Movie Review - 'Halloween II'

Halloween II Starring Scout Taylor-Compton, Tyler Mane, and Malcolm McDowell Directed by Rob Zombie Rated R

Are horror movies more or less popular when they show more blood and eviscerations? Well, the most famous movies in the genre - Exorcist, Psycho, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween are almost evenly split. Even the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is more suggestive than bloody. I ask that because, with Halloween II, Rob Zombie seems to think all you want to see is bloodshed. And even among those classic movies that do explore gore (note: the original and best Halloween from 1979 does not) are rarely more violent than not. The reason is simple: Gore for the sake of gore simply isn't interesting. There's no effective, efficient build-up to the scenes of undeterred violence, and without that suspense, there's no release. You're just watching a slaughter, which has no drama in a one-sided boxing match and even less in a movie featuring a knife-weilding giant with an inhuman pain threshhold. The kicker here is that Zombie has actually created a small shred of a story that beats anything in the Michael Myers films since John Carpenter's 1979 original. He began exploring the psychology of Myers in his remake two years ago. For the first time, we saw Michael Myers as a child, and though it's a heavy-handed and rudimentary explanation, Zombie does make a case for how the killer got that way. In fact, the origin story elements of Halloween were what made it stand out. Here again, the writer-director looks inside the mind of the killer, but now also his only survivor from the first film, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton). There are a couple of surprises down that dark road, so far as you go in not thinking about how the movie might end. It's all illustrated through dream sequences and flashbacks, which are a decent device for such material. But Zombie's impulse is to stack up the bodies, which is a shame. His strength has never been writing, and it's just as obvious in this film, where he actually has an opportunity to make the film something different, but instead delivers us more of the same. Poor Scout Taylor-Compton is actually a pretty good scream queen, and Zombie really puts her through the paces. It really makes you wonder what would happen if she got a second act in the story to read. Better luck next time. And because there are no other performances that are supposed to matter, Zombie barely bothered to write those beyond dialogue that sets up another entrance from the masked behemoth with the knife. Halloween II is being advertised as a completion of Rob Zombie's "extreme vision of terror." Well, most of that is correct. Can't really say there's much of a vision, however.

Comments

[JP]

Rob Zombie is awful. His first so-called remake sucked and I expect the same from this one.

[Ryan]

This was at least an attempt to make a slasher different from the many genric slashers out there. And look at that, in 5 days it broke even so its going to make a profit. More movies for RZ coming up.

[ME]

Rob Zombies versions of Haloween where EXTREMELY intense!!!!! Rob is AMAZING to go DEEP inside the mind of a PSYCO & a LAME SHRINK!!!! & ROB =...PLEASE keep your wife ROLLING!!!!!! She's INCREDIBLE in ALL your movies!!!!!!!!

HUGE ZOMBIE FAN!!!!!!!

XOXOXOX,,
Cindy