Halloween; Death Sentence

Halloween (Rob Zombie, 2007) - C+

Zombie is improving, as I thought he might, and he could actually have a decent horror movie in him one day: he's at the very least a talented stylist with a relentlessly bleak, grungy worldview, something that serves him well in making bleak, grungy, depressing films. The back story he provides for Michael Myers here is compelling precisely for that reason; it's not actually that interesting, a pretty generic abusive childhood rattling an already-disturbed psyche, but it's so grandly unpleasant (mom's a stripper; stepdad is a filthy asshole; house is something out of The Devil's Rejects; school bullies could themselves be horror film villains) that I admit to a certain fascination. If Zombie can harness his flair for this sort of operatic nastiness, I thought, he might come up with something. When he moves on to the more generic slasher horror of this prequel/remake's second half, though, his instincts begin to fail him. In navigating the staple elements of the genre, he's depressingly literal-minded -- making Myers seven feet tall is a stupid, unimaginative move, putting the final nail in the coffin of the original film's conception of the character as a representation of pure evil. In staging the violence, he forgets that all great horror directors, even ones who traffic in gore, know when to look away. Halloween ultimately doesn't deliver the scares and suspense, which is probably a fatal flaw for any entry into this franchise. But Rob Zombie, in his third and "best" feature to date, continues to show some glimmers of promise.


Death Sentence (James Wan, 2007) - B

Now here's a movie, red-blooded, smart, alive in every frame. I am really starting to like this Wan guy; for as long as the underrated Saw franchise keeps up he'll be remembered as the one who got it off the ground, but it's his post-Saw work -- first the creepy, gleefully nasty horror flick Dead Silence and now this -- that makes me think he is going to develop into the sort of genre wizard we always need around. On one level, this is an ode to self-reliance -- the justice system is ineffectual, promising to put the gang-initiation murderer of the protag's son away for a few years, if that, and once the gang declares war, law enforcement is almost willfully unhelpful, basically telling poor Kevin Bacon to suck it up -- but at the same time, the distressing outcome of Bacon's antics and the mournful last fade-out suggest a morbid cautionary tale. Wan, in any event, just chomps down on this stuff, busting out elaborate long takes (the parking lot sequence is awesome) and giving every admittedly implausible twist unexpected dramatic weight. The movie's contrived and, on paper, a little silly, and Wan pulls off a tough balancing act taking on this material without winking, making the exaggerated, grotesque story seem to matter. Garrett Hedlund, cast against type in a role that Ben Foster would have eaten alive, plays a truly fearsome villain -- it's a big performance, one that teeters on the edge of absurdity but doesn't quite tip over, much like the film itself.