Film Review: Halloween 2 (H2)
Halloween 2 (2009)
Studio: Dimension
Release Date: August 2009
Directed by: Rob Zombie
Starring: Scout Taylor Compton, Danielle Harris, Tyler Mane, Malcolm McDowell, Brad Dourif, Sherri Moon Zombie, Brea Grant, and Angela Timbur
Reviewed by: Britt Hayes
Rob Zombie is a visionary director. He’s brought us camp and throwback to the 70s with House of 1000 Corpses. He took us on a brutal fugitive ride through the West with the incredible Devil’s Rejects. Then he wandered into questionable territory with his remake of Halloween, a film that should have really been split in two. Where he used restraint and second-guessed himself in reimagining the tale of Michael Myers the first time out, he could’ve used a heaping dose of that same attitude in Halloween 2. This movie is just….silly. It’s not to say his vision doesn’t need to be seen and enjoyed, but Zombie needs to stick to original material and leave the ideas of others alone.
From the beginning of Halloween 2, there are scenes that work and some that don’t, and it’s indicative of the film that follows. We’re given a title card with a ridiculous explanation of a white horse, and its meaning in psychology with relation to dreams (it has something to do with rage). The first scene is Judith Myers visiting little Mikey in the Smithgrove Sanitarium on or around Christmas. She brings him a white horse toy and tickles him. Next stop is the not-so-distant past, with Laurie walking down the street with a gun in her hand after killing Michael. Sheriff Brackett pulls up in his car and takes her to the hospital and we are treated to one of many dream sequences in the film. There’s also a scene with two guys tasked with transporting Michael’s body. For some reason, there’s nowhere nearby to take his body, even though Haddonfield has a hospital with a morgue, which would seem reasonably close. But these two jackasses end up on a farm road and hit a cow. A magical cow, as it has somehow set Michael free from the back of the van. It’s at this point that Michael creatively expresses himself the best way he knows how. After dealing with the men in the transport van, Michael sees his mother in a flowing white gown, guiding a white horse. I wish to fuck that this was the only time we had to see ghost mom and her white horse.
Dream sequences are utilized throughout the movie and they’re quite effective for the most part. Some dreams are gritty and trick the audience into thinking this is still the real world, which leaves us just as shocked as Laurie when she wakes up and we realize we were dreaming with her. There’s a great scene with Laurie running through the woods in slow motion, where this brilliant blue smoky light is shining from the background. If Zombie was slowing the scene down because he was proud of this set up, he had every right to do so: it’s gorgeous.
Laurie is still trying to put herself back together using a therapist, prescription meds, and partying, but she still has awful nightmares about Michael getting her (I would too if my therapist was Margot Kidder). These days Laurie lives with Annie, who also survived the first film, and her father Sheriff Brackett. Annie has become more of a stay-at-home kind of girl, while Laurie has flipped and become an Alice Cooper fan who loves to go out with her annoying friends and party it up. And make no mistake: Laurie is pretty annoying here. I don’t remember her being so irritating in Halloween the first time around, but here, I wanted her to die. It could be Rob Zombie’s lack of a uterus that fails to allow him to write decent lines for a girl. It could be that Scout Taylor Compton is just a bad actress.
Michael Myers is also different this time around. When he kills his victims, he grunts and growls in an almost animalistic way. He’s more brutal this time out, too. His violence is intensely visceral. This is a Michael we should’ve seen more of, sans white horse, in the first entry. When he kills it’s infinitely more violent than the first movie. Every stab has so much force and anger behind it, you start to believe Michael has a personal vendetta out there for every person he kills. Which I think is the point here. Humanize Michael a bit, and not by showing him as a child like the first film, but letting him express his emotion more. Just because he wears a mask and we can’t see his face, doesn’t mean that he can’t express what he feels outwardly in another way; therefore, by allowing him to vocalize, and making his kills more violent, the audience gets a better idea of the driving force behind Michael. A particularly brutal scene takes place in a strip club, and although killing these people seems pointless, it serves to show just how fucked up and merciless Michael is.
And that’s a problem I had with the film: everything felt so pointless. Dr. Loomis returns, but doesn’t connect with the main plot until much later in the film. We spend most of our time with Loomis following him around on a book tour, where he’s become a pompous ass. He’s angry with the media because he’s always being asked if he feels responsible for so many people dying in Haddonfield the year before. This is the only likable side of Loomis – where he lashes out at the media for portraying him as a murderer by association. I think Loomis knows he’s an asshole, and he’s a lot of things, but a murderer isn’t one of them. Dr. Loomis is an interesting character, but he doesn’t fit in with the rest of the film. His only purpose seems to be releasing a book on Halloween, which helps develop Laurie’s plot a little further, but a different device could’ve easily been used for that.
