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character was the lack of reason in his monstrous actions: the idea that terror can come from anywhere - indeed, from the secure, middle-class family home. Zombie's back story makes a mockery of the working class, depicting Myers as a product of a broken family home: his anger built on years of abuse and neglect from his father. But the frightening aspect of the original Michael Myers is the sense that his killing is based on uncontrollable evil that even he has no power over. The new Michael Myers is just a deeply trouble psychopath with a brutal distaste for the family that failed him.

Inextricably, having established Michael Myers with reason, Zombie provides him with supernaturally powerful strength and the ability to withstand a bullet. This, having taken the mystique away from Myers-as-monster, betrays the audience's trust entrenched in Myers' bullied and abused childhood.

Zombie's poor script extends to some truly awful dialogue made only palpable by genre veterans Malcolm McDowell and Brad Dourif, and languid, disjointed pacing. Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie Strode makes do with a limited lead role, while the supporting cast (made up of predominantly pretty twenty-something girls) is a collection of cliched characterisation and Kevin Williamson-style, angst-ridden dialogue. Zombie borrows the Dawson's Creek-in-a-slasher-movie ideals from Wes Craven with not even a semblance of his talent on show.

Rob Zombie's Halloween remake is a stale, uninteresting mess. It laughably takes itself far too seriously and has no right to. The second half of the film is so bad John Carpenter should consider legal action over copyright infringement. Not only does the film betray the legacy of one of the genre's most iconic characters, it destroys his fear factor. The new Halloween's most damning attribute is that instead of being fearful of this demonic, uncontrollable evil, we begin to pity it. And that's a dead end road Zombie should never have gone down.

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