Halloween II Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 08.31.2009

A Rob Zombie film through and through. But is that for the better, or the worse?

Directed by: Rob Zombie
Written by: Rob Zombie

Starring:
Scout Taylor-Compton - Laurie Strode
Tyler Mane - Michael Myers
Brad Dourif - Sheriff Lee Brackett
Danielle Harris - Annie Brackett
Malcolm McDowell - Dr. Samuel Loomis
Sheri Moon Zombie - Deborah Myers
Chase Vanek - Young Michael
Brea Grant - Mya Rockwell
Howard Hesseman - Uncle Meat
Angela Trimbur - Harley David
Margot Kidder - Barbara Collier




Running Time: 101 minutes
Rated R for strong brutal bloody violence throughout, terror, disturbing graphic images, language, and some crude sexual content and nudity

Many of the directors who are known largely for their horror work are polarizing artists; one of the foremost on that list is Rob Zombie. The filmmaker, who rose to prominence as the founder and lead singer of the metal band White Zombie. Soon after the dissolution of the band, Zombie's attention turned to making films, and following in his musical career's legacy, he gravitated naturally toward horror. Zombie's first film, House of 1000 Corpses, was released in 2003 after a four-year process and immediately drew its share of fans and critics alike for the campy, over-the-top horror tone. The follow-up film to that, The Devil's Rejects, was a much darker and grittier film and earned Zombie more fans. It was his next film, however, which put Zombie in the mainstream of horror. Dimension Films was looking to revamp their much-beloved horror series Halloween, which had hit some of the lowest critical and commercial marks in the series' twenty-nine year history. Zombie served as a writer and director on the "reimagining," which turned out to be the highest-grossing film in the series history but drew a wide share of criticism from hardcore Halloween fanatics for its deviance from the mythology of the series. Now, two years later, Zombie is back with Halloween II, in what is being billed as "the final chapter" of the saga.

Halloween II picks up first with a short flashback, featuring a young Michael Myers (Vanek) at Smith's Grove Sanitarium being visited by his mother Deborah (Moon Zombie). She gives him a statuette of a white horse, which Michael relates to a dream he had the night before of her bringing him home on a similar white horse. The film then picks up fifteen years later, right where the first film left off where Laurie Strode (Taylor-Compton) has just shot Michael Myers. She ends up in the hospital while Myers is loaded into a morgue truck and hauled off. Unfortunately, a collision allows the killer to escape off into the night, though everyone believes him to be dead. Two years later, Laurie is living with her friend Annie (Harris) and her father Lee Brackett (Dourif). She is working at a coffee shop/bookstore with her friends Mya (Grant) and Harley (Trimbur), and still clearly bears the emotional scars of what happened to her. She's getting strange nightmares about Michael…understandable, says her psychiatrist, since Halloween is approaching. While Laurie is busy trying to convince herself that Michael Myers is dead like the world believes, Dr. Samuel Loomis (McDowell) is on the verge of his next book being released. He's facing public scorn for profiting off the families of the dead, but seems not to care; in fact, he even heads to Haddonfield to be there for the release of the book for maximum publicity. It is into this equation that Michael returns. Spurred on by visions of his mother, Michael ventures out of his hiding place, trying to bring down the river of blood that the ghostly Deborah claims will reunite their long-separated family.

Zombie's first entry into the Halloween series may have caused a major split between fans of the franchise, but one of the things that everyone could agree with, for better or for worse, was that Zombie created a movie within the universe of Michael Myers that carried his unmistakable stamp on it. With Halloween II, the writer/director takes that even further. With the first film, Zombie used the original plot as a basis to tell his story, and much of the second-half of the movie is very close to John Carpenter's original tale. This time around, he pays homage to the original Halloween II with a hospital sequence that eerily brings to mind the images of Michael Myers chasing Laurie through the hospital…but far more effectively than the Rick Rosenthal film did. Once that is out of the way, Zombie goes a direction that is almost, though not completely, his own. The first movie was Michael Myers's story as told through both his and Laurie's eyes; this movie is primarily Laurie's story. There are obvious homages to other films in the series—Laurie's nightmares start to seem like visions, for example, which brings to mind immediate references to Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 4. Zombie has always admitted to being a fan of the original films and it has shown in his devotion, whatever viewers think of the quality of his work; it is therefore impossible to believe that such elements are accidental, especially when Jamie Lloyd herself, Danielle Harris, is part of the cast for the second time around. These visions are some of the most striking scenes in the movie, as they vary so much from the rest of the film, and they surprisingly work very well in spicing up the plot, providing something to break up the rest of the story and providing a very interesting story element in its own right. Events in the movie raise a question of whether it is venturing into the supernatural or not. The answer can possibly be extrapolated by what happens, and there will certainly be debates either way. Whatever the answer, the segments work in ways that one might not expect them to. The symbolism is very bold and even borders on silly a time or two, but it doesn't cross that line.

