Original vs. Remake #1

Hey everyone. I'm hoping for this to be an article that I reprise from time to time. Over the past few years, there have been many different remakes of many classic films. Most of them have been horrible. But, every now and then, there can be a gem that comes out of this process. In this topic, we will explore the good and the bad of this trend. This first post explores Rob Zombie's recent remake of John Carpenter's horror classic Halloween. I originally wrote this for my film class, but it has been re-edited for the site. Enjoy.

*Warning: Spoilers for both films*

Halloween: Original vs. Remake

"Was that the Boogeyman?"

In 1978, John Carpenter’s low budget horror film Halloween burst onto the screen and became an over night box office phenomenon. Produced on a minimal budget of $325,000, Halloween went on gross $47 million at the box office, becoming one of the most profitable independent films of all time. Throughout the years, Carpenter’s film proved to be inspiration and the blueprint for the future of the slasher film sub genre of the horror genre. In 2006, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. Despite the popularity, significance, and influence of the film, the villain of Michael Myers has been run into the ground throughout the years in many empty sequels. Finally, in 2006, shock rocker and rookie filmmaker Rob Zombie was approached to remake Carpenter’s 1978 classic. Zombie agreed to do so, hoping to make Michael Myers not only scary again but a more realistic psychopath with a solid background story. Zombie’s version was released in 2007 and, although the box office return was strong, the critical response was not kind. Still, Zombie offered an interesting take on Myers and the type of horror the original Halloween inspired. Although Zombie uses various film and story techniques to create a tragic Myers figure, it is Carpenter’s original boogeyman take and atmospheric style that made Halloween a powerful and important horror film.

Although both films focused on the same villain, Carpenter’s pure evil story interpretation is more effective in horror than Zombie’s tragic hero story take on the character. In his original 1978 film, Carpenter presents a Michael Myers that becomes anything but human. From the moment he murders his older sister Judith on Halloween night, Myers becomes someone else entirely. He becomes what Carpenter referred to in his screenplay as “The Shape.” He becomes just a vessel or a hollow shell for pure evil. All personality, compassion, and being are wiped from him. To further represent this soulnessness, Carpenter gives him a faceless white mask to wear- something that is devoid of all personality and character. What has started as a six year old boy that murdered his older sister has become something equivalent of the boogeyman himself. Myers is now an unstoppable force of mythical portions. He lives in the shadows, behind your closet door. He cannot be stopped, breaking through locked doors with his bare hands. After being shot six times by his former taker Dr. Loomis and falling off a second story balcony, Myers disappears into the dark Halloween night. As he does so, the haunting sound of his muffled breathing against his mask fills the audience’s eardrums. He could be anywhere, living in the shadows with the rest of the evil of the night. Due to Carpenter’s careful story building elements, Myers has become the boogeyman, something that is echoed by a traumatized Laurie’s last line. Although Zombie has his Laurie repeat the same line, it is under ironic circumstances.

Michael Myers in Rob Zombie’s Halloween is much different than the one created by Carpenter in the 1970’s. Unlike Carpenter’s normal child turned evil representation, Zombie presents Myers as a child raised under a rough roof- his mother is a stripper, his stepfather an abusive cripple, and his sister a tramp. He only finds comfort in the presence of his infant baby sister Laurie and, in rare moments, with his down and out, but kindhearted mother. Zombie also has Myers deal with other obstacles as a child such as loneliness, neglect, and being bullied at school. Unlike Carpenter’s Myers that wears a mask to symbolize his emptiness, Zombie’s Myers creates various masks starting at childhood to hide behind because he believes he is ugly, mostly due to the unhealthy environment he is being raised in. Still, Zombie portrays Michael as having an evil growing from within him early on. When alone, he mutilates little animals that he catches and, after school, catches up with a bully and beats him to death with a large stick. Finally, pushed to the edge on Halloween night, Michael kills not only his older sister Judith, but also his stepfather and Judith’s promiscuous boyfriend. After the murders, Zombie presents Michael as unaware of what he has done. In his first interview session with a youthful Dr. Loomis in the Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, Michael is shy and playful at the microphone. In some moving scenes, he shares a silent but understood friendship with an affable and encouraging janitor. As time passes in the asylum, however, he becomes agitated, depressed, and unruly. My favorite shot in the entire film shows Michael, his mother and Dr. Loomis all sitting at table in the asylum. They are exhausted and not talking. Moments after this, Michael finally descends into madness by killing a nurse that baby-sits him, further falling into his doomed, silent state. Much like in the original film, Myers breaks out of the sanitarium years later and makes it back to Haddonfield, most likely to murder his sister Laurie. However, in a rare quiet scene with his captured sister, Michael pulls out a photograph of him holding her as a child, something that she doesn’t understand since her past has been hidden from her. In a stark move, Zombie makes the underlying meaning to Myers’ murderous homecoming just to reach his baby sister, one of the few that shared a meaningful relationship with him. As Myers goes through Laurie’s licentious friends, he becomes a villain very different from Carpenter’s interpretation. Unlike a hollow evil shape that lurks only in the shadows, Myers is front and center in every take. Suddenly, he has more personality than his teenage victims, all of which just seem to be a waste of space. Now, Michael is the main character. However, due to this, the horror is gone. Zombie does manage to create some disturbing scenes and some effective jumps, but his version of Halloween is something other than a horror film. As the audience sees Michael kill off each of Laurie’s friends, family, or anyone that really gets in his way, they see that the film has taken the form of what one could call Greek tragedy. Suddenly, Myers is just a doomed individual who is cursed to follow the path of a misunderstood serial killer. In the end, Michael is killed by the hand of his once beloved baby sister, something that was implausible in Carpenter’s version. As she sits on top of his dead body, covered with blood and screaming her head off, Zombie immediately cuts to an poignant set of family home video footage of a young Michael lovingly holding her in his arms to further his point. Still, despite this valiant effort, Zombie creates a film that is not as scary or ingraining as Carpenter’s classic.



