05/06/09 - Reading the Script

Just finished reading writer/director Ron McLellen's short film script HALLOWEEN: NIGHT OF THE BOOGEYMAN which is meant to be a fan-film that he plans on filming this year. It is a short film that is part remake and part re-imagination of the original John Carpenter film.

Being a short film and a remake of the original film (and not the Rob Zombie remake) McLellen's script borrows a lot from the original film with only a few minor changes mostly in terms of names of characters but the plot is 100% Carpenter HALLOWEEN, which is not a good thing.

In this day and age there are virtually hundreds of HALLOWEEN fan-films out there and doing a remake of theoriginal is probably not the best way to go. Of the few HALLOWEEN fan-films I've seen most of them have either done sequels to various films in the franchise or created stand alone one-offs but none that I have seen have tried to remake the original (which point of fact is too straight forward and kind of bland which is why Zombie changed so much for his version). McLellen has done some very interesting short films in his past, most notable NIGHT OF THE HUNGRY DEAD (which gets mention in this fan-film), THE INN, FROM ABOVE, and DER SOLDAT, but this film is lacking in originality and...well, a sense of fun.

Most of the fan-films I've seen relish the opportunity to have fun with their favorite character being able to put them in situations that "Hollywood" never would but this sense of fun is completely void in McLellen's script and in fact comes off as dare I say - bland and emotionless. Now this may be exactly what he is going for as it is a remake of the Carpenter film and if that is the case then he has succeeded but that doesn't always make for a good fan-film.

Regardless, I've always trusted McLellen with his productions and for the most part they are sound, so, I'm not too worried when we actually start to film. I'm actually looking forward to the filming as this will be my first fan-film and McLellen is working on getting the Myers mask from HALLOWEEN: H20 as opposed to any of the other versions of the mask. I know that he'll change it around and augment it to fit his own perceptions of how Myers should look. I also happen to be in the running for a small role in the film which should be fun since I've had no roles in quite a long time (by choice since I'm too busy) and I thought that this film would be a good film to re-enter the field.

I'll have more as we get closer to filming the movie.