Rob Zombie has given a thematically appropriately timed interview to MTV where he discusses some of the details of his upcoming remake of John Carpenter’s seminal slasher film, Halloween. First of all, Zombie’s fully aware that horror remakes suck; he uses Cronenberg’s The Fly and Carpenter’s The Thing as examples of the few that work, and why – because the filmmaker took a new approach.
Zombie wants to take such a new approach with his Halloween when he starts shooting this January, focusing more on Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis and less on the babysitters who get slaughtered. "I want the lead character to be Michael Myers," Zombie said. "He’s not just a faceless thing floating around in the background and then you focus on these girls. I feel that that’s where you can make it different and that’s where you can make it more intense.
"I felt the character of Dr. Loomis just popped in and out when they needed somebody to say something dramatic," Zombie observed. "I wanted his story to feel more intertwined with Michael in a way that means something, which they did in the original, but sometimes it feels like he disappears for a long period and then just pops up to go, ‘He’s evil!,’ and then he disappears again for a while."
Zombie plans on getting more into detail about Mike’s life and the events that shaped him into The Shape he is today, a big departure from the original. But two things will remain mostly unchanged: that William Shatner mask and Carpenter’s haunting score. "I think the music and the imagery and everything involved with ‘Halloween’ is still effective because it was simple, and simple things are always classic and they last," Zombie opined. "I relate it to the Ramones. When they were doing it first, nothing sounded like that, and it’s hard to believe that nothing sounded like that because everything sounds like that now. It’s hard to believe there was a time that was never done."
For more on Zombie’s vision, click here to read the whole MTV article.