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There have been many different re-makes of ‘Halloween’ and each one is as scary as the other. This movie is not different, but is it a movie that is good? Does it make audiences want to see it again?

The film opens with the Myers family; of course, this is a Zombie film, so they are a white trash, long haired clan whose cursing would put sailors to shame. In this Halloween outing, we see Myers’ transformation into the infamous serial killer. Zombie constructs a working profile of young Myers as a serial killer to be, mutilating animals and obsessed with masks, the irony is that we already know that Michael will kill his sister and run amuck through Haddonfield 15 years later.

The hiccup in Zombie’s artistic liberties is that we don’t quite make the leap that young Myers is the unfeeling killing machine we know he’ll be later in the film. Compared to his white trash family, Michael’s childhood rage is, at very least, understandable. We want him to teach the school bully, his mom’s deadbeat live-in drunk and heartless sister a lesson. It essentially turns him into the anti-hero of the films first half and destroys the original terror of an unexplained evil that somehow exists naturally.

While the first half of Halloween is largely Zombie’s creation with a dash of references to the original, the second half of the film completely relies on your knowledge of the first film. Given the iconic first film, it’s likely that most horror fans will be able to fill in the gaps and spend most of their time anticipating the appearance of Tommy Doyle or the mention of Ben Tramer.

For those not in the Halloween-know, Myers’ brutality and energy are enough to hold your attention. This is Michael Myers at his most brutal, but the terror doesn’t come from exploitive gore. Ex-pro wrestler Tyler Mane walks Myers with authority and nothing can stop him, doors, windows, walls, fences, bullets, nothing. While Mane is bashing through everything in his way, Zombie’s aesthetics fail to truly capture on that energy. His camera is mostly shaky, sometimes out of focus and generally ineffective.

Though his style hasn’t really grown since House of 1000 Corpses, his storytelling ability has, to some degree. He takes stabs at the influence of music on child violence by putting young Myers in a KISS t-shirt and slashes at corporate America as Mr. Strode blames a large conglomerate convenience store for putting Nicholas Hardware out of business. Like the rest of the film, his thematic jabs are uneven, as the subtle social commentary is overpowered by heavy-handed motifs such as Myers’ self-made masks, one of which emulates a jack-o-lantern.

But Zombie’s cinematic heart is in the right place. Instead of trampling over the original, he builds on it and creates an homage that should motivate the new generation of horror fans to seek out John Carpenter’s original with the respect and excitement it still deserves.