10 Things You Learn Rewatching Halloween (2007)

Let's be frank; a man who calls himself Rob Zombie is never exactly going to be one for subtlety. From the very opening of this film, Zombie's heavy-handed tendencies get the best of him and nearly strangle his creation to death in its infancy.

In an effort to make Michael "scary again", Zombie spends the first act exploring Michael's troubled childhood. And in an attempt to make it "more real" (Zombie's words), he gives Micahel a broken home that helps inspire his acts of madness.

The problem is Zombie goes so overboard with this broken home that it practically turns into self-parody. His family's house is in shambles, his mother is a stripper, his sister is the school whore, and his mother's live-in boyfriend is overtly abusive.

A regular day at the Myers house begins with cursing profusely at and throwing dishes at each other, apparently.

This and the subsequent explorations of Michael's murderous exploits in this first act (read: killing animals and beating Juni Cortez to death with a tree branch) come off as dime-store psychology at best. Zombie is never content to let implications or subtext do any of the work for him, instead opting to bash the audience's brains in with how on-the-nose all of this is and it is to his own film's detriment.

There's an argument to be made for whether or not telling the story of Michael's youth is even a worthwhile exploit but in Zombie's hands, all of this never even gets a chance to get off the ground before becoming obnoxiously hamfisted.