Halloween II (2009) Dimension/Horror RT: 119 minutes Unrated Director’s Cut (extreme graphic violence and gore, nudity, strong sexual content, language, scenes of intense terror, drug and alcohol abuse, adult situations) Director: Rob Zombie Screenplay: Rob Zombie Music: Tyler Bates Cinematography: Brandon Trost Release date: August 28, 2009 (US) Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Scout Taylor-Compton, Tyler Mane, Danielle Harris, Brad Dourif, Sheri Moon Zombie, Chase Wright Vanek, Brea Grant, Angela Trimbur, Bill Fagerbakke, Weird Al Yankovic, Margot Kidder, Caroline Williams, Richard Riehle, Octavia Spencer, Mary Birdsong, Howard Hesseman, Duane Whitaker, Mark Boone Junior, Daniel Roebuck. Box Office: $33.3M (US)/$39.4M (World) Body Count: 20
Rating: *
As the closing credits rolled on Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, the sequel to his 2007 remake of the classic John Carpenter movie, I could only stare in stunned disbelief at what I just witnessed. It would be very easy to summarize my review of this flick with three words, “What the f***?”, but that would be too easy. It would be tantamount to exonerating Charles Manson for his brutal crimes.
Yes, Halloween II is a criminal act. Not only does it bear little resemblance to the 1981 sequel of the same name, it bears no resemblance to anything that I’ve ever seen. For one thing, it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. What’s all this business about the white horse seen throughout the movie? But I’m getting ahead of myself here; I should start by explaining the premise of this dreadful sequel.
It picks up right where the previous one left off. Laurie Strode (Compton) is walking down the street in a daze after shooting Michael Myers in the head. At this point, she has no idea that she is his sister. All she knows is that some maniac killed her family and friends then went after her. Sheriff Brackett (Dourif) rushes her to the hospital where doctors work feverishly to patch up her extensive wounds. She looks like she’s been through a corn thresher.
Later that night, as Laurie recovers from her ordeal, Michael arrives at the hospital and kills everybody in sight. He starts to chase Laurie again and corners her in the security guard’s booth, he raises an axe to finish her off and just as he’s about to strike a fatal blow…. Laurie wakes up in her own bed screaming. It was just a nightmare. That’s where all similarities to the OG Halloween II end.
Laurie has not fully recovered from the events of two years ago. She takes a lot of meds and sees a therapist daily. In layman’s terms, she’s a total basket case. She’s now living with Sheriff Brackett and his daughter and her best friend Annie (Harris) who miraculously survived the events of the first movie with a few facial scars. Laurie is a completely different person now. She works at a local coffee shop and hangs around with a couple of hard-partying, Goth-type girls. She starts having hallucinations of a woman dressed in white and a child in a clown costume. These mirror the hallucinations that Michael is having as he returns to Haddonfield. Oh yeah, he ain’t dead yet.
Apparently, Michael escaped from the ambulance that was carrying him to the morgue that Halloween night and hasn’t been seen since. God only knows where he was hiding. It’s not like he blends in with his surroundings. He’s nearly seven feet tall and sports a lot of facial hair. He looks like Chewbacca’s evil cousin.
Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis (McDowell, A Clockwork Orange) has written another book about Michael Myers and is touring the area to promote its upcoming release on Halloween. In the new book, he describes the awful events that took place in Haddonfield two years ago and reveals that Michael has a sister who still resides in Haddonfield. Even though he promised the sheriff he’d never reveal this piece of information, it’s information like this that will make his new book a best seller. Laurie freaks out when she discovers that she is actually Angel Myers, the younger sister of a brutal psychopath.
Well, Halloween night arrives and so does Michael. That’s when the killings begin, but you already know this. It’s one of the main conventions of a slasher movie. If you thought the previous Halloween movie was violent, Halloween II will really rock your world. It’s not enough for Michael to simply kill; he acts like he’s training to work in an abattoir. Honestly, the violence is the best part of the movie. It’s a total bloodbath! The high point is when Michael stomps some guy’s head in outside the strip joint where his mother once worked. He also decapitates a man with a shard of glass from a windshield and impales some redneck idiot on a pair of deer antlers affixed to the front of his truck.
However, Halloween II is shot so poorly that it’s difficult to tell what’s going on in certain scenes. It’s one of the ugliest movies that I’ve ever seen and I mean this from an artistic point of view. When the simple act of looking at a movie is unpleasant, you know the rest of the movie isn’t going to be all that good. It’s not good. In fact, it’s very bad.
Now let’s talk about the performances. I don’t exactly know what Zombie was going for here, but he succeeds in making both main characters extremely unlikable. While I understand that a traumatic experience, especially one that involved the violent deaths of many people, will have a negative effect on any and all survivors, there’s no excuse for Laurie to act like a bipolar bitch. She actually comes out and admits she can’t even look at Annie without remembering the horrific events of that Halloween night. The scars are a constant reminder. Is that any way to treat the friend who took her in after her parents were murdered? A little gratitude and a lot of appreciation would be in order, don’t you think? Laurie has become somebody that you’d like to strangle with your bare hands; this is in addition to her increasingly erratic behavior and her bizarre hallucinations.
Then there’s Loomis. He’s become an arrogant, conceited a**hole who doesn’t care about the negative repercussions his upcoming book will have. His primary concern is whether he sells a lot of copies. He’s still making a fortune from the blood of others. Is it any wonder Sheriff Brackett punches him out when he arrives in Haddonfield to help put a stop to Michael’s recent rampage? Are you surprised that the father of one of the teenage female victims pulls a gun on Loomis at a book signing? It’s pretty bad when even Weird Al Yankovic mocks him on a national late night talk show. I can’t believe Zombie made such grievous errors with these characters. It’s just wrong!
What about Michael Myers? Did Zombie get that character right? Considering he’ss redefining the character, I don’t have a definite answer to that. What I can say is that I just can’t get my mind around the idea of Michael Myers grunting as he slaughters his victims. The original Michael made no sounds whatsoever. That’s part of what made him so scary. In this version of Halloween II, he grunts and growls while he does his thing. It doesn’t work. It’s especially out of place when Michael yells “DIE!!!” as he stabs one of his victims. Also, he’s often shown NOT wearing his trademark mask. That’s very, VERY wrong! This is not the Michael Myers I grew up watching at weekend matinees or on late night cable TV. It’s no fault of the actor playing Michael. Tyler Mane has a very commanding presence. I wouldn’t mind seeing him in other movies. He’s an ideal choice to play the bad guy in some cop actioner.
One thing that bothers me about both of Zombie’s Halloween movies is that you never know what year the action is taking place. If you go by appearances, it would appear that the scenes depicting Michael’s troubled childhood take place in the 70s. The vintage 70s tunes playing on the soundtrack support this assertion. HOWEVER, you see people talking on cell phones in the scenes set in present-day. Also, somebody has a website called WWMD (What Would Michael Do?). It just doesn’t add up.
Halloween II is a confused, incoherent mess of a horror movie and I still haven’t really discussed the woman in white that both Laurie and Michael see. It’s Michael’s dead mother Deborah (Sheri Moon Zombie) and the little boy in the clown costume is young Michael Myers. But what does that white horse mean? Sometimes a horse is just a horse (of course, of course) and it’s there for no other purpose than to screw with the audience’s minds. This whole movie doesn’t just screw with the audience’s heads; it also screws them out of the ticket price. See it if you must, but don’t say I didn’t try and warn you.
