HALLOWEEN 2 Review
Comments(16)
- By mrblack
I went into this film with incredibly LOW expectations. I am honestly not a fan of Rob Zombie’s movies I am however a HUGE fan of his music. It is some of the most original, creative, entertaining and truly amazing music out there so why then are his movies so un-original? Look I know he is a huge fan of the horror movie genre as many of us are but this had very little originality in it.
Maybe I am not being very fair. After all I am not a director. Halloween 2 was the follow-up to Rob Zombie’s previous Halloween film. For those of you who for whatever reason have no idea what the movies are about: Halloween is about a mysterious killer named Michael Myers who kills on, you guessed it, Halloween. He uses a big freakin’ knife and wears a William Shatner mask to cover his face. Halloween 2 deals primarily with the survivors of Michael’s previous bloody rampage. Scout Taylor-Compton reprises her role as Laurie Strode who is tormented by the memories and hallucinations of the events of the previous Halloween. Brad Douriff plays the town sheriff who takes the young Laurie in. Tyler Mane reprises his role as Michael. The performances are what you would expect from a horror movie. But I will say, I was very pleased with the performances of Brea Grant, Sherri Moon Zombie and Weird Al as himself. Yes…Weird Al plays himself and its pretty funny. He even makes a reference to another man with a similar name to our masked killer.
The story started off like a very typical horror movie and it was a bit jumbled. But about half way through the film it actually starts to get a bit interesting. You have a typical horror movie play out with the obvious “jump” moments. You know what i mean…those moments where it gets all still and the music goes quiet and something happens really fast to scare you. There was quite a bit of that, which is to be expected. But there were these Hallucination/nightmare moments mixed in their of Michael Myer’s family particularly of Sherri Zombie playing Michael’s mother that were really kind of cool. Those scenes seemed to also be shot differently from the rest of the film. Those lighting, camera lens effects, and timing effects made those scenes that much more intense and honestly a bit scarier than the rest of the film. Unfortunately though there weren’t quite enough to make up for the cliche moments.
The ending was probably what you would expect. A showdown between Michael, Laurie, the police and Dr Loomis (Malcolm Mcdowell), the psychologist who treated Michael as a child. The showdown wasn’t too bad though. there was some cool hallucinatory moments in there that added to the intensity of the film. But, you can see the “twist” (for lack of a better term) coming a mile away.
All in all not a horrible film. If you really need to go see a horror movie this season then this is probably one of the better ones out. You will at least be entertained…..at certain points in the film and if you like blood and gore because my friends there is quite a liberal dose of blood and gore in this. After all it was written and directed by Rob Zombie.
Please let us know what you guys thought of the film. Did you like it or hate it? Was it scary or funny?
The movie sucked i had to say the first one was better
Just got back from watching Halloween II and really, WTF?
Let me start by saying, I like a lot of Rob's music, I enjoyed House of a 1000 corpses and the sequel the Devils Rejects. For the most part I even enjoyed the Halloween remake (except for the bit about Michael being an abused kid from a really broken home).
Michael Meyers has now gone the way of Jason Voorhees (because dead mommies say so), Loomis is an uncaring, money grubbing hack (originally played up as more of an Ahab type and Meyers was his white whale). While anyone who knows me personally can attest, I have no problem with swearing, but it seems that the only thing Ms. Strode knows how to say is F@ck.
The best the film has to offer is that Michael looks pretty intimidating (huge lumbering mass, stalking about in a mask).
I had hoped that ultimately the fight/death scenes would at least be graphic enough to take this one time horror thriller into gore land (cause the story flew out the window, along with suspense), but no. Sadly, you see some movement from Meyers, a lot of screaming and in some cases a bloody scene is left behind, but you as the viewer witness very little.
yea ive been hearing horrible things bout it…which makes my two years of waiting and anticipating pointless, im seeing it tomorrow anyway.
This movie blew chunks- and I really liked the first one — oh well
I agree with Mr. Black. Zombie seemed to lack any originality in both of his Halloween films. As Emanon stated; Myers was taking orders from his mom – Jason anyone?! Also, the killings were not orginal – just hack and slash with the same blade over and over.
I hated the movie. From start to finish. Absolutely no redeeming qualities.
After seeing Devils rejects I thought to myself, "Now here is a man that can put out some twisted shit!" So when I saw Halloween 2 coming up, I said to myself, "Self…hell yeah let's go check this roller coaster ride out!"
The movie was totally lame, not even scary….boring, predictable, the movie theatre was empty! Zombie you suck, and so does this film. Don't waste your money!
Am I the only person on this planet that enjoyed this movie? Ok the movie is no where near close to the original Halloween 2 …oh well. It was still a very entertaining movie. Fans of the original movies keep bitching about things like the mask (or lack of mask), Myers grunting, the story, I have even heard a guy say that the killing style of Myers bugged him!?! WTF! I thought the killing scenes were brutal and more realistic. I actually felt the anger from myers when ever he took someone out. I liked the grunting, no man can unleash hatred and power without grunting, and the hatred and power that Myers unleashes in this movie is way up there in the "holy hell" zone.
