halloween 2 – Tripping Through Gateways

Rob Zombie returned for the sequel to his fairly successful reboot. My understanding is he had not intended to, but was talked into it. And from the outset, this one is a total mess.

It opens with a bit of text regarding the psychological significance of a white horse. It then gives us a flashback to young Michael and his mother having as loving a moment between a mother and son as you can have at a sanitarium. This right here is continuing a wrong foot. In the original films, Loomis talks about how Michael was quiet and interacted with no one, to the point where everyone grew complacent around him.

The film just jumps ahead fifteen years, to the end of the previous film. In an imitation of the original Halloween 2, there is a hospital sequence, but it is only about 25 minutes long and then Laurie wakes up a year later. Was it a memory? A dream? The film is unclear.

We learn Laurie is in therapy and has rage issues. Loomis, on the other hand is now a psych-babble hack who uses Michael as his money-maker. This is an unpleasant take on the character, which makes him far less sympathetic. He is convinced Michael is dead, even though no body has ever been recovered.

Michael, very much alive, has been hiding out, building up his murderous rage. He is haunted by dreams of his mother, and an avatar of himself as a little boy who speaks to the vision of the mother. There are instances where Michael grunts as he kills that seem out-of-place. A completely silent Michael makes for a better Michael. Michael also spends a lot of time with no mask, which just seems wrong.

Laurie seems to have a sudden psychic connection to Michael that comes out of nowhere. And Laurie has become an entirely unpleasant. In fact, nobody is really likable in the film beyond maybe Sheriff Bracken and Annie. But most everyone else is just hard to like or care about. This is a bad thing for your lead. It is hard for the viewer to invest our time and emotion to care about a character we cannot even really like. And to pretty much have her cast her lots in with Michael (this is the same problem the recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel had) is troublesome.

The resolution of the film is nonsense leaving this a complete (as stated earlier) mess of a movie. It robs Laurie of any actual strength, and ultimately punishes her. It is pretty clear that Laurie Strode was accepting Michael’s ways. Her deviant smile before the cut to black is far to dark to be interpreted as triumph over the evil of Michael Myers.

There are some great shots, as Zombie has a real eye for framing shots, especially when going for a creepy vibe. And there are some solid performances, especially from McDowell, Dourif and Harris. People need to give Dourif more roles like this. He shines in the film. And Zombie (as usual) peppers his film with tons of character actors who clearly had a lot of fun in their roles.

But in the end, the writing and ideas are inconsistent, the characters overwhelmingly unpleasant and a Michael Myers who does not feel at all like Michael Myers.

Halloween 2 is guilty of kicking off a lot of horror sequel trends. You remember that kid Randy from the Scream movies? The one who explained all the rules of the slasher genre? Halloween 2 pretty much nailed every one of the rules of a sequel that Randy talks about in Scream 2.

Halloween 2 does not suck. On the other hand, it is not quite as good as the first film. Carpenter and Hill are producers and helped with the script, but the film was directed by first time film director Rick Rosenthal (who has gone on to direct a lot of television, especially in the horror/fantasy genre such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville) who returned to the last film before Rob Zombie’s reboot. So, as with many sequels, this was someone cutting their teeth.

Spoilers are cutting up next. Ouch. Sorry about the pun.

The part of this film that works is we have our main cast returning and it continues on the same night as the original film. This one picks up as Dr. Loomis believes he shot Michael dead, only, of course to look over the edge and see Michael is gone.

The story continues Michael’s unrelenting attack, though it becomes more refined. People often forget, it was Halloween 2 that introduced the idea that Michael and Laurie were siblings (It was also the second film that first used the song Mr. Sandman to creepy effect). Nearly the entire second film takes place in a hospital, with the majority of film’s victims being hospital employees.

As the film starts, Laurie Strode is taken to the local hospital, which is pretty sparcely populated at the time, we see no patients (other than some newborns in the nursery at one point), only a skeletal staff of nurses and ambulance drivers. Of the two drivers, we have the kind hearted Jimmy Lloyd (played by Last Starfighter Lance Guest) and the sex obsessed, crass Graham (played by Jeffrey Kramer). Graham is constantly trying to get some alone time with his girlfriend, Nurse Bailey (Pamela Susan Shoop). Jimmy on the other hand keeps trying to sneak in to talk to Laurie, though head nurse Mrs. Alves (Gloria Gifford) keeps interfering, insisting Jimmy let Laurie rest.

Dr. Loomis is still working with police to try and catch Michael, but that relationship becomes increasingly strained as the sheriff discovers that one of the dead teens is his own daughter. It is when Marion Chambers (who we saw in the first film) comes to tell Loomis he must leave with her under state orders that they discover a truth that was hidden from even Loomis. Michael had another sister, little Laurie Strode. Loomis, being the determined guy he is, will not go down without a fight and demands to be taken to the hospital.

Of course, in the meantime, hospital staff have dropped like flies. Laurie has been sedated, but she refuses to give up and stumbles through the hospital trying to escape the ever present Michael Myers. If it sounds familiar, this is because many films have duplicated this cat and mouse since in the slasher and horror genre. But Halloween 2 pulls it off well, it is one of the film’s strong points.

Loomis arrives at the hospital for a final showdown with Michael. In one of the less plausible moments, Laurie manages to shoot both Michael’s eyes out with a gun…which only blinds him. Holding a scalpel, he swings wildly as Laurie and Dr. Loomis turn on the various gas tanks in the room. Loomis sends Laurie out of the room and then flicks a Bic lighter (okay, maybe it was some generic brand of lighter) blowing himself and Michael up.

This film ups the killings, using various implements found in the hospital (such as needles). The kills are more gruesome and elaborate, the characters less dimensional (hardly a shock as there are more characters introduced). It carries through pretty seamlessly from the first. But it lacks something without Carpenter’s skilled eye for the use of shadows and light to obscure Michael. So it has a different feel.

They do try and advance the story, rather than re-hash it (which is where we get the family connection exploited both well and poorly in later films). It is notable that they killed Michael off believing that they were done with stories about Myers. I mean, where else could they go? The idea was that now they could make other movies with the Halloween title, but all new stories and characters. And then they made Halloween 3.

Tag: halloween 2

The Next Night He Became a Zombie (Halloween 2, 2009)

(Still) The Night He Came Home (Halloween II,1981)