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HALLOWEEN (2007) 9 p.m. on AMC. In his New York Times review of John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher film “Halloween,” Jason Zinoman wrote that Michael Myers isn’t like other movie monsters: “He never speaks and offers no hint of a motivation for his killing spree. He is not a character so much as an absence of one, an abstraction in the middle of a mundane slice of suburban life.” But this take on that film, directed by the heavy metal singer Rob Zombie, upends that idea by exploring Myers’s back story and unmasking his motive to kill. It follows his childhood as a socially awkward, bullied boy with a stressful home life, which fuels his rage, leading him to enact his first murderous rampage on Halloween night at just 10 years old. He’s then locked away in a mental institution and breaks out 15 years later in an attempt to reconnect with his younger sister, who’s now a teenager. In his review for The New York Times, Matt Zoller Seitz wrote that “the case study part of the film re-establishes Mr. Zombie’s status as modern American horror’s most eccentric and surprising filmmaker.”

FRONTLINE: FIRE IN PARADISE 10 p.m. on PBS. Last fall, the deadliest wildfire in California’s history tore through the town of Paradise, killing more than 80 people and destroying nearly 19,000 homes. This documentary looks at the aftermath of that blaze through interviews with survivors and emergency medical workers. It also explores the chain of events that caused the fire, which was sparked by power lines.

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