Sheri Moon Zombie did a great job playing a shrill, annoying character in House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, but I wondered if she had any acting ability beyond that. I can safely say I was very impressed with her performance in this movie. Her turn as Michael's mother is heartbreaking because it's clear how much she truly loves and cares for her son and she doesn't understand his descent into madness. Her obvious love for her son is what makes the opening sequence and Michael's back story work so well. Yeah, about that back story. I hear fans bitching about how Michael didn't need a back story and the original worked so well without one, and yes, that movie worked on its own level, but it's a completely different movie than this one. The back story here sets up this version of Michael and his past and his killing nature and it does a great job of doing so. It's not just that Michael is tormented (though he is) it's that he's managed to disconnect himself from reality and he can't separate that fantasy from reality.

Plus, on a prurient level, there's some spectacular nudity from Judith Myers in this movie that, when coupled with the gore and brutality she faced were enough for me to get my rocks off and the movie was just getting started. It's too bad the other characters couldn't be so well developed. In the original film, the other characters weren't developed extensively either (they didn't need to be for us to understand what was going on) but in this movie, when we're just watched almost an hour of Michael Myers' back story, the lack of development of the other characters feels like a cop out. That's not to say that the actors don't turn in good performances, because they do.

Dr. Loomis is sufficiently campy and melodramatic and his exchanges with the Sheriff as they drive around Haddonfield at night work (even though the actors can't keep the timeline straight when they talk, first something happened fifteen years ago, then something that happened AFTER that happened seventeen years ago...it was a mess and it could have easily been corrected and it irritated me that it stuck out so badly in the final cut of the film). Scout Taylor Compton does a great job as Laurie Strode (even though her brain falls out at the end of the movie and she makes the dumbest moves I've ever seen) and even the child actors do a great job of making Tommy and Lindsay sufficiently endearing and annoying. Lindsay's banter with her babysitter Annie is fun and it rings true. Annie herself gives us some awesome nudity (with its own bloodstained, brutal turn later in the movie) and in this Halloween, Linda shows us the whole shebang, not just her tits when she asks us if we "see anything we like." I did, I did. So the nudity, the gore, and most of the acting worked wonders for the movie and made me a happy little horror fanatic indeed.

And then the final act of the movie came and I wanted to hurl things at the screen. I understand that characters in horror movies make stupid moves...it's what they do. If the characters were smart, the movie would be over in five minutes. But some of the moves that Laurie Strode makes at the end of this movie were so incredibly asinine that they moved beyond the realm of simple dumb character actions and actually messed with my suspension of disbelief. She had, what, fifty chances to escape, but what does she do? Steal a gun, not to shoot Michael mind you, but to break a hole in a wall and hide in there. No, I'm not kidding. I understand why Zombie didn't want to have her fire the gun yet and I like the ending and think the final shot works, but it still could have been better written so the scenes leading up to that weren't so ridiculous.

And what was up with bastardizing the "Was that the boogeyman?" "As a matter of fact, it was" exchange that the original made so famous? This movie isn't the original, it's got a completely different tone, and the line felt tacked on and frankly, stupid. The characters in this movie come from a different era with none of the romanticized small town innocence that made the exchange work in the first movie, so it really had the opposite effect of feeling disconnected and out of place in this version. Everyone in the theater laughed when the characters said it, and it just didn't work the way it was supposed to. I understand why the line was included, Zombie is a fan boy too, but the line didn't work and should have been cut. And with all the asinine things going on the final act felt like it was hours long. It shouldn't have dragged like that. I heard several people in the theater say "What's taking so long?" and "Why is she being so stupid?" That's NOT the reaction you want to leave people with, trust me. We were with you up until that point, Rob, why did you lose us?

By the final shot, most of the missteps were forgiven because it's bloody and brutal and it works, I just wish I hadn't had to wade through such a stupid climax to get there. I wish the momentum that was built during the Myers back story could have been sustained throughout the rest of the movie. Like I said before, in the original Halloween, we didn't need to get to know any of the characters in depth because the movie wasn't really about that, but in this movie it felt like an entire reel of film fell out or something and the lack of development coupled with the brain-dead character moves of the climax really hurt the film. Nevertheless, when it was all over, the tits and gore and brutality and Sheri Moon Zombie's performance saved the day. No, it wasn't perfect but the good outweighed the bad for me and I walked out of the theater happy and relieved that the movie had exceeded my expectations. I'll definitely see this one again.

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