I can respect a horror film with all muscle and no brains. But a horror film that tries to have brains should have brains, and any argument about the mindlessness of horror won’t work here. It’s obvious from the first frame that Zombie intends for this movie to be more intelligent and psychological than the first. It just isn’t. Putting a white horse in as a reference to dream psychology, and putting Michael through the Norman Bates school of coping mechanisms isn’t effective. Often when Michael sees the ghost of his mother, he envisions himself as a child. This seems to bear no symbolism whatsoever. Maybe he sees himself that way because that’s the last time he actually talked to anyone, and it’s how he can emotionally relate; however, since his mother is a ghost, I wonder if this child isn’t the ghost of the child that died Halloween night so many years ago, when he slaughtered his family. He didn’t kill his mother, after all, and maybe he’s appearing with her now because the child in him is still so loyal. This sounds a lot deeper than it is on screen. The white horse also feels pointless. It’s as if there was no other way to describe why Michael is the way he is, and a white horse just looked pretty next to a pasty hot white chick.
Before even seeing the film, I could tell from the previews that this ghost mom element of the plot was something obviously put together by Zombie to include his wife, Sherri Moon Zombie, in the film. I understand wanting to use her in his movies: she’s hot. Unfortunately, she’s no Frances McDormand and this isn’t a Coen Brothers film. Her scenes, save for a couple of dream sequences that are absolutely radiant and eerie, are useless. She only serves as a sort of calendar for Michael, telling him what day it is, when he should go out and kill, and she even tells him at one point to “have fun!” Is Michael going to camp for the summer? Did I miss a memo here? The dream sequences I mentioned are truly wonderful. There’s this lack of color, married with a sort of ethereal glow and shaky motion, that’s evocative of much older horror films. Films that Rob Zombie has mentioned influence him greatly in his work. These dreams involving Laurie work to great effect.
The camera work is hit and miss: during the more violent scenes, the camera is jerky, almost to the point of nauseating. A steady, unflinching approach would have fared better with a film that tries to focus on more brutality. Other times Rob Zombie uses slow motion, which doesn’t always work, but during a very violent scene involving Annie during the climax it’s deeply affecting. The overall look of the film is grainy, a style Zombie feels comfortable with.
There’s plenty of attention to the set, but Zombie should have spent more time developing a cohesive plot than decorating. Something I did enjoy, however, was Annie and Laurie’s dirty bathroom. How often do you see a dirty bathroom in movies? It’s a nice touch that shows just how grungy Laurie has become.
The end of the movie leaves a lot to be desired. Laurie and Michael are involved in their inevitable stand-off, and Laurie is being held down by the young Michael, which only she can see. There is no point to this, other than perhaps Laurie forgot to take her meds or maybe Laurie is finally losing it. A dream she has earlier in the film points in the latter direction, and indicates that Laurie might have a bit of the violent streak her brother possesses. There was a slight nod toward a psychic relationship between the two (once during a scene where Michael inexplicably eats a dog, while at the same time Laurie is vomiting), but once again, this is pointless and seems to go nowhere. Sheriff Brackett is also underused. I was excited to see more of him this time around, since Brad Dourif is pretty fucking awesome, and when it looks like he might go off the handle and exact some revenge, Devil’s Rejects style, he doesn’t. He’s just…there.
The last scene of the film would have worked better if Laurie’s character had been developed differently. Perhaps she really needed to lose her shit. Maybe Zombie needed to work on making Laurie a bit darker. But he didn’t. When the final scene comes, it’s stark and I almost felt something powerful, but because of the poor character development and weak script, I was left scratching my head. If Laurie hadn’t been such an annoying, whiny bitch throughout the film, I could see there being a real ballsy story here. Zombie has said in interviews that there is a director’s cut, just as there was with his first Halloween, and in it Laurie was a dark and angry character, slowly spiraling out of control and becoming more and more crazy. That’s a movie I would’ve liked to see. Unfortunately, Zombie made this film a haphazard, rushed movie with a mediocre plot and insanely weak script.
Brutal As Hell Rating:
2 ½ out of 5