Much like their different approaches to the story, both Carpenter and Zombie use strikingly different film techniques, styles, and music to create horror and their vision of Halloween. In his 1978 film, Carpenter uses a very atmospheric approach to his directing. From the start of the film, he uses an incredibly long take that is a first person P.O.V. from Michael Myers’ eyes. Looking through Michael’s eyes, we see him go into his house, grab a kitchen knife, put on a clown mask, and kill his older sister Judith. It’s all presented in a single take, putting the viewer into the killer’s shoes. This also gives the audience a shock as Michael’s parents pull the mask off, causing the shot to end and a new shot to start that shows Michael just to be a six-year-old boy. Carpenter then pulls the camera back with a long crane shot, elevating the state of surreal shock that is overcoming the viewer. With just two inventive shots, Carpenter creates one of the most imaginative openings in film history that would be ripped off by various future horror films in an assortment of ways. Throughout the film, Carpenter continues to use this type of atmospheric direction, using long tracking shots and long takes to create a building sense of tension and dread. He films the character of Myers mostly in the shadows, lurking in the background, or obscured by another object. He learned quickly that, the less you show the monster, the more effective he will be when he comes out of the shadows. It is only at the end of the film that Myers comes out into the lime light, becoming the epitome of the boogeyman character. In one moment, he slowly emerges out of a dark corner behind Laurie, his white mask glowing blue in the dim light of the house. In this scene alone, he appears to be more of a monster than a man. Unlike Zombie, Carpenter does not rely on the use of blood or gore. Most of the kills in his Halloween are quick, uninventive, and nearly bloodless. Carpenter instead focuses his horror on the unending build to the kills. Carpenter’s original score only adds to sense of unending dread and horror. Composed mostly on a piano in a short amount of time, the score is simple, easy to remember, and full of ambiance. Over time, it gets under the viewer’s skin and is, at times, scarier than the images on screen. As mentioned earlier, Carpenter uses a majority of blue hues during the night scenes in his cinematography. He also uses warm orange colors, creating a real sense of the Halloween spirit in other scenes.

Zombie’s direction, on the other hand, is more fast paced and hard hitting than atmospheric. He uses extreme close ups on his characters in moments of tension, causing discomfort in the viewer. In his murder scenes, the camera is usually shaky and uneven, attempting to create a documentary feel that is contradicted by his lush cinematography. His cinematography also is used to distinguish the three main sections of the film: the origin of Michael, the asylum days, and the homecoming. The scenes of Michael’s childhood are very handheld and shaky (much like the murder sequences throughout the film) to suggest the chaotic nature of his upbringing. In a stark contrast, the asylum scenes are very clean and static, hinting to the oppressive and boring nature of Michael’s new home. The homecoming setting starts off warm and fuzzy, but as Michael comes into the picture, it becomes more shaky and handheld like the beginning of the film. Unlike Carpenter, Zombie shows all the brutality in the murder sequences. However, he never glorifies the murders, but just shows how atrocious they can be. His extreme attention to the murder of the bully that Michael commits as a child manages to create one of the most disturbing sequences put to film in a long time. Unfortunately, Zombie never really focuses on the build to these things and they just happen. Therefore, no real horror is created other than a feeling of being disturbed, something that furthers one to see his film as more of a tragedy than horror film. Also unlike Carpenter, Zombie uses some intercutting between scenes to create some unique sequences. As Michael is abandoned to trick or treat by himself on that fateful Halloween night as a child, images of him sitting on a sidewalk alone are intercut with images of his mother stripping at a local strip club. It is Michael’s last moment of loneliness before he descends into the murder of his family. He is shot in a beautiful green hue as the leaves blow by in the background while the strip club carries a vibrant red glow that is full of sin. As this occurs, Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” plays in the background. This scene was highly criticized as being blatant in its intensions, but overall, works to an extent. As hinted at, Zombie employs many 70’s rock songs in the film to create a 1970’s vibe to movie, something he did much more successfully in his previous effort The Devil’s Rejects. In an ambitious move, he starts the film to Kiss’s “God of Thunder” instead of Carpenter’s famous Halloween theme. He also uses “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult (which was the one rock song that Carpenter used in his original film) before two murder sequences. Carpenter’s music is still used in the movie, but to various moments of success. Unlike Carpenter’s less vibrant effort, Zombie has some beautiful cinematography employed in the film. By doing this, he creates a stunning nightmare vision of Halloween, but destroys the sense of reality that Carpenter withheld in his film.



In the end, Carpenter’s version of Halloween is much more important to film and effective in the realm of horror than Zombie’s effort. He creates a film that is atmospheric and overwhelming in its sense of anxiety. His version of Myers is the stuff that nightmares are made of, rooting itself into the brains of the audience, keeping them from sleep at night. However, that does not mean Zombie has made a bad film. Despite his original intentions to make Myers scary again, he makes a film that serves a decent telling of Myers as a tragic figure than of a monster. The film he creates suffers from the occasional bad dialogue and acting, contradictions in writing and film techniques, and, at times, obscure characterizations. Still, overall, it serves as a decent love letter to Carpenter’s original horror masterpiece. Zombie knew that he could never make a better version of Halloween than John Carpenter could. Instead, he did his best to make a version that was his own as well as a nice little tribute to the classic film. Many remain split on the effectiveness of this effort, but it is a valiant one nonetheless.

Halloween (1978)- 9/10
Halloween (2007)- 7/10