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situation - the strained mother, the obnoxious sister, the abusive father, the constantly crying baby. In the original Carpenter inferred Myers came from a well-meaning family and that his actions were completely motiveless. Zombie gives Myers motive which defeats the underlying fatalism that made the original character so effecting.

Zombie's movie watches as Myers murders several people and gets incarcerated at a mental institution. There Dr. Loomis tries to help him but over many years Myers becomes more distant. He bloodily escapes the institution and heads back to Haddonfield. There, during the film's second half, we pick up events as they are told in the original with added gore, nudity, and some small detail changes.

John Carpenter's original was a brilliant horror movie that revolutionised the genre. His measured use of the widescreen frame and off-screen space, his unnerving soundtrack which included one of the best horror score's ever committed to celluloid and inventive use of sound effects, his careful pacing and claustrophobic final third, made Halloween 1978 one of the best films of its type.

Zombie's turgid, stale affair is badly scripted, badly plotted, and badly paced. His post-Scream, post-Saw technique lacks any redeeming features, coming across as a mismatch of unoriginal ideas from a director lacking the skill or the foresight to make anything not derivative or lacking invention.

Halloween 1978 is frightening and effective, begging to be watched again and again. Halloween 2007 is boring and uninspired. One viewing of it is one viewing too many.

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