YMMV / Halloween (2007)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Judith really a bad person or, like Michael, living in the unstable home life shown in the film has caused her to act like she does in the film, making her a Jerkass Woobie?
• Awesome Music: Nan Vernon's cover of Mr. Sandman over the closing credits.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Due to the sheer amount of assholish characters in the film, standouts being Judith, Ronnie, Wesley, and several of the asylum guards, it can be deeply satisfying to see Michael off them.
  • Laurie blowing Michael's head off at the end after causing her so much irreparable trauma throughout the movie.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Joe Grizzly. He's a One-Scene Wonder played by Ken Foree who was badass enough to give Michael a small challenge before being killed by him.
  • Ismael, Annie, and Sheriff Brackett are liked because they're some of the few characters in the remake franchise who aren't complete assholes. Also because of their actors: Brackett is played by Brad Dourif (already a horror film legend for his role as Chucky); Annie is played by Danielle Harris, who played Jamie Lloyd in the fourth and fifth Halloween movies; and as for Ismael, well... it's Danny Trejo.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: Most agreed that giving Michael (a character originally created to be pure evil) a tragic past took away too much of his mystique.
• Fan Nickname: Annie the Indestructible as some fans jokingly call her since she’s Michael’s only victim in the movie that survives his vicious attack.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Quite a few people prefer the alternate ending, as it makes Michael and Loomis more sympathetic and implies that Michael dies (which would avert the events of the base-breaking Immediate Sequel).
• Fetish Retardant: Annie gets a topless sex scene. However, Annie is played by Danielle Harris. For viewers who remember her being a preteen in previous Halloween movies as Jamie Lloyd might find the nudity a bit off putting.
  • She also spends the rest of the movie topless, but she is covered in the blood and gore of narrowly surviving an encounter with Michael Myers.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • In the middle of all the Darker and Edgier goings on, it's kind of nice watching Tommy and Lindsay start to get along, especially after they start out as somewhat brattier than their original incarnations.
  • While the scenes of Annie lying injured are mainly Tear Jerker and Nightmare Fuel moments, the fact that her father and Laurie manage to save her is one of the bright spots of the remake, even if the sequel partially diminishes this.
  • Laurie's parents get a lot of heartwarming extra screen time in the director's cut, allowing you to care more about them before they're tragically murdered.
  • Izzy being a buddy to Michael in the asylum as a child and defending him against the new orderly's insults as an adult.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • There is a massive difference in height between child Michael and adult Michael, to the point that jokes were made about the orderlies at Michael's asylum feeding him steroids. This gets even funnier when in the sequel, Daeg Faerch (the actor who played Michael as a child) was unable to reprise his role because of a massive growth spurt he had between films.
  • In the first scene, Deborah's partner Ronnie makes a rather crude 'joke' about how Michael will probably grow up to be transgender - "Prob'ly cut his dick an' balls off an' change his name to Michelle." A year later, Faerch appeared in Hancock, in which he played a French bully called Michel (the French version of "Michael"), which is pronounced the same way as "Michelle."
  • Malcolm McDowell, aka "The Man Who Killed Kirk" is up against a maniac in a Captain Kirk mask.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Regardless of you feel about this version of Michael, there's no denying that his life sucked ass. Perpetually abused by everybody around him, save for his mother, Loomis, and Ismael, there's no wonder why he wishes death on the people he encounters.
  • You might feel a little bit sorry for Judith when she gets upset at her boyfriend mistaking Ronnie for her dad and saying that her real dad is in Heaven. It's also briefly implied that Ronnie might be sexually abusive of her (or at least might want to be) when he makes an explicit comment about her behind in front of her mother, although this could also just be him trying to antagonize Deborah as much as humanly possible.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Since the film's contentious reception has become better known, some people are only interested in how horror icons Brad Dourif and Danielle Harris appear as Sheriff Brackett and Annie and arguably get the most praise out of all the cast members.
• Les Yay: There can be some interpretation that Laurie at least has some kind of crush on Annie the way she always calls her "baby" and reacts like she's just found her lover dead both times she finds Annie dying from wounds inflicted by Michael. Whether or not it's reciprocated or acted upon is left to the interpretation of the viewer.
• Moral Event Horizon: Michael crosses it when he brutally kills Ismael Cruz, the only guard who ever showed him any kindness, for the crime of trying to put him back into the confinement of his room that he's been locked in for over a decade-and-a-half. This was later revealed to have been deliberate, as the creators wanted to show just how far gone Michael had become and that he really was a monster despite his tragic past.