I liked how the characters ended up, beat up, scared both physically and emotionally, just the way someone would after going threw what they went threw in the first film. The idea that Myers was surviving with a back pack in the woods for a year was awesome I think. It gave him more depth. It showed his determination, and patience. Him not having his mask on 24/7 was also cool.
The old school myers fans will hate all this because Myers never grunted, took of his mask, or had a back pack, but I think this was much more realistic.
I do agree the mom in white thing was played out too much.
Besides the very first Halloween I did not care much for the Halloween films.
Zombie has made me a fan.
I posted my review last night.. If anyone might be interested:
It was widely reported that Rob Zombie had no interest whatsoever in making Halloween 2.
It shows.
Yes, Mr. Zombie didn't want to do it. But he did it. Some sources claim that Dimension Films was going to go forth with their reboot of the franchise with or without Zombie's participation, so in the name of continuity and artistic integrity, Zombie caved and decided to complete his "extreme vision" of the Michael Myers saga.
As evidenced by the film I just saw, it's painfully apparent that they threw a shitload of money at him and he ran with the paycheck – artistic and franchise integrity be damned.
I am a Halloween purist. John Carpenter's iconic 1978 film is my all-time favorite in the genre. There is a "Hitchcockian" quality about that film that has rarely been surpassed. It is a stylish example of just how frightening a film can be with the right score, the right cast and the notion that what truly frightens is what you don't see – rather than what you do see in gruesome and gory detail. Halloween is a film that holds an audience in the throes of suspense – with a bare minimum of blood and gore.
Halloween is widely considered the granddaddy of the slasher genre. It was the film that launched a thousand maniacs – some that succeeded not on imitation, but in their ability to reinvent the wheel. However, in the face of new franchises, new masked and/or burned and deformed psychos, Halloween stood alone. In 1981, Halloween fell victim to it's own trap. It was inevitable there would be a sequel and as far as sequels go, the 1981 Halloween 2 was quite good. In fact, many franchise fans consider Halloween 1 and Halloween 2 to be one long film. After all, there is a seamless continuity to both films. H2 picks up right where H1 ends. Stylistically, it worked. H2 had far more gore than it's predecessor. It was almost a necessary evil. After all, from 1978 to 1981, the horror genre had begun to become more about upping the ante in the gore factor. More blood, more guts, more bucks.
When Zombie's H1 was released, I went into it with a great fear that we were about to see a total train wreck. Much to my surprise, it wasn't. Zombie had written a relatively cohesive backstory for young Michael Myers, showing a cycle of abuse, abandonment and dysfunction that led Michael down the proverbial "Psycho Path." Interesting? Somewhat. The only major flaw in that backstory is that it takes the mystery away from the Myers mythology. It's more frightening not to know what makes him so relentless rather than chalking it up to a textbook case of abuse. The main problem that Zombie encountered in making H1 was when the story moved from the original backstory to the remaking of Carpenter's film. The familiar characters became stilted and uninteresting. The storytelling became rushed and truncated. Moreover, the ending became too quick and far too much of a cop out. However, I actually found myself enjoying Zombie's new take on Halloween. No, it would never replace the original, but it wasn't a total failure. I knew it was going to be a difficult balancing act to remake such an iconic film, but I thought that Zombie put his spin on it and managed to be respectful to Carpenter and make the second half of the film more of an homage.
I wondered how long it was going to take for a sequel to rear it's head. I read Zombie state in multiple interviews that since Laurie had blown Michael's head off, there would be no H2 from him. I knew damn well that was a disingenuous statement. Few horror films have endings that are final or absolute. If there is gold to be mined from the masses, they'll find any way possible to resurrect the dead.
Continued in the next comment
Zombie's H2 has none of the redeeming qualities of his H1. This is a mishmash. An unfocused, Headbanger's Ball video, chock full of jumpcuts, wrapped in a paper thin screenplay that bears little or no resemblance to the original H2. It turns familiar characters inside out and makes them unsympathetic, abrasive and flat-out annoying. The one absolute in the horror genre is that you must truly have some sort of empathy with the characters. I found myself rooting for Michael Myers. He's the only character that truly elicits any sort of pity. Why? Because Zombie is making a futile attempt to continue his backstory that he created in H1. While you should feel sorry for a child from an abusive home, it's rather difficult to feel anything for a 7 foot behemoth lurching around and hacking everyone in sight just because the world has been unjust and unfair. That's predictable and uninteresting. In an effort to explain and perhaps justify Michael's actions, Zombie brings back his wife, Sherri Moon Zombie as Michael's mother Deborah Myers. This time, she's not the tortured mother wondering where she went wrong. She's a guardian angel of death, dressed in white satin and perpetually accompanied by the young version of Michael and a white horse (???) She exhorts Michael to kill for her, as killing his sister is a surefire way to bring their broken family back together. The "Kill for Mommie" tactic totally emasculates Michael. It robs him of his malevolence and makes it seem as if Zombie couldn't come up with anything better than a redux of Jason Voorhees' old M.O. from Friday the 13th. Yes, you might feel pity for Michael in this state.. but for the totally wrong reasons.
