Well, this week I rented and watched Rob Zombie's Halloween II, which dropped and went ker-splat at the box office last year.

Still, I'd had some hope for it. Zombie's first Halloween remake goes into my category of movies that are "probably as good as they could be, considering they didn't need to be made."

So my hope was that, freed of comparison to one of the scariest movies ever, he might be able to do something great. Especially since the 1981 Halloween II really kinda sucks.



Sad to say, so does the 2009 version, but it does not suck quite as bad as the 1981. I think this is because Zombie is a better director than Rick Rosenthal (Zombie's unrated director cut is the version I watched).

You sense him trying everything in his bag to try to make this into an effectively scary, haunted-house of a movie, and once or twice he succeeds, especially with the quick-flash editing. But the problem is, this haunted house is empty.

With his approach to the first remake, Zombie had some new ground to cover: The growth of Michael Myers from disturbed child to slashing adult.

But here, though he tries like a motherfucker to show us more about the way the adult Michael thinks, he never convinces that this sequel has any reason to exist.

Save that the last one made money, of course. It's notable that Malcolm McDowell's character in the follow-up is portrayed as a sellout cashing-in on the pain of others. Artist's mirror, Rob?

Writing about the last movie, I said

To an extent, good casting comes to Zombie's rescue here.

All the stars of the newer film are repeating their roles from the last and they're just as good, however they're even more sorely lacking in good things to do.

McDowell is simply wasted and Sheri Moon Zombie has virtually nothing to do but lead around a white horse. Even the height of Tyler Mane (he plays grown-up Michael) is not exploited as well as it was last time.

The three strongest actors do suggest a direction I would rather have seen this movie go.



Brad Dourif returns as the weary Sheriff, Danielle Harris as his teenage daughter who survived a Myers attack in the first film, and Scout Taylor-Compton as Laurie, the unwitting center of it all.


Yes, friends, this is the face of a survivor.

Laurie's adoptive parents having been killed by Michael in the first movie, she's now moved in with the Sheriff and his daughter and it isn't going well.

Here was a set-up for a much more interesting film to do what few horror series have ever done, really deal with the psyches of people who survived such an attack.

There are moments that suggest Zombie wanted to do just that, but they never come together and stand up as anything because he always has to go back to the tired old tale of the unstoppable masked killer.

Dourif, the old pro, is the only one to be given more to do in the sequel than he was in the first, and he deserves it. He even manages to put an almost uncomfortable amount of real emotion into what could've been a horribly bad scene where he discovers a loved one has been killed. It's the singer, not the song.

Unfortunately, the novelty of casting Harris as a friend of the character whose daughter she played at ten years old in the original Halloween series has all but worn off.

She does a nice job, and based on some of her other roles I believe she could've done even better, but...her character doesn't even leave the house.

Something could've been made of this. Perhaps her experience of the last movie left her agoraphobic. This might help explain why she and Laurie are always sniping at each other, but it's never indicated, so we're left with a character that apparently exists only to clash with Laurie.

Taylor-Compton remains appealing, unfortunately she starts the performance at such a high shrieking pitch (one of the main points of the film is to show Laurie losing her grip on reality) there's not many places she can take it.

This could've been because of direction or actor's choice, but I think I'll blame the screenplay. This is credited only to Zombie, but Patrick Melton has said that he and his writing partner Marcus Dunstan, who wrote the screenplays for Saw IV-VI, made some un-credited contributions.

In the end...it's just a slasher film, even if you sense it didn't want to be just that. How much of why it's just a slasher film is due to studio interference, budget cuts, and a "grind it out" schedule is an interesting question.

One I would love to discuss with Zombie over dinner...