Despite the critical failure of the director’s fandom-dividing 2007 Halloween remake and its sequel, Rob Zombie’s The Munsters reboot will not run into the same issues as his earlier effort. As far as horror directors go, Rob Zombie has always been an acquired taste. Some of his work in the genre has been praised for reviving the grindhouse aesthetic and bringing the conventions of exploitation movies into the twenty-first century, while other projects he has helmed have been derided for being too self-consciously edgy, nihilistic, or relentlessly downbeat.
However, while there are many fans and critics alike who defend Zombie projects like House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, the consensus on the director’s 2007 Halloween remake is more unanimous and unambiguous. Unlike the Halloween franchise’s successful 2018 reboot, Zombie’s Halloween remake was largely viewed as an ambitious misfire. Disliked by both fans and critics, 2007’s Halloween and its sequel 2009’s H2 were both failed attempts to revisit the famous slasher franchise from a fresh new angle, which has led some to fear that Zombie’s much-anticipated Munsters remake will befall a similar fate.
Expected in 2022, Zombie’s Munsters reboot has a lot in common with his Halloween remake at first glance. Both projects are remakes of classic originals that are beloved by both a legion of loyal horror fans and Zombie himself, who said he has been chasing the chance to remake The Munsters for twenty years now. Both Zombie’s Halloween movies and The Munsters are iconic properties that were dormant for some time before the director rebooted them, and both were broadly agreed to be past their prime decades earlier. However, The Munsters is a sillier, lighter project with a sympathetic view of its anti-heroes, making the reboot a far better fit for Zombie than his ambitious but flawed re-imagining of the Halloween franchise.
What Went Wrong With Rob Zombie's Halloween Remakes
The primary issue with Zombie’s take on Halloween was that the movies fundamentally misunderstood the appeal of the original John Carpenter-directed horror movie. Where 1978’s Halloween was a sparse slasher classic that never explain the motivations of its killer villain, Zombie’s Halloween remake devoted much of its runtime to humanizing the young Michael Myers and explaining his slide into evil via endless exposition and backstory. Even Dr. Loomis’ pre-Halloween comic backstory did not endeavor to humanize Michael and instead made the already-terrifying villain even scarier by proving that the most sympathetic observer still couldn’t find any recognizable humanity in him.
While it is theoretically admirable to revise the story of one of cinema’s most cartoonishly evil figures and attempt to find the soft soul beneath the masked murderer’s emotionless exterior, Zombie’s Halloween didn’t have the sincerity or emotional depth to pull off this approach. The early scenes of domestic dysfunction were a chore for viewers to get through and watching Michael being bullied by both family members and peers made for a miserable viewing experience. Before 2007’s Halloween could offer anything like introspection or the patient, unsettling character building of the fellow series-spawning festive slasher Silent Night Deadly Night, however, the remake switched gears and became a gory thrill ride in its final third. Michael’s ruthless killing spree lacked any cathartic payoff after the grim opening acts, but the movie’s gleeful gore and kill ‘em all attitude meant that the ending also lacked much in the way of pathos or tragedy.
How Rob Zombie's Munsters Reboot Approach Is Different
From the outset, the earliest set photos prove that Zombie’s approach to rebooting The Munsters will be very different from his take on Halloween. Where making Michael a more human form of tragic antagonist would always have been radically different from the original Halloween (even if the approach had succeeded), the first look at Zombie’s The Munsters reboot resembles the tone and style of the original series. Much like both successful Addams Family reboots kept the macabre humor of the original television series but updated the setting, Zombie’s re-imagining of The Munsters simply needs to update the existing series for fans to be happy. Since The Munsters was (again, like The Addams Family) already sympathetic to its cast of lovable monsters, the reboot won’t need to break new ground by making its heroes human the way that Zombie’s Halloween tried to. On the flip side, Zombie’s Munsters reboot also won’t benefit from making the Munsters into scarier, darker monsters.
Why Rob Zombie's Munsters Reboot Will Work When Halloween Didn’t
Rob Zombie’s take on Halloween completely re-contextualized the iconic villain Michael Myers, attempting (and failing) to make the infamously evil monster more human. The Munsters are already humanized and, like Tim Burton’s upcoming Addams Family re-imagining Wednesday, all that Zombie needs to do is update their existing personae for a new generation. If Zombie took the equivalent approach to The Munsters that the director took to Halloween, it would mean making a version of the series wherein the family are murderous monsters with evil intentions. Few viewers have any interest in a dark, edgy reinvention of The Munsters, since the entire appeal of the original series and its many spinoffs was seeing traditionally scary monsters turned into lovable sitcom characters.
Furthermore, if Zombie humanizes the monsters of The Munsters as much as he humanized Michael Myers, this would actually be a boon for the reboot. Unlike masked monster Michael Myers, The Munsters should be likable, misunderstood characters whose motivations don’t match their chilling exteriors. Thus, Zombie’s desire to find the humanity underneath the creepy external appearances of horror characters will work for The Munsters since the franchise has always prized this sort of playful, humorous subversion. The same impulse that doomed Zombie’s Halloween will likely make The Munsters all the better, as Zombie is no longer trying to give a famously inhuman monster a heart and is instead attempting to make already-lovable characters likable again. Since The Munsters is better suited to Zombie’s career-long love of weirdos, outcasts, and rejects, the reboot will align perfectly with the director’s singular style. However, since Halloween is built on making one villain utterly, inhumanly evil, the franchise was a terrible fit for Rob Zombie's more character-focused approach to horror.