Another huge misstep is the moral judgment of good and bad that figures into the majority of horror films. Most horror films have stock characters that you intuitively know should and WILL get their comeuppance. In H2, Zombie's screenplay makes it difficult to feel one way or the other about the people who are on the receiving end of the brutality. The wholesale butchering of the ancillary characters are largely unmotivated and seem like nothing more than a gore quotient filler. Zombie has always had a fascination with grotesques. Characters in all of his films seem to have some sort of grunge or physical oddity, H2 is no exception. It's practically a toothless redneck-fest at times. When those characters make Michael look almost normal, something goes terribly awry.
Scout Compton Taylor's Laurie is ostensibly supposed to be on this tortured emotional journey of survival. Taylor seems to stay on two levels throughout the film – she cries and screams or alternatively acts like a spoiled brat. The only moment in which you feel as if her character might have an epiphany is when she discovers that she is Michael's sister. In that moment, you hope she will find that Jamie Lee Curtis survivalist spunk – but she never does. Instead, she goes back into her established pattern. I won't spoil the half-assed ending, but Zombie's fate for Laurie was basically ripped from the finale of Halloween 4 – and it's just as unoriginal as Michael's "Kill for Mommie" directive.
The most horrific error in the screenplay was to turn Dr. Sam Loomis, once again played by Malcolm McDowell, into a huge punchline. Loomis is no longer the benevolent doctor, relentlessly pursuing the inner workings of Michael's mind. He's now a comic figure that has been transfigured into a media whore, selling sensationalist books on Michael and behaving like a diva. It's a pathetic attempt to inject humor into the script and it fails miserably. Loomis was always the moral compass of the Halloween franchise. He was the one factor that was a necessary constant. He knew that Michael was the personification of evil, and he was the only person who could remotely stop Michael and make him think. Now that Zombie's backstory voided the pure evil mythology, Loomis becomes extraneous. The screenplay does give Loomis a halfhearted attempt at redemption towards the end of the film, but it's too little, too late.
I'd like to take the sound effects editor for this film out into a field and horsewhip him. Every murder is punctuated by Foley overkill. I fully expected each slice of the knife or crunch to be accompanied by a 1960's Batman-style title card (Kerplunk! THUD! SHWAP!) There's also a massive failure on Zombie's part this time around with the film's scoring. The iconic Halloween theme and the Laurie's theme are nowhere to be heard until the last 60 seconds of the film. Carpenter's score is an essential element that makes or breaks any Halloween film. Even the most mediocre of them all feature that music – or variations thereof.
Concluded in the next comment
H2 has moments that attempt to be artistic – particularly in the multiple dream sequences – but all of them left me bored rather than visually engrossed. Yes, H2 has some massive failings, but none more tragic than Zombie's failure to maintain suspense. He telegraphs each intended shock so far in advance, there is simply no element of surprise. No jumps, no startles. You see it coming a mile away and all you have left is the mechanics of the method of dispatch. I think the only genuine startle I got in this film was to see Margot Kidder as Laurie's psychologist. It was shocking to see Lois Lane looking like a weathered leather handbag after 20 years in a combination meth lab and psych ward.
The the thing about Michael Myers that has made this character (and this franchise) endure for over 30 years lies in the simple fact that he IS the Boogeyman. He's the thing we fear most. He's the monster in the closet. He is pure evil. In this story, he's been reduced to a mama's boy with some deep emotional scars. What's most scary about H2 is what Rob Zombie has done to the boogeyman.
Fortunately, there IS hope for the franchise. John B.DeHaas has written a camp, parody MUSICAL version of Halloween that is premiering in Orlando in October. This musical may be the only thing that will remove the bad taste that Rob Zombie's film has left in my mouth.
it felt like he didnt try that hard(or didnt have the passion) with this one it just was thrown together and very predictable with A bad ending
I totally disagree with this review. The Sherri Moon Zombie scenes were awful. Bad lighting, bad script, bad movie.
I never said they were amazing just that they were the only decent parts of the movie. But I do agree the movie was bad.
One word…"Ridiculously Horrible"
Yes I kow it's two words and thats my point….it didnt make sense. That remake could very well be one of the worst hack jobs to a movie ever. I quit watching 30 minutes in to the movie saying to myself..I would have rather seen a "Devils rejects continuatuion…" sure they were blasted to all hell, but I enjoyed the characters.
I saw one thing that was very cool though ..the scene over the field and zooming over Michael walking. Very nice
please have a real director remake this movie, though it will be tough to top the original but please dont let the halloween legacy end like this, lets end it with a bang, a nine dollars worth, scare the hell out of you movie, that has a good story line, i mean come on.