’s script for the Halloween remake he is currently shooting, I tried to keep an open mind. Maybe he would make a film worthy of the original and restart a franchise that desperately needs a breath of fresh air. But after reading the 126 page screenplay, I can say one thing for sure: This is not that movie.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween is very different from the 1978 original. This version focuses a lot of its attention on what would make a young boy turn into an emotionless murderer, the Michael Myers story. The first thirty pages are all about what psychotic kid Michael is. I think we’re supposed to feel sorry for him; after all, he has a stripper mother who brings home a new jerk boyfriend that seems to always treat little Michael like crap, he is consistently picked on at school by bullies that are twice his size, and no one understands him. But if Zombie thinks that any of that will be reason enough for the audience to look the other way while a ten year old Michael Myers records himself killing a neighbor’s cat and then pleasures himself while playing it back later, beating a little girl to death and urinating on her corpse, and sodomizing his own sister with a baseball bat, I believe he will be sorely disappointed. These are just some of the over the top gruesome acts portrayed within these first thirty pages, and if they serve no purpose other than to show how screwed up he is, why have any character development at all? There was a reason John Carpenter referred to him as “The Shape” in his original screenplay, Michael Myers is not a character. He is a soulless empty shell, a “shape” that kills people without any remorse or pleasure whatsoever, almost as if he’s doing it out of curiosity. But Zombie’s Michael, is just psychotic.

The next 40 pages are supposed be all about the relationship between Loomis and Michael. Finally explaining what would cause a renowned doctor to give up on a patient after coming to the conclusion that there is not helping Michael, he is just evil in the purist sense. But the problem is when you give Michael a textbook serial killer childhood, he no longer represents evil incarnate. He is no longer “The Boogeyman”. He’s just an average psycho in a mask. I like the idea of showing Dr. Loomis trying to get through to Michael. It would have been a great place to explore Loomis as a character. If Michael is pure evil, without having a reason (i.e.: no bullies, drunk father figure, or stripper mom), it flies in the face of everything Dr. Loomis believes in as a psychiatrist, which causes his obsession with Michael. Instead, Loomis just comes off as an inadequate doctor, because with Michael’s past, isn’t it obvious what caused him to kill his family? And if it’s so obvious why can’t Loomis help him?

 
    On page 70 we finally meet Laurie Strode, the role made famous by Jamie Lee Curtis in the original film. From this point on the script goes into very familiar territory; all of the characters read just like their 1978 counterparts, and the story follows a very similar path to the climax that the original does, with minor changes here and there. The main difference being that it is revealed Laurie and Michael are siblings early on in the film, rather than the sequel as it was with the originals. This really didn’t bother me so much, but it does lead to another aspect of the script that I found the most wrong.

When Michael is a child he has a baby sister named Laurie that everyone calls “Boo”, and throughout the film Michael Myers will call out the name “Boo” when trying to find the now teenaged Laurie in what I could only imagine would be some sort of caveman-ish grunt. There are also several places in the script where Michael runs after his victims. Michael Myers does not run. He walks calmly after them, knowing full well that no matter how fast his victims try to get away, he’s going to catch them. It is something bothered me throughout the script as it seemed so out of character.

Overall the script seemed to prove that while he is obviously a fan of the Halloween series, Rob Zombie never really got them. I will reserve my final judgment for the film itself when it is released this fall, but it’s not looking good. Zombie’s script made Michael Myers just another hulk of a psycho like Jason or Leatherface, but he’s much more than that. He is pure evil. He’s the boogeyman.