After being committed to a state mental institute for 17 years for killing most of his family, a psychopath returns to his hometown to finish the job.

The Good

I think Daeg Faerch did an awesome job as young Mikey. He had that ability to switch from an innocent loser to a psychopath in seconds. Probably the best actor out of the bunch. I think this was punctuated in the scene where he beats the living shit out of the school bully.

The Bad

Sweet Cthulu, where to start….

While I do understand this is a remake…re-imagining…whatever, certain elements need to be intact or added to the idea to keep the movie at least scary as the original was. With The Thing it was the wide expanse of Antarctica and open isolation. The Fly had that chilling subtext of terminal illness during the era of AIDS. If we were to remake Halloween, what it needed to cover was the idea of…swift quick, feel good techniques creating a monster. How gated communities and social drug regimen could create a killer. Zombie does not do this. He forsakes the subtext to make a generic slasher movie.

I think it’s safe to say that after three movies, Rob Zombie’s major flaw is writing. He’s too in love with exploitation elements to properly write a script. You can see it in the first part of the movie clearly. And yes, while the first part seems to hold a bit of interest, the whole movie goes downhill in the second half. He needs someone to hold his hand and to help him convey his messages a wee bit clearer. Maybe even be a leash to tighten when he gets too far.

The second half of the film was just so god damn frustrating. It reminds me of this little habit my brother used to have when singing songs. He’d sing at least a bit of the song and then get to what he thought was awesome. Rob takes the build he has in the first half and just totally squashes it in the second. He takes what he thinks are the best scenes out of the original and just scatters them while trying to add his own flavor into horribly bland scenes.The difference is, I can’t backhand Zombie when he does that.

What really bothers me is that I can’t recall a single thing that happens in the second half other then the stuff lifted from the original. That’s really sad.

Conclusion

If you’re a fan of Horror, don’t go see this movie. If you have friends who are into horror, stop them at all costs and if you know somebody who thinks this movie was good, stage some sort of intervention because clearly they need help.

In the spectrum of remakes, this movie is just above TCM: The Beginning, but waaayyy below Night of The Living Dead ‘92.

2 stars.