*Originally written December 3rd, 2018*
After revisiting Rob Zombie's first Halloween film and being pleasantly surprised, I thought maybe it was time to go back to this one and see if it was as terrible as I remember, or I was just wrong. While Halloween 2 suffers from a lot of the same problems as the first, it's not quite as bad as I remember, but it is far from good.
Zombie's decision to shoot on 16mm film makes for an ugly and nasty looking film that retains a lot of the grittiness and feeling of trashiness he was going for. It also captures the pure barbaric nature of the Myers violence, but Zombie fails to film his kills with any real tension or decent framing. This is something that gets worse in Zombie's career as he went on to favour shakey-cam in the truly awful 31.
There's a baffling amount of story decisions in Halloween 2 that just feel off and far too weird for a film like this. I appreciate Zombie was let off the leash for this one and allowed to do his own thing, but this is far removed from the spirit of the Halloween franchise we know. We learn more about Michael's motivation from his hallucinations of his dead mother who orders him to get his sister back. It's nice to explore what's making Michael tick, but it is done in such lame and purely executed fashion that it's hard not to cringe. It's a huge creative misstep and I feel someone should have been handling Zombie's ideas a bit more.
Speaking of missteps, part of me both loves and hates the opening the film, a 20 minute prologue that ultimately meant nothing to the film. It's clearly a homage to the original Halloween 2's hospital setting, but having this event as a dream sequence feels like an outrageous amount of padding to get the film up to an acceptable length. What's most frustrating about it is the hospital scene actually has some real tension and brutality here, far better than anything later in the film. I just wished they saved it for something that actually happens in the film.
It's not all bad though, Malcolm McDowell is back and wonderful as ever as Dr. Loomis. I'd guess a lot of fans would not be a fan of this portrayal of Loomis as it portrays him as a money hungry profiteer off the misery of the people who had died in the previous film and his failure to treat Michael. It's not particularly deep or clever, but it's fun to see McDowell play Loomis as such a sellout in a performance that clearly isn't taking itself as seriously as the rest of the film.
I was also pretty impressed with Scout Taylor-Thompson's role as Laurie Strode this time, they actually do a lot of interesting things with her in the first half as she learns the truth about her connection to Michael while she suffers from PTSD after the events of the first one. It's no Jamie Lee Curtis from Halloween 2018, but it's definitely a step above a lot of other horror film final girls.
Some part of me wishes we got a trilogy of the Rob Zombie Halloween films, while we waited 9 years for the Excellent David Gordon Green film, it would have been nice to see this canon of the story told and wrapped up. Whether it would have been better or worse than this one is another story, because the ending stinger implies something a lot more stupid than this one. Hey-ho, this canon is dead now so it doesn't matter anyway.
Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 is a huge misstep after the decent first, but it still has Zombie's aggressive flare and enough interesting moments to make it one of the better Halloween films. I feel I'm giving this a really low score, despite kind of enjoying it, but it really is a mess. I might like this one more in the future. After this watch, I'm surprised and confused as to why I hated this so much when it came out?
4/10 Dans
Halloween 2 is out now on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
Watch the trailer below:
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Letterboxd: Dan
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