Halloween is a 2007 American slasher film produced, written, and directed by Rob Zombie. It is a remake of John Carpenter's 1978 film, and the ninth installment in the Halloween franchise. Starring Malcolm McDowell, Sheri Moon Zombie, Tyler Mane, Scout Taylor-Compton, Brad Dourif, Danielle Harris, and William Forsythe, the film follows Michael Myers, who murdered several people as a ten-year-old child and was incarcerated at Smith's Grove Sanitarium, before breaking out and stalking Laurie Strode and her friends on Halloween night seventeen years later.
Working from Carpenter's advice to "make [the film] his own", Zombie chose to develop the film as both an origin story and a remake, allowing for more original content than simply re-filming the same scenes.
Halloween was theatrically released in the United States by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on August 31, 2007, with The Weinstein Company releasing in other territories, to generally negative reviews from critics. Despite this, the film was a box office success, grossing $80 million worldwide against its $15 million production budget. A sequel, Halloween II, was released in 2009.
Plot On Halloween 1990 in Haddonfield, Illinois, having already exhibited signs of psychopathic tendencies, ten-year-old Michael Myers murders his school bully Wesley Rhoades, his abusive stepfather Ronnie White, his promiscuous older sister Judith and her boyfriend Steven "Steve" Haley, only sparing his baby sister, whom he calls "Boo". After one of the longest trials in the state's history, Michael is found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to Smith's Grove Sanitarium under the care of child psychologist Dr. Samuel Loomis.
Michael initially cooperates with Loomis and his mother Deborah, whom he loves dearly, as she visits him regularly. Over the following few months, Michael starts dissociating and fixates on his papier-mâché masks, withdrawing from the people around him, even his mother. When Michael ends up killing a nurse as Deborah is leaving from one of her visits, she is unable to handle the situation and commits suicide.
For the next fifteen years, Michael continues making his masks and not speaking to people. Loomis, having continued to treat Michael over the years, attempts to move forward with his life and closes Michael's case. Later, Michael escapes from Smith's Grove, killing the guards and facility staff in the process. He then kills a truck driver, takes his coveralls and makes his way back to Haddonfield. On Halloween day, Michael then arrives at his now-abandoned childhood home, recovering the kitchen knife and Halloween mask he stored underneath the floorboards the night he murdered his family.
Meanwhile, teenage Laurie Strode and her friends Annie Brackett and Lynda Van Der Klok prepare for Halloween. Throughout the day, Laurie witnesses Michael watching her from a distance. Later that night, Lynda meets up with her boyfriend Bob Simms at Michael's abandoned home. Michael appears and then strangles Lynda after stabbing Bob. As Laurie is babysitting Tommy Doyle, Michael murders her parents, Mason and Cynthia. Dr. Loomis, having been informed about Michael's escape, drives to Haddonfield in search for him. After obtaining a handgun, Loomis warns Sheriff Leigh Brackett, who rushes over to the Strode home. While on the way, he explains to Loomis that Laurie is actually Michael's baby sister, having been adopted by the Strodes after their late mother's suicide.
After convincing Laurie to babysit Lindsey Wallace while spending time with her boyfriend Paul, Annie is attacked by Michael after he kills Paul at the Wallace residence. Bringing Lindsey home, Laurie finds Annie badly injured on the floor but still alive and calls for help. Michael attacks Laurie, chasing her down the street and back to the Doyle residence. Loomis and Brackett hear the call over the radio and head toward the scene. While the kids hide in the bathroom, Michael kidnaps Laurie and takes her back to their old home. He tries to show Laurie that she is his sister and presents a photo of the two of them together. Unable to understand, Laurie stabs Michael in the neck before escaping the house. Michael chases after her, but Loomis arrives and shoots him three times.
Recovering, Michael recaptures Laurie and heads back to the house. Loomis intervenes, but Michael subdues him by crushing his skull. Laurie takes the gun and runs upstairs where she hides inside of the walls. Michael corners her on a balcony and charges at her head-on, knocking them both over the side of the railing. Laurie awakens over an unconscious Michael and points the gun at his face, with Michael grabbing hold of her wrist just as the gun goes off. Laurie drops the gun and starts screaming maniacally as police sirens are heard in the distance.
