Okay, technically it opened in August, but that just wasn't as catchy. And it doesn't change the fact that no sooner do I run a bit about the critical and financial woes of the brothers Weinstein than their very next pic opens at the top of the weekend box office with $31 million over four days from 3,472 theatres for a $9k average (shattering Transporter 2's Labor Day weekend record of $20 million). On top of which, their upcoming period drama Elizabeth: The Golden Age is getting some serious Oscar buzz, in spite of being a completely unnecessary sequel to director Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth.
Maybe Cuba Gooding Jr.'s in for a career up tick, too. He does have a part in American Gangster (although he's nowhere to be found in the trailer).
But back to Halloween. I was able to check it out this weekend (you're not really surprised, are you?), and while it certainly doesn't approach Carpenter's original, writer/director Rob Zombie succeeds in putting his own stamp on it, and the film's financial success bodes well for his future.
Gone, of course, is all of Carpenter's subtlety and much of his ability to build suspense with those long, sustained takes of classic slasher Michael Myers just standing there in that eerily emotionless mask. Zombie's version comes complete with a much more impressive body count, gallons more blood, and a visceral approach to the violence that both helps and hurts the film.
But his most unique move in brining this "re-imagining" to the screen is what he does with it structurally. The first two-thirds of the film focuses on Michael's childhood, where we find him raised not by the two straight-laced yuppies seen at the end of the original's prologue, but rather by a stripper mother (Zombie's wife, Sherri), an abusive and lecherous step-father (William Forsythe), and a sluttish older sister.
And, of course, a baby sister who- as fans of the series already know- grows up to be the oft terrorized Laurie Strode.
When considered with his previous pics, House of a Thousand Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, not to mention his work as a musician, Zombie has a twisted, funhouse-mirror version of Americana that makes this section of the movie very much his own. To Carpenter, what was scary was the Myers came from a normal, Leave It to Beaver-type home. Zombie re-imagines that as a home we're more likely to associate with a serial killer, but what's scary is that he seems to feel such environments are far more common than we'd like to admit, and I for one think he may have a point.
Which may be why the film loses so much steam when switching gears so radically so far into the movie. The last third is basically a compressed version of the original Halloween, and Zombie has no choice but to spend a little time unconvincingly portraying Lorie's idyllic home life with two loving parents, babysitting precocious kids, and generally waiting for her psychotic older brother to make things interesting again (in one of the few departures from the original, Zombie does have Myers pay a visit to Laurie's parents, perhaps as a way of destroying that suburban cultural stereotype).
All of this is just to say that Halloween is an interesting film, though maybe not terribly good. Still, it's financial success will keep the Weinsteins afloat for a bit longer, and hopefully give Rob Zombie time to deliver on his promise as a filmmaker (man, I never thought I'd be typing that ten years ago, but even in his pan, the NY Times' Matt Zoller Seitz calls Zombie a "sociologist who happens to make horror movies: the John Cassavetes of splatter.").
In second place was Sony's late-summer sleeper Superbad with $15.6 million and a $92 million total. People have written just about everything there is to write about this one, but I would only add that star Michael Cera is getting more good buzz from Jason Reitman's Juno, which is playing festivals right now, and may be the one to emerge from Superbad as a star. Opening in third was Balls of Fury with a lackluster but not dismal $13.8 million from 3,052 screens for a $4.5k average, giving it $16.7 million since its Wednesday opening. Not bad, but well below similar pics like Dodgeball. Studios seem to be scrambling for programmers these days, and I'm glad that audiences aren't making it too easy on them.