Halloween 2 (2009)

In 2007, Rob Zombie won the ire of a multitude of horror fans in his revision of Halloween; a remake so sorely received that its release temporarily lowered the Rotten Tomatoes ‘Tomatometer’ of the 1978 original. Despite the groans and gnashing of teeth from critics and fans alike, the film was a success in one critical junction – it made money. Nothing buried underneath the dirt of so much cash ever stays dead for long. Now, two years later we bear witness to the aftermath of this financial success in Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2 - God help us all!

The story starts where the last one stopped. Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) is sent to the hospital, and Michael (Tyler Mane), temporarily dead, takes a ride in the meat wagon. Michael, being the kind of man he is, doesn’t stay dead for long; the meat wagon guys are dealt with, as well as one rather unlucky cow, and soon he’s back at the hospital, hacking through staff with bloody abandon and hot after his long lost sister. The first fifteen to twenty minutes of the film is immediate survivalist horror with oodles of screams and gore. This bloody escapade ends abruptly with an extremely cheap twist that pretty much nullifies the entire sequence, and then the actual movie begins, one year later, as the following Halloween rapidly approaches.

All of our characters have done their best to move on. Laurie now lives with Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) and his daughter Annie (Danielle Harris). She spends time hanging out with her hip and slutty slang-throwing friends but is also plagued with bad nightmares that play out like a film student’s second semester project on surrealism. Michael has cultivated an awesome beard and spends his time dressing like a hobo and wandering around the forest presumably eating squirrels and bugs. Michael’s mom (Sheri Moon Zombie), sadly dead but now with a murderous agenda, has taken to dressing like Exene Cervenka’s ghost in Because I Do and has developed a fetish for white horses and is rarely seen without one. Young Michael (Chase Wright Vanek), not quite dead but whose soul is buried deep in the hobo behemoth that is adult Michael, still likes to wear his Halloween clown outfit and occasionally appears translucently in front of his hobo host to say a few bits of exposition, all presumably because hobo Michael would rather suck on his monstrous beard than talk.

As Halloween approaches, hobo Michael begins to stir out of his squirrel and bug eating slumber and begins to see visions of his mom’s ghost. Once he has his marching orders from mom, he dons his old mask, lumbers into Haddonfield, and begins to give everyone a really bad time. He also stops to eat a dog. His mom didn’t seem to mind, though I have to imagine it made her white horse nervous. One of his first stops is the old Rabbit in Red Strip Club, where the dirty business of head stomping and stripper slashing kicks off Michael’s quest to reunite his old family.

All of this is quite disconnected from the world of Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), who lurches from talk shows to book signings in ghoulish pursuit of the almighty dollar. McDowell plays Loomis with campy hyperbole; the character has become a complete egotistical sellout that cares only about cash. You get the feeling that this man would sell steaming kabobs of Michael Myers’ flesh in order to drum up business. You also get the feeling that McDowell really enjoyed the campy silliness of the role and was just having a good time. The side story of Loomis is probably the most entertaining of the entire film and this is all due to McDowell’s “to hell with it, let’s have fun” attitude in acting the role. Unfortunately, it has very little to do with the rest of the story, except at the end where Loomis stumbles back to Haddonfield to try to save the day, fails miserably, and says adieu.

All of this compiles to a silly mess. The end result is a film that is a bit better than the first remake; however fails to reach the rolling green hills of the faraway land of “good”. The failure of Zombie’s Halloween was mostly in the latter half, where he forced the tale into a sort of ‘Halloween Cliffs Notes’ that was nothing but a condensed version of the original. In Halloween 2, Zombie’s hands are not nearly as tied; the opening sequence of the film is about all that remains loyal to the original sequel. The rest of the film, white horses, big beards, and all, seems mostly of his own reckoning.

That’s not to say this is an entirely good thing. Zombie’s reckoning almost always goes back to the ‘sick and twisted family’. We had it in House of 1000 Corpses, we had it again in The Devil’s Rejects (arguably his best film to date), and we have it now in Halloween 2. I realize that the original films also scripted Laurie Strode as Michael’s long lost sister, but Zombie’s introduction of ghost mom and ghost little boy Michael, and then the subsequent attempts to reunite the entire ‘family’, is a reapplication of his well worn motif of a warped and sadistic family who have affection for one another and murderous intent for everyone else. It’s been done and done over, and really didn’t need to be done again here.

Halloween 2 also breaks from other Halloween films in another way. With the exception of the opening scenes, Zombie has done away with the prolonged chase sequence; the classic scenario where Michael thunders through a house (or hospital, or whatever) after a victim, smashing from room to room as his prey manages to escape yet another close call and flees deeper into the home only to be pursued anew. This is actually a good thing as these types of scenes are way too common in slashers and are frankly very boring. The Michael Myers of Halloween 2 generally kills people quite rapidly without wasting much time about it.

The blood and gore of the film are bumped up a notch, with gruesome decapitations (complete with squelching noises as he saws), face stompings, fingernail removal, and other various cranium crushing scenes constructed for your enjoyment or distress. The effects of the film certainly can’t raise much of a complaint; it’s often downright brutal. The editing, however, is sometimes jarring and obnoxious; there’s more than one attempt at creating juxtaposition between two unrelated scene sequences, such as Michael eating a dog and Sheriff Brackett eating pizza, and these fail to be ‘artful’ and manage instead to be ‘annoying’.

Halloween 2 is certainly better than Zombie’s first attempt, though is still rife with problems and often silly ones at that. Despite this, I actually do think Zombie has talent and we may see some good stuff out of him yet. The man’s efforts in The Devil’s Rejects were worthy and demonstrated, at least to me, a raw talent. What Zombie does next is up to him and remains to be seen; but the best thing for him, in my small and easily ignored opinion, would be to work on a film that is all his own, not part of a franchise, and has absolutely nothing to do with a crazy murderous family of any type whatsoever. Halloween 2 might be enjoyed best as a rental. For now watch Exene Cervenka sing Because I Do, which I’ve kindly embedded below. It’s a good song.