Zombie Tweets About ‘H2′ Director’s Cut – Too Little Too Late?
by Britt Hayes
Rob Zombie recently took to his Twitter to share with the public, in 140 characters or less, what he’s up to:
“Just finished doing the director’s commentary for the DVD of Halloween 2. Love the new cut. This is the real film.”
He also previously mentioned that this version is “very different” from the theatrical cut. God, I hope so. It’s no secret that I was very disappointed with H2. After being one of very few people who enjoyed Zombie’s Halloween as a whole, even though I thought it would work better as two films, I had some hope for H2. After all, House of 100o Corpses was fun and all, but Devil’s Rejects was miles ahead. I found myself considering the possibility that Zombie just might be one of those directors whose films are good, but whose sequels are even better. It’s rare.
But then H2 happened. I remember the day it happened. It’s almost like when my grandmother talks about the day JFK was shot. I sat in the theater, popcorn and giant cup of cherry slush at my side, feet up on the chair in front of me, giddy like a little girl. You’d think someone was about to bring out a fucking pony (no pun intended). Approximately 25 minutes into the movie, and I felt like someone had robbed me. There was so much Zombie could’ve done to make this film better. I was thinking, “This is it. This is where he’ll go batshit crazy and do his Rob Zombie thing that he didn’t do the first time around. This will be AWESOME.” But there was no batshit crazy thing. The craziest thing about the movie was how many chances he had to do something truly awesome, and I found it just insane that he didn’t.
(Warning: Potential Spoiler Ahead)
In the film, Laurie has gone a little crazy. She’s seeing things that aren’t there and having psychotic dreams triggered by the traumatic events of the first film. (Also, oddly enough, she has a giant Charles Manson poster above her bed, so I guess she isn’t that traumatized…or Rob Zombie just thought it looked cool. I’ll go with the latter.) By the end of the movie, after Michael Myers has returned and killed most of the people she knows..again..Laurie loses her shit and, at one point, walks out of her final confrontation with Michael, wearing his mask (which looks just fucking HUGE on this little girl’s head). At another point in the film, when Myers kills and eats the dog of a couple of his victims, Laurie is on the other side of town, having dinner with Annie and her father, and suddenly falls ill. I believe this scene was supposed to indicate some sort of psychic connection between Laurie and her brother Michael, but that connection isn’t really explored, leaving the dog eating scene as kind of a “what the fuck and why the fuck?” moment.
The real squandered potential, I believe, lies in Laurie. Zombie has mentioned in interviews that his director’s cut focuses more on Laurie being absolutely nuts: she’s a bitch to Annie, her only remaining friend from the first film, she’s alienating people, and she’s out partying and being a fucking nutcase for most of the film’s runtime. This sounds like a better movie than what I saw in August. Zombie could’ve made Laurie insane. He could’ve made her absolutely lose her mind and become somewhat violent, which would explain the last 20 minutes or so of the film, and moreover, the final scene.
Instead, Zombie, never one to exclude his wife from a film (and look, I’m not complaining, I love Sherri Moon, but there’s got to be a line somewhere. She’s no Frances McDormand, okay?), spent at least half of the film on a ghost mom and a white horse, which have become something of a running joke in horror land.
I honestly hope that Zombie’s director’s cut will be better than what we got in the theater. Only he knows why he made the changes he did for the theatrical version. Every interview I’ve read indicates that he had complete freedom this time around, even from his own self-imposed restraint. When the director’s cut debuts on DVD (the date is TBD), I’ll review it again, and maybe this time I’ll have something more positive to say.
