At last, August 31^st, Halloween has arrived!  Fans of horror around the world have been waiting for this moment, either with great excitement or great trepidation.  Rob Zombie has remade the classic.  This movie has taken the original idea and modernized it.  It is retro-informed by the now.  Would it stand up to the original?  Could it possibly?  I am sure that Mr. Zombie would rather us not answer that question, but instead to look at it as standing on its own. 

When the news first broke, the big shocker was that this movie would examine the genesis of the monster from his boyhood.  This does not a machine make, a big point of contention for those opposed to this remake.  But this so-called family was beyond screwed up, and Zombie could not have found a scarier young Michael than Daeg Faerch.  He has an unbelievable cold depth for a ten year old boy.  His eyes burn through you, and this seems to foreshadow his physical presence as eyes behind a mask. 

Honest to God, I nearly cried when the movie segued between childhood and 15 years later.  The cinematography of these few scenes was awesome.  I could feel the pain of the child lost and of the mother mourning and horrified. 

The first time you see the grownup Michael, you still picture that angelically eerie face beneath the mask.  Zombie swiftly dispersed any doubt about Michael’s lack of a soul with an especially heartless kill.  After that point, it was game on.  I finally had the killer in front of me, the Michael I know and love, the Michael who is unstoppable and unflappable. 

Not until Michael met Laurie again was I reminded of his young persona.  By this point, you are deeply vested in him, and not so much in her, so you almost find yourself rooting for him.  After all, she was part of a severely irritating trio of girlfriends who you want to stab within moments of their first appearance on screen.  On the car ride home from the movie, I asked if Zombie went too far with how annoying they were.  My sister responded to my question with a hearty “No!  They were perfect,” but I’m not sure I can answer that.  They did serve to contrast with Laurie, but it wasn’t quite working for me. 

Those girls sure had it coming to them, and the best scene of the movie involves one of the doomed cheerleaders.  It was scary because you could feel her fear, not because someone threw a bucket of blood and fake guts into the scene.  Like in the golden oldies of horror, Zombie attempts to use the human reaction to scare the pants off you.  You feel like “this could happen to me” because you can imagine yourself whimpering like that.

On that note, there was not much overt gore, but it was still highly brutal, with the bashing scenes being particularly stomach turning.  The buttery flavored oil topped popcorn waited at the top of my throat, but I kept it down.  I was sure that the animal cruelty I’d heard about would put me over the edge, but honestly, it wasn’t that bad. 

The main negative for me was the lack of physical tightness.  There were several scenes that went in and outdoors, and even when Laurie was squeezed into tight places, I did not feel the can’t-get-away creepiness of the original.  I like my movies a little more confined, which explains my affinity for the widely panned Saw II.  Ironically, the scenes in Halloween that were the most claustrophobic were when Michael was surrounded by his dysfunctional family members.    

I was thrilled out of my seat a few times, and there were more than a few screams to be heard from the almost packed dinnertime show.  I was ecstatic to see so many people motivated to attend opening night, and as we left, I made sure my pleasure was obvious to the folks waiting anxiously in line.