by Sarah Terzo

Created on: November 29, 2008   Last Updated: June 17, 2010

This Unsatisfying Movie Falls Way Short of Its Goals

Bottom Line: Too slow to be a good slasher movie, not believable enough to be a good thriller.

The original Halloween made quite a sensation when it was released in the 1970s. I never saw it, so I am unable to compare the two. Without any previous knowledge of the characters or plot, and no real nostalgia for the original, I approached this movie as I would any other.

The newest version of Halloween tells the story of Michael Meyers, a murderer who slaughters his family and is incarcerated in a mental hospital for the criminally insane. The movie attempts to provide background on his character. The old Halloween movies had the reputation of being simple slasher movies, and the elaborate back story may have been the new movie’s attempt to add some depth and intelligence to the franchise. Sadly, the attempt fails. There is nothing intelligent about this movie.

We are first treated to Michael Meyers (at this point played by Daeg Faerch) when he is a morbid, glassy-eyed ten year old with an incredibly dysfunctional family. We meet his worn but affectionate mother (Sheri Moon) who just happens to be a stripper, his self-centered and promiscuous teenage sister (Hanna Hall) and his newborn baby sister. William Forsythe plays Michael's mother's loser boyfriend.

After school officials find a slaughtered cat in Michael's locker, psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis is brought in. He appears too late to prevent Michael from committing his first murders, and the boy is soon incarcerated in a mental hospital. Here, visited only by his mother, Michael degenerates into a mindless automaton whose only manner of expression is violence.

Dr. Loomis is played by Malcolm McDowell. Little about his character is fleshed out, and McDowell does a lackluster job portraying him. When the doctor says goodbye to Michael, having given up on reaching him, he makes the improbable statement that Michael has become like his own son. Like so much else in this movie, this emotional revelation comes out of nowhere- we have never seen even so much as a hint of any previous affection towards Michael on the doctor's part. This emotional goodbye is contrived and unconvincing. It is the start of a pattern in Halloween- characters making emotional decisions that come out of nowhere, doing and saying dramatic things that have no basis in what came before.

It is shortly after Loomis leaves that Michael escapes.

There are a number of ways that a mute psychopath

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