Cast
Production After the release of Halloween: Resurrection (2002), there were various ideas on how to proceed with a ninth installment. After the release of Freddy vs. Jason in 2003, Dimension Films attempted to produce a crossover with the Hellraiser franchise featuring Pinhead and the Cenobites. One of the pitches involved a young Michael Myers opening the Lament Configuration and being possessed with Samhain fleeing from Hell, providing the source of his murderousness and invincibility; the remainder of the film would have involved the Cenobites pursuing him. An earlier pitch from the late 90s from Dave Parker was rejected by Dimension, as they believed Freddy vs. Jason would bomb at the box office. According to Doug Bradley, Clive Barker agreed to write a script while John Carpenter was being considered to direct. Bradley said that Barker "wasn't interested in a mano-a-mano confrontation. He was interested in finding the places where the Hellraiser and Halloween landscapes might have crossed over" and that he envisioned Michael Myers as "a sadomasochistic sexual pervert and serial killer which would be enough to pique Pinhead's interest." The project was ultimately cancelled after 52 percent of respondents to an online poll disapproved of the project and Moustapha Akkad was not interested.
Akkad continued to try to develop a sequel. Josh Stolberg, who also unsuccessfully proposed a Hellraiser crossover with Bobby Florsheim, pitched Halloween: Bad Blood, which would have brought back Jamie Lloyd. A 2004 script from screenwriting duo Jim Keeble and Dudi Appleton, titled Halloween: Retribution, would have begun with Michael killing Busta Rhymes's character Freddie Harris and involved Laurie Strode's son John Tate and Sheriff Leigh Brackett plotting to kill Michael Myers in revenge for her death in the previous film; the film would have ended with Tate drowning Michael in a frozen lake but implying that he would take his place as a murderous killer. Also in 2004, a script from Matt Veene, entitled Halloween: Asylum, had Michael Myers breaking free from death row. Another prospective screenplay written by Jake Wade Wall was Halloween: The Missing Years, which would have been a prequel centered around Michael Myers returning to Smith's Grove Sanitarium in the early 1980s during the events of Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), with flashbacks revealing details about his childhood at the asylum after murdering his sister in the 1960s. At the same time Moustapha Akkad and his son Malek were working on a story revolving around Dr. Wynn from Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995). Development on a direct sequel suddenly halted when Moustapha Akkad was killed in the 2005 Amman hotel bombings while attending a wedding in Jordan, and his son Malek decided to take the series in a different direction.
On June 4, 2006, Dimension Films announced that Rob Zombie would be creating the next installment in the Halloween film series, which was to be a remake of the original film. The plan was for Zombie to hold many positions in the production; he would write, direct, produce, and serve as music supervisor. Bob Weinstein approached him about making the film. Zombie, who was a fan of the original Halloween, jumped at the chance to make a Halloween film for Dimension Studios. Before Dimension went public with the news, Zombie felt obligated to inform Carpenter, out of respect, of the plans to remake his film. Carpenter's request was for Zombie to "make it his own". During a June 16, 2006, interview, Zombie announced that his film would combine the elements of prequel and remake with the original concept, and insisted that there would be considerable original content in the new film as opposed to mere rehashed material. The BBC reported that the new film would disregard the numerous sequels that followed Halloween.
Zombie's intention was to reinvent Michael Myers because he felt the character, along with Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Pinhead, had become more familiar to audiences, and as a result, less scary. The idea behind the new film was to delve deeper into Michael's backstory and add "new life" to the character. Michael's mask would be given its own story to provide an explanation as to why he wears it, instead of having the character simply steal a random mask from a hardware store as in the original film. Zombie explained that he wanted Michael to be true to what a psychopath really is, and wanted the mask to be a way for Michael to hide. He also wanted the young Michael to have charisma, which would be projected onto the adult Michael. In addition, he decided that Michael's motives for returning to Haddonfield would be more ambiguous, explaining, "[W]as he trying to kill Laurie, or just find her because he loves her?" Michael speaks as a child during the beginning of the film, but while in Smith's Grove he stops talking completely. Zombie originally planned to have the adult Michael speak to Laurie in the film's finale, simply saying his childhood nickname for her, "Boo". Zombie explained that this version was not used because he was afraid having the character talk at that point would demystify him too much, and because the act of Michael handing Laurie the photograph of them together was enough.
Moreover, Michael would not be able to drive in the new film, unlike his 1978 counterpart who stole Loomis' car so that he could drive back to Haddonfield. The Dr. Loomis character was also to be more intertwined with that of Michael; Zombie reasoned that the character's role in the original was "showing up merely to say something dramatic". Although Zombie added more history to the Michael Myers character, hence creating more original content for the film, he chose to keep the character's trademark mask and Carpenter's theme intact for his version (despite an apparent misinterpretation in an interview suggesting the theme would be ditched). Production officially began on January 29, 2007. Shortly before production began, Zombie reported that he had seen the first production of Michael's signature mask and commented, "It looks perfect, exactly like the original. Not since 1978 has The Shape looked so good". Filming occurred in the same neighborhood that Carpenter used for the original Halloween.