IT'S NO TRICK -- THIS VERSION OF 'HALLOWEEN' IS A TREAT.

Byline: BOB STRAUSS

>FILM CRITIC

"Halloween" has everything you could want in an updated slasher movie, as long as you're not a homicidally slavish purist.

Writer-director Rob Zombie spends the first third of the remake immersing us in the dreadful childhood of Michael Myers (played as a boy by eerie newcomer Daeg Faerch), then copies most of the plot and some of the key moments from John Carpenter's original chiller -- but not all of them, and the hard-rockin' director puts his own spin on many of the classic bits.

The result is over-the-top and freakshow disgusting in the manner of Zombie's previous features "House of 1,000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects." But, while frightening enough, it's also less gratuitously icky than those and other films in the current torture porn horror wave. And while it would be giving Zombie's script too much credit to call it psychologically credible, it does humanize the hulking, mask-wearing Myers to a far greater extent than the original film and all of its sequels ever did. Other characters aren't exactly realistic, either, but for the most part they're fun to watch.

The new material focuses on the Halloween holiday when abused young Mikey went from killing animals to taking bloody revenge on school bullies, his mother's awful boyfriend (William Forsythe exploring the outer limits of scuzziness), a sibling and her lover. The director's wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, plays Michael's frazzled but supportive stripper mom, and Malcolm McDowell hams up the old Donald Pleasance role of Dr. Loomis, the grandstanding shrink who really does seem to care about Michael as much as he does about making a buck.

Flash-forward a decade or so, and we get to enjoy big, completely gone- around-the-bend Michael's ("X-Men's" towering Tyler Mane) high- casualty-count escape from Grove Sanitarium. It's back to unsuspecting Haddonfield, Ill., in time for another Halloween rampage and hopes of connecting with the adopted-out sister, Laurie Strode (a very good Scout Taylor-Compton in the Jamie Lee Curtis part), he hasn't seen since she was a toddler.

There are goofy cameos (Mickey Dolenz as an eager gun dealer) aplenty, evocative use of old houses and institutional corridors and, of course, loads of teenage sex and nudity -- with punishment for it!

Though the new "Halloween" suffers from too many false climaxes and repetitious stalking, in general Zombie crafts a well-paced clear story while building genuine suspense. Kind of a treat, overall, and who expected that?

Bob Strauss [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

HALLOWEEN - Three stars

>R: violence, nudity, sex, language, drug use, children in jeopardy.

>Starring: Tyler Mane, Malcolm McDowell, Scout Taylor-Compton, Daeg Faerch, Sheri Moon Zombie, Brad Dourif.

>Director: Rob Zombie.

>Running time: 1 hr. 37 min.

>Playing: Area wide.

>In a nutshell: Well-crafted remake of the mother of all slasher films.

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Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton) faces Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) in the latest rendition of "Halloween."