by Daniel Stephens

Created on: February 28, 2009

Aside from the great gulf in quality between John Carpenter's classic 1978 slasher and Rob Zombie's post-Scream back story-cum-remake, the new film couldn't be more different from the original.

The original Halloween was a benchmark in horror. It set new standards that would become convention in movies that followed like Friday The 13th and A Nightmare On Elm Street. Heavily influenced by Bob Clark's Black Christmas, Halloween became the trend-setter of slasher movie lore. Essentially, to remake Halloween - a classic film loved by so many - was an impossible task. It's like trying to remake Citizen Kane or The Godfather: you'd be fighting a losing battle.

Halloween circa 2007 is more a quick-fix marketing ploy, intended to hit a ready-made audience than an artistic cinematic endeavour. Employing the limited talents of Rob Zombie - the pin-up of MTV generation trash - to not only write but direct the new film, indicated the studio (read: the Weinsteins') weren't interested in remaking quality just inventing box office profit.

I suppose you can give the movie's producers credit for providing viewers with something new. Every remake, after all, has to add something to up the ante (that's why I've always ignored Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho). Halloween 07 adds back story to Michael Myers. Unfortunately, back story to one of the genre's most iconic and frightening monsters is the worst thing you could have done for the series. Would The Exorcist be more interesting, indeed more effective, if we knew the entire history of the demonic presence possessing Regan? Of course, not.

The new Halloween neglects to acknowledge what made the original so effective. This is, without doubt, the film's cardinal sin. What made Michael Myers such a frightening 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.

The new film differs from the original completely in the first half. We see Michael Myers in a difficult family

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