10. Homeless-Looking HeroinesRob, why must you make every character in your movies look like they've spent the past week hanging out at the Port Authority--especially the girls? The female leads may be OK on the eyes, but it seemed like Zombie did all he could to make them look as skeevy as possible.
9. The Best Part Never Even HappenedHands down, the movie's best sequence was the opening in the hospital--but guess what? It was just a dream! That's right, the only part of the flick that felt like an actual Halloween movie, wasn't even real. Cause you know, Rob Zombie had to put his "stamp" on things and give us his version of the franchise. Thanks a lot, buddy.
8. That's So JasonCharacters you hate so much you can't wait to see them killed? Isn't that the domain of Friday the 13th? Don't get me wrong, Halloween dabbled in that to a degree as well, but not to the cartoonish level of the Voorhees series. Until now. I don't want to root for Michael Myers. I didn't in the original, and I shouldn't be now.
7. Logic? We Don't Need No Stinking Logic!
Why would Laurie be sharing the same hallucinations as Michael? And don't tell me because they're siblings, that crap might hold water if this was some lame-ass Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers-type supernatural nonsense, but I thought we ejected all that garbage in favor of realism.
6. Not Enough Danielle Harris!What was the point of letting her character survive the first movie (unlike in the original) only to be rendered pointless in this one? Her presence is a major selling point of the film as far as I'm concerned, yet she was completely wasted.
5. Paging Dr. Frank N. Furter...
What was up with referencing the characters from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, yet vehemently refusing to mention them by name? Even going so far as to repeatedly refer to the good doctor merely as "a dude pretending to be a chick". Mr. Zombie, do you really think we're that dumb? Well, you got my ten bucks, so maybe you're right...
4. You Ma'am, Are No Laurie StrodeThe completely annoying and unsympathetic Scout Taylor-Compton is such a far cry from Jamie Lee Curtis' iconic final girl that it's not even funny. Lacking all of the poise, style and acting chops of her predecessor, she turns Laurie into just another run-of-the-mill whining slasher flick chick. If this is the "good girl ideal", then our culture is doomed.
3. Angry Michael MyersThe Shape has no emotions. The Shape feels no pain. The Shape is an automaton. Or at least, he's supposed to be. Every time I heard Michael utter those seething grunts and groans as he murdered his victims, it felt like he was plunging the knife into my own heart. As if the humanization of the character in the first one wasn't bad enough...
2. Sheri Moon Zombie, Will You Please Go Now?I know she's your wife, Rob, but why oh why did she have to be shoe-horned into this one, too? And as a completely out-of-place supernatural entity on top of it... It's been said before, but Michael isn't supposed to be the movie slasher who hallucinates his dead mommy, remember? Ms. Zombie and her stupid white horse nearly ruined the movie for me single-handedly.
1. The Dr. Loomis Character AssassinationI say nearly, because what really did it for me, what drove me into paroxysms of geek rage, was the cynical, stupid way in which Zombie ham-fistedly raped the character Donald Pleasance made so famous. The doctor is supposed to be a heroic figure--the voice of reason crying out against the madness, the yin to Michael's yang. Instead, Zombie thought it would be cute to make him a sleazy media-whore. So very sad. Not to mention the fact that his character serves absolutely no purpose in the picture whatsoever. Not since Jack Black's Carl Denham has a classic character been so thoroughly FUBARed.
And just so you don't consider me your typical bitter genre blogger... Here are the handful of little things I actually liked about the movie: Some very cool imagery, the nods to Frankenstein, Michael-as-transient, Brad Dourif, the Psycho homage at the end. There, happy?