Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Finally: A Promising Horror Sequel?!?!

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Copied and pasted from Arrow In The Head, a horror component of the great moviehouse site, joblo.com:

"A couple months ago I mentioned that Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo (the team behind the brilliant Inside) may have been in talks with Bob Weinstein and Dimension about continuing what Mr. Zombie had started [with his Halloween]. Now, thanks to an article in Rue Morgue Magazine, we have further confirmation that this is indeed the case! Here’s a brief snippet of what was said:

'It's a proposition we couldn't refuse,” Maury explained and added that he and Bustillo are well aware of Zombie's re-imagining of Michael Myers and they're out to put their stamp on the character, not copy what came before them. "Therefore, our vision will be done with utmost respect, with a continuity of [Zombie's] work but also a real evolution of the world he set in place.'"

.....

I've been anxiously waiting on the news of what the brilliant duo behind Inside would be doing next. Inside was their first flick, and showed more potential than any film debut I've seen in God-knows-how-long, so seeing whether they can avoid the sophomore jinx or not has been quite intriguing for me. At first, they were attached to a remake of Hellraiser, the sadistic S&M horror jawn that brought good ol' Pinhead to the world. But alas, Hollywood is a bunch of pussies and these two dudes had to leave the project because their vision for it was apparently too raw, too evil, and too much. Meaning, exactly what it needed to be.

So the fact that these two guys are now attached to a second Halloween project is a mixed bag for me. On the negative side, I really wish these talented foreign genre filmmakers would be allowed to make their own original stuff here stateside, rather than being forced to handle tired remake and remake-sequels to get their feet in America's doors, sort of speak. But positively, this does mean that Bustillo and Maury are, in fact, coming to our shores, and I'm really optimistic that this will be good times for US horror hounds such as myself.

As for Rob Zombie's original Halloween spin, it tore my opinion in half like Mike Myers machete slash. The first section of the movie was pretty great, showing the demented and disturbed childhood of Myers, and I thought it all worked like gangbusters up until Myers left the insane asylum and headed back to Haddenfield. From that point on, however, Zombie abandoned all originality and basically did a shot-for-shot H-ween redux, and not terribly well. If he had just stuck to his own beginning vision, it could've been great. Introduce a whole new set of characters around Laurie Strode, and cast a different actress in the Strode role, one who could elicit some sense of compassion from audiences just as Jamie Lee Curtis once did. And try to avoid creating such white-trashy characters that the film reeks of Devils Rejects, which is a film I love but should remain its own entity. Zombie relies on this white-trash asthetic way too much.

So when Maury says he wants to stay true to the world Zombie created, I'm a bit concerned. They should just create their own universe and let the bodies drop in it. But still, though, these dudes have sick eyes and used some amazing camera techniques and frame tactics in Inside. Plus, John Carpenter's almighty OG Halloween has arguably the most iconic soundtrack in all of horror; the score of Inside, while far from iconic, is still bloody phenomenal. Nice meshing here, too.

Their "Halloween 2" could be something special. Time shall tell, my sick friends. Time shall tell.

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