Halloween II

Halloween II starts off with a dream sequence… I think. Michael Myers, presumed dead, wakes up after the ambulance transporting his body hits a cow in the middle of the road (a cow… really?). He offs the two paramedics then walks off. Next scene, the female lead from the first Halloween wakes up in her ER room, only to be stalked by Myers, who finally chases her down and drives a knife into her head. Then she wakes up. So when did the dream start? Did Myers actually escape the ambulance like that? I have no idea. But maybe I’m looking too much into it.

Rob Zombie’s revamp of John Carpenter’s classic was actually not that bad. I remember seeing his first Halloween two years ago and being entertained throughout (mostly with the first hour, when we deal with the young Michael). Such is not the case here.

We often give horror films the benefit of the doubt. Myers gets shot several times and lives, okay. He lives for a year in a shack, walking around empty fields, okay. He puts on his mask before he kills people, even though they won’t be able to tell anyone about him anyway, okay. He happens to kill a girl at a crowded party (who just happens to be best friend with his most sought after victim), okay. But seriously, how can this dude possibly know where his biological sister, Laurie now lives? The yellow pages? Google maps? Does Michael Myers own a GPS? I wonder what the sales person at Best Buy thought of his buoyant personality.

You want blood? You got it. Boobs? Check. Bad acting? Of course. But if you’re in the torture-porn mood already, I suggest staying home, renting Zombie’s first Halloween, tuning off the lights and being entertainingly grossed out.

One positive quality of the film that I will mention is that it does look good. As with the first Halloween, Zombie produces a dark, shadowy, blue-ish hue that is very pleasing, and distinctive, to the eye. He also knows how to use slow motion in a way that is not distracting or annoying. Take for instance the scene when Laurie runs rabidly through the woods, freezing just in front of bright lights, silhouetting her in the dark moonlight; it looks great, I just don’t give a shit about what I’m seeing. D