Earlier this week, I took part in a roundtable discussion over at HorrorBlips.com on what appeared to me to be a very one-sided topic. The question that was posed to bloggers like myself, Stacie Ponder of Final Girl, BC of Horror-Movie-a-Day, Bryan White of Cinema Suicide and others, was this: Which version of Michael Myers is scarier, John Carpenter's original character, or the version created by Rob Zombie for his remake?Yes, I know, who in their right mind would choose the new Michael, right? Well, that's what I thought too, and lo and behold, not a single blogger polled did so. In other words, it was a landslide for Carpenter's Shape.
For those of you who haven't had an opportunity to check out the article at HorrorBlips, here is my contribution:
I would say, hands down, that John Carpenter's original conception of Michael Myers is the more frightening version. The mistake that Rob Zombie made was giving us way too much background information on Michael, almost trying to make him sympathetic.
The complete mystery of the original is far superior—it's almost as if Michael is less a person and more a force of nature. In the remake, we are made to understand how Michael got the way he is, and why he kills. In the original, we have no idea why—he seems to be just a normal little boy who one day decides to start killing people. This is far more chilling.
I understand why Zombie did what he did; obviously he felt he needed to add something, rather than simply regurgitate what Carpenter had already done. Unfortunately, however, the result points out even more clearly why a remake was pointless in the first place—from a creative standpoint, anyway.So what do you say, HorrorBlips? Next time, give us a question we can really debate. This one was a no-brainer!