Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween, John Carpenter's horror classic, if nothing else, is a reinvention for our time. It wastes no time in cramming in as much crude dialogue as Zombie's pen can muster - in all of two minutes, there's discussions about "skull fucking", the ever-noticeable Rob Zombie stamp, which may as well have been a blood-soaked plaster that he removed from his own skin.

Whilst the original film very quickly went through the motions of Michael Myers' childhood stage, this update goes to painstaking lengths to explain what drove Michael to mercilessly slaughter in his later life. Michael, as a young boy, now has long hair, and wears a KISS shirt, and whilst the young actor portraying Michael did the best with what he was given, being exposed to so much of this precocious boy's attitude (and moreover, his face) all but adds to the terror, rather severely detracting from it instead. Still, the sombre mood in these opening moments is still there, it's just a shame that these instances become overwrought by Zombie's insistence to take the film in a different direction rather than simply remaking it.

The opening credits, by the sheer display of names alone, is a dash of fan service for any self-respecting horror aficionado, letting them know which famous faces to look out for, including Ken Foree (Romero's Dawn of the Dead), Danny Trejo (From Dusk Til Dawn), Brad Dourif (the Child's Play series), Sheri Moon Zombie (partner Rob Zombie's own House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects), and even, as no stranger to the Halloween series, Danielle Harris (who played Jamie Lloyd in the fourth and fifth films in the series). It's an impressive line-up, but as countless examples will tell, a great cast does not a great film make.

Halloween 2007 is essentially a film of two halves - the first half (quite literally a half, taking up roughly 50 minutes of screen time) delves into Michael's past, and explains his torments to us - he was bullied at school, he had an abusive, insensitive stepfather, his mother was a stripper, and Michael himself had something of a penchant for killing animals. Even as a youngster, he uses various masks as veneers (several of which were fortunately excised from the final film, including one he wears when he wishes to defecate) and whilst it's a mildly intriguing insight into the life and times of Michael Myers, it's more information overload than anything else. In much the same way as Hannibal Rising suffered earlier this year, one has to ask - do we really need to know this much about these psychopaths?

Admittedly we don't really get to know young Michael at all in the original film, but in this recanted attempt, his behaviours are considerably more exaggerated - he appears more calculated, and it's all less plausible, and moreover, less true to the spirit of the original - one can almost feel sympathy for young Michael at times, and this is what I feared from the outset. The devil you don't know is scarier than you devil that you do, and knowing Myers in such intimate detail is at great cost to the terrifying mood that was perfected so masterfully by Carpenter almost 30 years ago.

Still, fans of gore-soaked torture porn are likely to at least derive some enjoyment from the killings, for there is certainly no deficit of that in Zombie's version. The original film had a shockingly low body count, but Zombie near enough quadruples it here, killing as many people in the origins portion of the story as Carpenter did in the entirety of his picture. Furthermore, the deaths are considerably more graphic, more often than not appropriately accompanied by stomach-churning, blood-squelching sounds as victims are either stabbed or beaten to death.

As the origins section of Halloween begins to draw to a close, one must consider just how horribly it could have gone compared to how it did. Sure, it was an entirely superfluous addition to the Myers canon, but we knew this months ago, and so all we could do was sit back and hope for the best. For all of my gripes with this portion of the film being overlong and unnecessary, Zombie's cinematography, as usual, cannot be faulted - the man knows how to shoot a film, and his use of the "shaky cam" (now made infamous by Paul Greengrass) is effective, even if it is derivative from the nature of the original.

Soon enough we begin to meet the main players in this tale, beginning with Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell, stepping in for the late, great Donald Pleasance), the man charged with the thankless task of initially attempting to salvage Michael's psyche, and then ultimately trying to stop his murderous rampage. In the opening portion, Loomis asks Michael, whilst sporting his own flowing, greasy locks, "Why is your hair so messy?". At least Zombie understands the concept of irony.

When one considers that the original film told a piecemeal version of the same origins story in approximately a quarter of the time it took Zombie to do it, one can't help but consider that this half-hour over-pour was by and large a waste of time. Granted, a few additions here and there were of mild intrigue, but this "reimagination", as Zombie calls it, largely sacrifices the enigmatic terror of the original. Furthermore, Zombie endeavours to briefly introduce us to an older Myers in handcuffs, as something of a media sensation, and as we have to draw some sort of consolation in these instances, at least McDowell's Loomis got a hair cut. Myers (Tyler Mane), on the other hand, is a monstrously tall, long-haired, imposing individual, and one can't help but think Zombie's choice of physical appearance for his Michael was some sort of self-serving model of himself.

After a fairly abhorrent scene involving defecation, we finally reach the present day, quickly becoming acquainted with the frankly bastardised character of Laurie Strode. No longer is she the often-innocent, occasional weed-smoking bookworm - she is crude, obnoxious, and annoying to the point of seeming like a Bratz: The Movie throwback. Sure, Zombie can profess that his Laurie is not Carpenter's Laurie, but why make such repugnant changes? Laurie's friends are likewise rather irritating, and like many films that emulated the original film, you may find yourself rooting for the killer here. To introduce characters that are so lacking in depth, and moreover, are so typical of many of today's slasher films, does nothing but nearly debase the film to something you would see in those films.

From this point, events loosely follow the original - Michael arrives in town, begins slaughtering people to get to Laurie, and Loomis attempts to stop the carnage. Near enough everything that Zombie recreates is, as expected, Carpenter's version in a shell form, with a considerably greater amount of swearing and crude dialogue, and whilst Zombie slips in a few choice quotes from the original, the decidedly weaker performances render them by and large futile.

Considering how fearful I was of the origin section of the film, I was surprised to find the more faithful second half of the film to also be the weaker side. That said, some of the chase scenes near the end of the film are tense, well-shot, well-acted, and bolstered by a heart-pounding soundtrack. It's just a shame that the ending was a saddening departure from the original, the end result of which was understated, and quite frankly, a little boring.

Halloween, at it's best, is a remake for 2007 - it is loud, irreverent, and very violent. At it's worst, Halloween is an unnecessary remake (considering how well the original has aged) that makes changes for the worse, and introduces characters to us that, at times, seem to be nothing more than the generic stock characters seen in any half-baked horror attempt you'll see this year. Furthermore, it takes a great actor, in Malcolm McDowell, and gives him little time, or little great dialogue, to shine with. It isn't that Halloween is a horrible film as such, it's just a shadow of the original, and I'm sure that had this not been a remake of a classic that hardly needed remaking, my opinion of it would have been considerably higher.