I suppose there is atleast a superficial similarity there. The suddeness of violence and the confusion are both clearly inspired by terrorism and probably neither the book, nor the movie, would have been written without the events of 9/11 acting as an inspiration.
As far as the Halloween remake goes...well, I have mixed feelings.
Let me say that I audibly groaned when I heard about Rob Zombie's foray into horror movies shortly before "House of 1000 Corpses" was released. My thought at the time was, "Oh great, another rich self-indulgent asshole is attempting to "cross-over". I was wrong. "House" wasn't fantastic (extremely derivative of TCM and a slew of other cult classics which was clearly a case of paying homage as opposed to stealing), but it wasn't terrible. In fact, it showed Zombie to have some real talent, or f nothing else, a real love of horror movies. I liked Devil's Rejects for many of the same reasons, so when I heard Halloween was being remade by Zombie, I had a degree of timid optimism.
The original Halloween was essentially flawless. It wasn't hindered by technological limitations and it wasn't shot crappily thus in need of "cleaning up". On paper, this movie did NOT need to be remade. Unfortunately, in an age of endless sequels and remakes (appearently no one in the world has an original idea these days...Saw fucking V anyone?) it was bound to happen.
The good: Zombie approached this project with respect and admiration. It looked good, it sounded good, and it had some legitimate scares. Zombie knows how to frame shots and how to pace a film.
The bad: Well.....here's the thing. Horror movies are a visceral experience (particularly slashers). They are meant to build tension, cause unease in a viewer, and deliver payoffs in the form of adrenaline rushes. One thing that we have learned about horror movies, and the inevitable sequels, is that they don't stand up to in depth analysis of things like logic, sense, plausibility, etc. So, the mistake that Zombie made was trying to explain things. Was it a "cool" idea to attempt to fill in the 15 year gap between Michael's killing of his sister and his escape from the asylum? Yes. Was there any way to do so without highlighting the general silliness of the plot? No. The fact is, the original Halloween script probably looked horrible. It didn't matter because the moons aligned in such a way that a fantastic director, a great score, and most importantly, a brilliant cinematographer combined their efforts and created an unbelievable horror film. Sometimes, things are better left unexplained for us viewers to come up with our own meanings.
Zombie's Halloween didn't stink, but there was zero chance of him eclipsing Carpenter's original. If Zombie's film had been titled something else, and had been changed ever so slightly, he might have had a chance to make one of the very few worthwhile horror films in years. Alas, this was not the case, and it is impossible to look at Zombie's and not make the comparison.
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