Well, the time is upon us. Months of speculation and a ton of vitriolic, passionate reaction have led to this. Rob Zombie's "Halloween II"...here we go.I'll admit it - the only reason I even bought a ticket to see this film was purely for laughs. The discussions on the various horror message boards in the days immediately following this film's release were so entertaining and downright funny that I thought the entire movie was made in this fashion. Sadly, I was very wrong in that regard. See, I saw this movie on a Friday, which means that I hadn't slept in, oh, 20 hours or so. But while "Final Destination 3D" actually did a pretty good job keeping me awake, this movie damn near put me to sleep on several occasions.
It's definitely not the problem I thought I would have with this movie. I expected a comedy of damn near "Plan 9 From Outer Space" proportions. I'll also admit to believing some of the hype regarding one of the conspiracy theories about this movie. See, Zombie's next film WAS slated to be "Tyrannosaurus Rex," an original piece that, believe it or not, actually sounds like it could be pretty good. But Dimension Films refused to foot the bill for it unless he directed a second "Halloween" film, so word on the street was that Rob purposefully crafted a horrendous film to get back at the studio for forcing his hand. I believe I can report that this is not the case; fortunately and unfortunately, to this observer, "Halloween II" seemed dead serious on all levels. Fortunately because Rob wasn't intentionally making a bad film, which I truly wouldn't wish on any film-maker, and unfortunately because this movie failed to entertain on even the camp level that I was looking for. It also means that I have to make some attempt to explain the plot, but here goes anyway.
The film picks up immediately where Zombie's original remake left off; Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton, in a performance very similar to the original film; she does her damndest, but just can't compete with what is written for her, including bits of dialogue that call for her to be a blubbering idiot one minute and a calm, collected rationalist the next) has just shot Michael Myers and left him for dead. She is found by Sherriff Lee Bracket (Brad Dourif), the father of her best friend Annie, and taken to a hospital.
Meanwhile, Michael Myers makes his escape from the ambulance transporting him, and is then drawn to a strange apparition in the distance - his mother and a white horse. The film had also begun with a definition of the white horse as a dream symbol, and the motif will continue for the rest of the film - virtually every time Michael is seen in this film, Sheri Moon Zombie is close behind doing her best Pamela Voorhees impersonation.
There is actually a rather tense showdown in the hospital between Laurie and Michael that turns out to be nothing more than a dream. From here, the real meat and potatoes of the story of "Halloween II" unfolds. It seems as if Michael, who did indeed survive the gunshot wound at the conclusion of the first film, has spent the previous year traveling the countryside randomly and living off wild animals (in another manner not unlike Jason - hey, they call Tyler Mane's version of the character Michael Voorhees on one of the horror message boards I frequent for a reason) and such. Laurie has moved in with Annie and Sherriff Brackett.
And this being a "Halloween" movie, I think you know where this is headed. Michael is urged by Ghost Mommy to come back for his sister, all hell breaks loose, final confrontation, twist ending, the end. That, in essence, is the story of this film. So now, the critiques.
First, what I liked. Other reviewers have mentioned it, but yes, Brad Dourif makes this movie. I thought he was excellent in the first movie as well, and hell, I'm just going to throw this out there - if there was an official horror hall of fame, this guy would be a first-ballot induction. I've enjoyed the guy in virtually everything I've seen him in, from his stunning turn in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" to his scene-stealing role in Dario Argento's "Trauma." It takes genuine talent to steal a scene as a decapitated head, but Dourif pulled it off. In this film, he is the single most likeable character in Zombie's never-ending parade of deranged, depraved hicks of one sort or another, and for this alone, every scene that Dourif occupied was like a breath of fresh air.
Second, I actually found the opening twenty minutes or so of this movie to be pretty tense. I'll also go against the grain of some of the reviews and say that this movie utilized music to GREAT effect on one occasion - the Moody Blues song playing in the background as Laurie wakes up in the hospital. I've always found the original "Halloween II" to be one of the scariest movies of all time for the simple reason that it's ungodly to imagine what Jamie Lee Curtis had just went through, let alone having to face the monster AGAIN in a severely weakened state a mere hours later. These opening scenes before Michael shows up at the hospital are done very well, and I'd always found the particular Moody Blues song to be fairly creepy. It really does a great job building up atmosphere. In fact, I'll go ahead and say it, in a move that will no doubt get me some flack - if the entire movie had been a direct homage/remake/reimagining/what-have-you of the original "Halloween II" in the same manner as the opening segments of this film, I might have actually dug it. Unfortunately, it isn't - eventually, Laurie wakes up from the bad dream, and for me, the bad dream begins.