Aside from those elements which pay homage to other films, this is Zombie's story through and through and he clearly does not feel forced into the mold formed by the past films. He continues on his quest to turn Haddonfield from Middle America into a town on the wrong side of the tracks, and the characters have stepped even further over to that side. Sheriff Brackett is deeply troubled by what's happened and he seems as if he even knows what might come, for reasons that will become obvious later. Annie is physically scarred by her last encounter with Michael, and now finds herself essentially caring for both her father and Laurie; at the same time however, she is a complete recluse and is really hiding inside her sheriff father's house. As for Laurie, it is very quickly evident that she has suffered seriously. She has hit the skids and while she's trying to move on with her life, it's clear that she hasn't. The writing of these characters is actually quite good; it is disappointing, then, that Zombie falls down on the job with Loomis. His storyline seems to be a complete side note and there only because he needed to find a way to include the character. Most of his story arc has nothing to do with what's happening in Haddonfield, and his inclusion toward the end seems tacked on to give the subplot relevance. It is a flaw that threatens to drag much of the movie down, and very nearly succeeds. The climax doesn't help and seems both overblown and ineffective in wrapping up the film, until the final scene when it all, somehow, works.

Much of the success of this movie depends on the acting, and that is hit or miss. Brad Dourif does a great job as Sheriff Brackett, who has much more to do this time around. Dourif is a mainstay of providing great performances in poor movies, and his presence has made many films better than they deserved to be. He makes Brackett a character that we can care about, and that's essential to this film. Danielle Harris proves once again that she is one of the heroes of this franchise; she has been chased down by Michael Myers in four movies through two different roles, and she undoubtedly does some of her best work here. Brea Grant is good as Laurie's friend Mya and does exactly what's needed to fill out the role and make her someone more than just a victim to be. On the flip side is Malcolm McDowell, who appears to be lost in his pointless storyline and doesn't ever rise to the occasion. He did quite the good job in the first film, and one has to wonder if it was simply the quality of his plot that holds him back. Shari Moon Zombie is sometimes quite good as Deborah, both ghostly and real-world in flashbacks, and sometimes seems very off-kilter. The biggest misstep in the supporting cast is Chase Vanek as the young Michael Myers, taking the place of Daeg Faersch from the first movie. Vanek on his own is not horrible, but he does give a somewhat stuffy performance as the young Michael and lacks the charisma that Faersch utilized so effectively. It is difficult to believe that the young actor had aged so much as to render him unusable when he looked so similar in last year's Hancock, and the movie simply would been better off with him reprising the role.

The two leads, of course, are Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie and Tyler Mane as the adult Michael. Taylor-Compton was the subject of a lot of criticism for her performance in the first film for failing to conjure the same sort of likeability that Jamie Lee Curtis did in the original films. She fares better here and gets an opportunity to let her id out a bit; she portrays Laurie as a sort of developing sufferer of bipolar disorder. Laurie is struggling to find any balance as a character and Taylor-Compton does a better job of that than she did in her first time in the role. She is far from great and she has moments where she ventures into overacting or conjures images of her character in the first film, but it is growth for her. It is Tyler Mane, though, upon which the bulk of the film's weight must fall. We see him in portions of the film unmasked, face hidden in shadow and sporting a heavy amount of facial hair. Perhaps it is very telling that in these shots he looks a lot like Zombie himself—perhaps, disturbingly, Zombie sees something of himself in the character. Mane handles the physicality very well and is properly imposing. It is very difficult for a long-time fan of the franchise to see him without the mask at times, but he makes it as palatable as possible.

Zombie has decided with this film to grit things up, and he disposes of the cleaner production values that the first film had. This is a dirty, ugly film, and Zombie clearly wants it to be this way. Working with cinematographer Brandon Trost, who shot Crank: High Voltage and Feast, Zombie keeps this dark and murky, except when he wants his dream/vision sequences to shock us into paying attention with bright whites. It is a very distinctive look that will have its share of critics and fans alike, but seems to fit what Zombie wants. At the same time, he amps up the sound, particularly with kill sequences. Bones break with deafening snaps and knives land with the heavy sounds of a watermelon being hacked to ribbons. He does one thing that will clearly satisfy fans of his unique style, and that is amp up the carnage. When Laurie is being cleaned up on first arriving to the hospital, it is done so in exquisite, uncomfortable detail. Fingernails are pulled at, blood is washed off to reveal sickening wounds underneath. It's all viscerally effective, and when the carnage comes into play Zombie certainly never disappoints. He also has a great sequence when Michael attacks someone in a van, interspersed with a holiday-themed concert. At the same time, he does things that make little sense, such as largely jettisoning the series' iconic score. There are so many things that already establish this clearly as a Zombie film and not just another Halloween movie; there is little served by Tyler Bates and Zombie using their own work and the pop music that simply just doesn't follow as well as the Carpenter score would have. Another example is a banquet that consists of freakishly-headed creatures in one of the visions; while it succeeds in weirding people out, it just doesn't seem coherent enough to be truly effective. In the end, that's a statement that can almost be applied to the film as a whole. It does work as a movie far better than that scene does as symbolism, but a little more coherency and a little less Zombie-ism would have made it a much better one.

The 411: Whereas the first Halloween caused a divide between fans of both the franchise and Rob Zombie, Halloween II looks to utterly polarize them. Zombie makes a film that is almost entirely his own while not completely abandoning those things which make it a Michael Myers movie, and includes enough homages to the past for those who want to look. Not everything works, and that applies to the acting as well, but enough of it does that it still works very well as a horror film and as a final chapter—if indeed it is that—in Zombie's run on the series. It is far from a perfect film, and pales in comparison to the first Zombie chapter, but it is still a good one.

Final Score:  7.5   [ Good ]