Happy Halloween... In August?

Well, I just got home a little while ago from seeing Rob Zombie's remake of John Carpenter's classic Halloween. And while I think that it's safe to say that it's better than some of the lame sequels (yeah, I'm looking at you, Halloween: Resurrection), I don't know if I'd say it was all that great of a remake.

I really want to talk about what I liked and didn't like about it, but I'm afraid that I'd spoil things for people. And unless I'm talking about a Uwe Boll movie, I'd like to avoid as many spoilers as I can. But the truth of the matter is that my feelings in regards to the movie are quite mixed. It's as if the movie's a cross between "Michael Myers: The Early Years" and "John Carpenter's Halloween: The Greatest Hits"; I certainly got the impression that Zombie wanted to do his own thing, but got so swept up in doing homages and references to bits from the original movie that he lost sight of doing things his way.

There are things that work in this remake, but there are just as many things that fail as well. It's at least worth a watch; it's disappointing when held up to the absolutely fantastic original film (my review of which you can read here), but it's not an awful movie. It's probably on par with the remake of Black Christmas, so if you liked that, you'd probably like Halloween '07 too. I guess if I had to rate it, I'd give it a three out of five for now, but I'll probably pass a final judgment once I get a chance to see it again.

I also feel like I should point out that I've acquired a copy of the bootlegged workprint version of the movie, which I plan on sitting down and watching at the next available opportunity. I know that the ending is different, and that there's plenty of other differences between that and the version I saw tonight. Looking forward to checking that out.