And what's bad in this film? Pretty much everything else. I'd heard the many, many stories of Sheri Moon's ghost zombie in virtually every review that I'd read of this movie, so I know I'm not telling you anything new by hashing it over even more, but yes, it is completely boring, unneeded, and indeed, looks like something in a J-horror movie rather than a "Halloween" movie. I can harp on Zombie for this aspect of the plot, which is no doubt ridiculous, but I will give him credit for this - at least he was trying something new here with this particular film instead of resorting to his usual bag of tricks.
Because that is what the remainder of my complaining about this film will amount to - his usual bag of tricks. As many others have said, Zombie has his status quo and goes back to it every time the deeper meanings of this film get to be, you know, too deep. On a few occasions, this movie reminded me of "Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning." It is VERY fond of introducing extremely dislikeable sleazebag characters, giving them 5-10 minutes of character buildup, and then killing them off, leaving us all absolutely shell-shocked as to why we should care in the slightest about what we've just seen. The two paramedics in the beginning, the three random characters at the strip club, and Laurie's new batch of friends were all brutal kills that I really can't even remember the specific details of, because as characters they were completely one-dimensional caricatures that I can't even remember by anything other than some profanity-laced tirade that each of them unleashed at some point.
Speaking of Laurie's new friends in this one...yeah, I've seen some bad acting in horror films, but these two take the cake. I understand that they aren't given much to work with, particularly since we are introduced to one of them walking into Laurie's place of work and saying, and I quote, "whatup, dicklickers?"...but still. Yikes. Regardless of acting, however, this movie has the exact same diagnosis as Zombie's first reimagining. I just found it virtually impossible to get into this movie on an emotional level, since even Laurie herself is painted as somewhat dislikeable. The whole "I've always been a good girl - I wanna fuckiin' party!!" scene did little more to endear her to me.
For one last caveat on the character front, this movie brought out the darkest of my dark side on one occasion. I had absolutely hated the character of Annie Brackett in the first go-round of this reimagining, and had actually felt DISAPPOINTED when she survived Michael's attack in that film. In this movie, when we see Sheri Moon leering at her from above the stairs in the moments before Michael savages her once again, I found myself DESPERATELY rooting for the killer in a way that I haven't in a long time. I personally become uncomfortable when I dislike a character this much, to the point where I caught myself muttering "oh, holy movie, please kill her" under my breath.
I also just came to the realization that I completely left Sam Loomis out of this review up until this point, and I have a pretty good inkling why that is. Loomis himself, the biggest icon in the entire "Halloween" series with the exception of Myers himself, is essentially an afterthought in this mess of a film, showing up in a few nonsensical scenes where he is generally an arrogant ass to everyone and answers a bunch of silly questions about events in the previous film. And one other thing - just why WERE the reporters acting like Loomis was responsible for the murders in the first film? Lord knows I wasn't a fan of the way the character was portrayed in that film, but it never really struck me that he was responsible for the deaths in it - I was under the impression that the Loomis of "Halloween 2007" was a character trying to save Myers' soul, as compared to Pleasence's "Captain Ahab" version of the character. But that's just my take.
Which brings me to the real base of the problem that I have with these movies in the first place - that, on the whole, they were just really unnecessary. "Halloween" was, and is, a perfectly relevant horror tale; it's nothing more than the contemporary urban legend of a babysitter being terrorized brought to life, and a psychotic fiend made of absolute evil being the perpetrator of said terror. That's it.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about Zombie's take on "Halloween" is that, for as big of a fan as he claims to be of the originals, he doesn't seem to get the character of Michael Myers itself. To me, Michael Myers is an amazingly simple concept. A perfectly normal child who goes crazy for no reason. Just what happened to him on that long ago Halloween night when he murdered his sister we will never know, but whatever it was - the human being that was Michael Myers vanished that night, and in its place is total evil. And THAT is why he cannot die. With these two films, in his attempts to do all of the tinkering with Michael's back story and motivation, Zombie only proves what I believed to be true about this whole project from the get-go when I first heard there would be a remake of "Halloween" - that the unknown is scarier, and that no matter how intricate and complicated of a background and psychology one may write Michael Myers to have, it will ultimately prove to be a disappointment.
And yet, ever since 1981's "Halloween II," so many writers have come and gone, messing with that very story, never quite getting right what was so perfectly right in the original two films, unwilling to believe that some people are merely evil without an excuse. For some mystical reason, only John Carpenter and Debra Hill know how to write the character.
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