*note* I never saw the original John Carpenter's Halloween, however, like most, I'm aware of the basic story and have seen parts of the sequels.
This version of Halloween is Rob Zombie's interrpretation of the original. It is not another sequel. Zombie worked with Carpenter to capture the essence of the original.
The result is a classic 70s horror movie, stylized very much like how we saw in the most recent omage to 70s film, Grindhouse. The supsenseful jump-your-seat moments were timed perfectly, it has a bit of the grindhouse type subtle wit/humor you would expect from a 70s B movie (think the Evil Dead series).
It starts out in the late 70s/ early 80s with Michael Myers as a 10yr old boy. He comes from a broken home where his mother works as a stripper, his sleazy abusive stepdad is an alcoholic with a broken leg, and his older sister is known for being a whore.Bullies at school constantly pick on him for how his family is. After Mikey's most recent run-in with the bullies, the school counselor finds photos in his bag of smaller animals he's tortured and mutiliated and promptly suggests his mother get him evaluated before Mikey goes off the deep end.
A little too late.
After school we see Mikey beat one of the bullies to a pulp with a tree branch, Later that night, after mom goes to work and his sister refuses to take him trick or treating, Mikey ducts tapes his passed out stepdad to a chair and slits his throat, beats his sister's boyfriend to death with an aluminum baseball bat, and then slice and dices big sis with a knife. When mom gets home, Mikey's sitting on the steps out front, waiting with baby sister Laurie.
He spends the next 15 years in a mental facility, but never getting any better and eventually refuses to talk or take off the odd masks he makes in his alone time. In a late night transfer gone wrong, the behemoth Mikey breaks lose and takes off in search for his baby sister. As his doctor says, whatever his reasons are, they can't be good.
As you can tell, there's lots of gore and violence.
Some familar faces you may recongnize are Sheri Moon Zombie as Mikey's mom, Malcom McDowell as Dr. Loomis, with appearances by Danielle Harris and Danny Trejo.
It's interesting to see how Mikey came about wearing the mask we all know him to wear and the boogyman conversations between the 2 little kids Laurie babysits are completely amusing, especially when he shows up!
I never saw Devil's Rejects and I thought House of 1000 Corpses was one of the stupidest movies ever made (although the art/imagery used was interesting and a bit disturbing, the plot made no sense and overall it was just a giant gorefest), but this one I actually liked. Some people will hate it, others will like it.
Just remember kids, if you listen to Blue Oyster Cult and have sex, you die!
Rated R for language, violence, sexuality, drug use, nudity
