By the time Rob Zombie's reboot of the seminal slasher classic Halloween had come out Michael Myers was a household name. For lovers of slasher films he is the King. Like Elvis he came from meager background and slashed the competition. Years later, when Zombie decided to remake this classic Myers had already impacted the majority of horror viewers.
That is why it is such an interesting choice to begin his film with Michael Myers' back story. In the original we meet Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), Michael's younger sister who knows that her estranged older brother was taken to Juvenile Hall years ago for the murder of her family. In Zombie's reimagining we meet Myers as a troubled ten year old who kills animals for fun and on one Halloween sets out to kill everyone who has ever wronged him. As we watch him grow we learn that his appetite for murder grows as well and he later kills without any remorse or reason. He even kills one of the guards who watched after him for twenty years proving that he is, as Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) describes him, heartless.
Unlike the original, Zombie's film feels like a tribute, however ill-advised, to the killer Michael Myers. I don't mean that it advocates for his actions but rather it celebrates the character who has impacted cinematic history so gruesomely. Characters watch scenes from various horror movies of the past, among them the horror hound favorite Dracula reminding the viewer that despite its gore Halloween is a movie and Michael Myers is a character.
And what a character he is. In a transformed film that focuses on Michael's love for Laurie, Michael is practically a superhero. He defies logic by taking bullets and surviving and he lifts up a gravestone single handedly. There is even a possible reference to another superhero with healing abilities when Myers kills a trucker with muttonchops seen only before on Wolverine.
The movie itself is a strong horror movie, if not for one or two killings too many. The sound of knives scraping together echo throughout the film. Tyler Mane makes a good Myers. And Malcolm McDowell, no stranger to psychopathic killers, makes a strong Dr. Loomis.
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