• Narm:
  • Michael bursting through a car windshield is followed by Dr. Loomis shouting "MICHAEL! JESUS CHRIST! WHAT THE HELL?!" as if he were reacting to someone spilling coffee on the floor. The line even became a meme in the Dread Central podcast and forums, usually used whenever Malcolm McDowell is mentioned.
  • Judith's death, due to how comically oversized the White Mask of Doom is on young Michael.
  • As pointed out during the review of the film by Phelous, the merits of giving Michael an origin and explaining his murderous nature is dubious at best (and had been done (arguably)poorly before), but it is difficult to take Michael as a child seriously with the tantrum-esque "I'M NOT LISTENING!! *SCREECHES LOUDLY*" moment, to say nothing of how this can make it difficult to take this version of Michael seriously as an adult killer.
  • A lot of what Ronnie, Deborah's partner, says and/or does. The film starts off with him mocking his baby stepdaughter by mimicking her crying, then telling Deborah that Michael's probably going to grow up and "cut his dick and balls off and change his name to Michelle". He's almost cartoonishly unlikeable. The whole character is like someone took the mind of a twelve-year-old playground bully and put in the body of a middle-aged alcoholic wreck. As a result, he comes off as more of a comedic parody of a Hate Sink who's amusing to watch.
  • One of the biggest issues of the film is that the first third of the movie makes Michael both overly sympathetic and annoying (despite his multiple murders), making it hard to not picture the whiny kid even when Michael is a violent, hulking monster as an adult.
• One-Scene Wonder: Ken Foree as a confrontational trucker.
  "I'M JOE GRIZZLY, BITCH!"
• Questionable Casting: Brad Dourif, Charles Lee Ray himself plays Sheriff Brackett. That said, many like his portrayal of the Sheriff and think he did a good job in this film and its sequel.
• Rooting for the Empire: Nearly everybody in this film is so disturbingly unlikable that it's pure Catharsis Factor when Michael kills them all.
• The Scrappy: Ronnie is a weird example; he's supposed to be disliked for being an Abusive Parent, but he's ultimately disliked for being a one-dimensional asshole who torments his family For the Evulz, the fact that he comes off as more of an overgrown schoolyard bully than an actual abuser as mentioned in Narm above, and for giving Michael a Freudian Excuse, despite what made Michael so terrifying in the original movies was that he had no reason for killing.
• Tear Jerker: See here.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Michael's origin basically boils down to "he killed people because he had a very bad childhood, then killed people because he liked it." It wasn't fleshed out much, and as a result they ruined the mystery of his character. Then again, this is supposed to be a completely different and (by Zombie's words) more "realistic" take on Michael.
  • The movie was originally going to have been a prequel/midquel centering around Michael's years in the asylum in the original continuity. Some felt that would have been more interesting than a straight-up remake.
  • After spending the whole film with a new story about Michael and his origins, halfway through it just becomes a remake of the original. Even the many fans who hate exploring Michael's past have noted that the film would've been better if they stuck to that idea rather than devolving into redoing the first movie's story with fairly little deviation.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: While most horror films generally have a large quantity of jerkass characters, this film ups the ante by making practically every character as violently unlikable as possible. Most of those that aren't besides Laurie, her babysitting charges, Loomis and the Bracketts ^note  Mr. and Mrs. Strode, Michael's school principal, the cemetery groundskeeper, Ismael, and Mrs. Myers. are either barely seen or quickly killed off. Combine that with the incredibly cynical tone and questionable changes made to Michael's backstory, and the film can be rather painful to watch.
• The Woobie:
  • Laurie, obviously.
  • Special mention goes to Deborah Myers. While she herself was a struggling stripper, the fact that she came home to find her oldest daughter and partner dead, her son being the cause of it, and watching said son's sanity deteriorate as he pulls inside himself and away from her, all while the townspeople start thinking of her as the devil's mother, is awful to watch. Hits it big when Michael kills Nurse Wynn when she insults Michael's picture of Laurie and jokingly questioned if she was related to him in the director's cut. The look on Deborah's face when she sees Michael snap at her and having that evil smirk on his face and her huge mental breakdown is devastating. It is worse when you see her later on watching video tapes of how happy her family was before, and proceeds to shoot herself after hitting the Despair Event Horizon hard.

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