Category Archives: psychosis

This remake of my all-time scariest movie is a darker, deeper and more brutal version than the original. The first 26 minutes are devoted to Michael Myers as a long-haired 10-year-old child living in a heinous home filled with cussing, booze, sexual overtures and abuse. It is Halloween. Michael snaps when, sitting outside the principal’s office at school, he overhears a psychologist talking to his mother (a pole-dancer by trade) about photos of tortured animals the principal found in Michael’s backpack. That night, while Mommy is dancing and Big Sis is getting it on with her boyfriend upstairs instead of taking him trick-or-treating, Michael dons a clown mask and brutally murders his injured step-father (good riddance to that sicko!), his sister’s boyfriend, and then his older sister (as she is listening to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” on headphones). Finally, he picks up his baby sister and says, “Happy Halloween Belle.”

Flash forward 11 months to the local sanitorium, where Michael is being held and treated by Dr. Samuel Loomis. Dr. Loomis is not making much progress with Michael, who would rather design, create and wear strange masks and ask him why he “talks funny.” When his mother visits, he says, “Hey, Mommy, is everyone at home okay?” as if he has forgotten the havok he wreaked less than a year earlier. Little by little, Michael draws in upon himself and stops talking. When he is left alone briefly with a nurse who insults him, he forks her neck. His mom just can’t take being the mother of Satan any longer and shoots herself, leaving behind his baby sister to be adopted out as “Laurie.”

Flash forward again, 15 years down the road. Michael still has not spoken during all these years. He is enormously tall, with disgusting feet, and he wears an orange mask he has made. When two night guards taunt him in his room (beware the brutal rape of a fellow inmate in this scene…not for the squeamish!), he kills them and escapes, heading back to his hometown . On Halloween, he finds Laurie’s new family and one by one picks them off in various bloody ways, now wearing his trademark emotionless-face mask which he had hidden in his boyhood home (boarded up and abandoned) all these years. Dr. Loomis heads there to help find him and “talk him down” apparently. Fool.

The next hour is spent in bloodbath after bloodbath. However, we are spared much of the scares involved in the original movie, those of anticipation, since the scenes are so darkly lit we can’t really make out what is happening and how close he is to reaching someone and killing them. He does find Laurie during this time, and many, many, many, many minutes later the doctor also finds them and tries to help Laurie. The ending is very unsatisfying and is drawn out much longer than necessary. Ugh! I’ll stick with the original version of Halloween every time and recommend that you do too!

• Top Scare: Family Michael grows up in
• Heartbeats: 3 3/4 out of 5
• Gore Factor: 4 out of 5
• Suspense Factor: 3 1/2 out of 5
• Recommended for: 18 and up for cussing, abuse, nudity and sex scenes, gore and brutality

Next up: Parasomnia