The Halloween remake changed a lot of elements from John Carpenter’s iconic original slasher, but helmer Rob Zombie did stop short of giving the famously mute Michael a single line of dialogue. Released in 1978, John Carpenter’s Halloween was an instant horror classic hit that paved the way for a decade’s worth of rip-offs and provided the blueprint for every slasher that followed. Although Bob Clark’s earlier Black Christmas had explored some similar territory, it was Halloween that combined elements like a virginal final girl, mute madmen, a suburban setting, and a cast of teen victims for the killer to hunt down.
Although the original Halloween was the slasher hit that every subsequent knock-off attempted to ape, the movie was not as relentlessly gory as many of the slashers it inspired. The body count of Halloween’s sequels would attempt to make up for this lack of gore by ratcheting up the casualties to compete with the likes of the Friday the 13th series, but it was Rob Zombie's controversial 2007 Halloween that completely rewrote the franchise.
Zombie’s Halloween played a lot with the series lore, stretching the original movie’s brief pre-credits sequences into an entire extended backstory for young Michael which chronicled his descent into madness in detail. However, Zombie did stop short of breaking a pivotal franchise rule that ended up preserved in the final cut. Originally, the helmer was to have Michael speak in the finale of the Halloween remake, with the adult Michael addressing his sister Laurie by the nickname "Boo" during the scene where he has kidnapped her.
More Jason Voorhees than Freddy Krueger, Myers was never a quip-happy killer and maintained a strong-and-silent wordless demeanor throughout the entire franchise until this point. Zombie shot the scene wherein the Michael called Laurie "Boo", a nickname he had given her as an infant. The scene, included in Zombie's original script, sees Laurie have no idea what he means or who he is. Although Zombie’s DVD commentary sees the director claim that the moment worked, he nonetheless took it out as he felt it "demystified" Michael too much. According to Zombie, once the character was wearing his iconic mask, the audience had a persona in mind, and it was one that Zombie was not eager to change. It was definitively the right decision, as a later sequel scene proved.
Despite his certainty audiences did not want to hear Michael speak any more than they wanted to see Jason without his mask, Zombie did actually give the killer a line of dialogue in the 2009 sequel Halloween 2. The moment only appears in Zombie’s director's cut, but in that gorier version of the sequel, Zombie has Michael yell "DIE!" before he stabs and kills Dr. Loomis. It is a scene that falls flat and does indeed demystify the character, proving Zombie was right to cut Michael’s only line of dialogue from the 2007 remake of Halloween.
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