RSSIt’s Because the Suburbs are a Scary, Scary Place
May 04
I’ve been watching the Halloween movies lately. Don’t ask why. Sometimes you just get in the mood to watch something out of season. And sometimes that urge leads you to watch movies that aren’t always good. (And while I’ve watched Bad Santa during July, I’ve never made the plunge to watching Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause on Memorial Day weekend).
Anyway, after watching the original and then the Zombie remake (coupled with watching the recent Elm Street reboot), it becomes apparent what doesn’t work about Rob Zombie’s film. These creatures — Michael, Freddy, Jason — are very much tied into suburban fears. It’s where they draw their strength from.
Jason represents the thing that goes bump in the night outside of the city. Sure, he’s out at a campsite, but everything and everyone in the movies scream suburban (even when the characters come from the city). Take the “bump in the night” out of the night and put him in the city (aka the dismally bad Jason Takes Manhattan) and his effect is diminished. Is a hockey masked, machete wielding slow moving mass really that scary in an alley way full of rapists and drug dealers?
Similarly, Freddy is the thing inside of our head. No matter where you live, your own imagination can betray you. As a character, he turns on the idea that our dreams give him power. It’s that chill that keeps us awake at night and that we can’t hide from no matter we live. Inner-city crime rate too high? Flee to the nearby small town and feel safe. Safe, that is, until a news report plants a chilling seed in your mind that gnaws at you in the middle of the cold night.
Which leaves Michael Myers. The shape. The boogeyman. The representative of the darkness that lurks within the family unit. Nearly all of the movies boil down to the idea of family (Resurrection is the only one that ignores it after it’s first 15 minutes and the movie is a slow walk down the horrible trail at that point).
But in Rob Zombie’s Halloween, we get nearly forty minutes of back story to explain why a young boy would snap one Halloween and kill his sister. It’s supposed to be a look into the developing mind of a sociopath. Except it doesn’t work out that way. Just like Jason’s little trip to New York, the character loses its power once we surround it by other horribly mean characters. Is Michael Myers scarier than racist, redneck mental hospital guards who gleefully gang rape a traumatized patient?
If the story puts you in the position to think about something like that, then the story’s lost its battle. And if your Big Bad Scary Evil Monster-Man wastes time taking out criminals or vile disgusting human beings, then you’ve weakened the scare. We should be afraid for these relatively innocent (if stupid) people and not feeling pretty blase that a rapist received cinematic just desserts.