Family is Forever
My views of this movie can be explained in one simple
sentence. This is the worst horror movie
I have ever seen. I’ve seen “Plan 9”, “Birdemic”,
“Creature”, “Manos: The Hands of Fate”, “Halloween 3: Season of the Witch”, “Cold
Creek Manor”, “The Messengers 2”, “The Devil Inside”, “Drag Me To Hell”, “Troll
2”, “House of Wax”, “Hellraiser: Bloodline”, “Beyond the Walls of Sleep”, “Return
of the Living Dead 3”, “Sometimes They Come Back For More”, “Creepshow 3”, and “Halloween 2” is still the worst. I doubt I’ll ever see a worse horror movie as
long as I live. Unless we count Lars Von
Trier’s “Antichrist” or “Gummo” as horror movies and those were so godawful I’d
sooner watch Halloween 2 twice back to back rather than watch either again.
I can go on and on about why this movie is bad but I can’t
think of a single good thing about it.
After seeing Rob Zombie’s first “Halloween” I didn’t have high
expectations for this one but all the things wrong with the first one come back
tenfold in the sequel. The characters
are even more obnoxious and in some cases take a complete 180 shift. After surviving the events of the first movie
Laurie Strode is now a traumatized wreck.
Every scene she’s in she’s either screaming or crying, she was annoying
in the last film in this one she’s shrill and annoying. Dr. Loomis who has always been the self-sacrificing
voice of reason throughout this series is now a demanding, hostile, prima donna. Michael Myers acts as a fifth wheel in his
own movie and has little motivation to do any of the things he does. And to top it all off it has a ridiculous
pseudo psychological plot that makes no sense(I’ll have to get to that later).
After a short opening with young Michael getting a visit
from his mother in the asylum(like we didn’t get enough of that in the first
movie) giving him a literal white horse that acts a symbolic white horse(Rob
Zombie is not a master of subtlety), we see the aftermath of his rampage as we
see Loomis, Laurie, and Annie being wheeled into ambulances while Michael
himself is being loaded into a hearse. I
was surprised to see this because I always figured Dr. Loomis was dead at the
end of the first “Halloween”. In Loomis’
last scene Michael is caving his skull in with his bare hands. How the hell do you survive that?! Laurie’s friend Annie is still alive somehow
too. After he flees the asylum half his
victims survive in the next movie making Rob Zombie’s Michael Myers the least
effective serial killer in slasher movie history.
Rob Zombie master of subtlety
Before I rewatched it to do this review I did a little
research and found out Rob Zombie hadn’t planned on doing a sequel but with the
money they made with the first one the studio wanted a sequel. When Zombie heard about this he jumped at the
opportunity presumably because he didn’t want someone altering his vision. His idea for the sequel was to do it without
Michael Myers and have Laurie Strode as the killer imagining herself as
Michael. The powers that be wanted Myers
in their movie so he was written in. I
mention this because even the casual viewer will feel as if Michael Myers
doesn’t belong in this movie and like I said before he has no motivation.
The next few scenes are a labor to get through. The van carrying Michael crashes but not
before the deplorable coroners have a disgusting conversation about
necrophilia. Michael despite being
stabbed and shot several times(once in the head) gets up and walks off. Meanwhile Laurie wakes up in the hospital and
is chased by Michael. Just as she is
about to be killed she wakes up screaming in her bedroom 2 years later. At no point was I convinced that that was
anything but a dream sequence and is probably one of the scenes they wrote
Myers in so we didn’t forget this was a “Halloween” movie.
As the movie progresses we find that Dr. Loomis has
capitalized on his attack by writing a new book about Michael’s latest
rampage. In the book he reveals that
Laurie Strode is Angel Myers, Michael Myers’ sister. I always wondered why he does this. There have been many changes to this
character but revealing Laurie Strode’s identity is downright irresponsible and
dangerous. Predictably Laurie walks by a
bookstore and reads the book. She finds
out she’s Michael Myers sister which only leads to more crying, screaming, and
whining from her.
I’m not sure exactly where Michael Myers is but he’s being
led back to Haddonfield by an apparition of his mother and younger self. Meanwhile we’re supposed to believe that
there’s some kind of psychic link before Michael and Laurie. From this point forward I feel I could
describe the rest of the movie in as little words as possible because it just
tends to repeat itself making it boring, predictable, and superfluous. Michael walks around killing people and then
we switch to Dr. Loomis trying to justify his behavior or Laurie freaking out.
After Laurie finds out that Michael’s her brother she cracks
up. One of her friends tries to comfort
her while the other only cares about going to a Halloween party. Seems to me if I were traumatized during a
holiday all I’d do when that holiday approached would be to lock myself in my
room with a shotgun. Instead Laurie
decides it would be a great idea to go to a nightclub and get drunk. After her annoying unsupportive friend gets
killed she goes home with her other friend only to find Annie has been murdered
by Michael. The movie climaxes with a standoff
between her, the police, Michael, Dr. Loomis, and the police. Michael kills Loomis again and is then gunned
down. Laurie investigates the corpses,
grabs Michael’s knife, and is herself gunned down. The movie ends with these two images
It began with lazy forced symbolism and it ends the same way.
Even if Rob Zombie got to make the movie he wanted to it
would still be bad because there’s enough of that movie in this one. However uneven it is it’s still not ambiguous
enough to make you believe that it was Laurie running around killing people
even though the ending of the movie leads you believe that. It’s clear that Michael Myers exists because
he’s off killing people when Laurie is nowhere near the places these crimes
take place. Above all else the problems
that plagued the first movie are back in this one. The characters are still obnoxious but in
Laurie’s case you can add whiny and annoying.
The movie still lacks restraint.
None of Laurie’s friends have sex so instead Zombie added a scene where
Michael kills three people in a strip club for no other reason than to add some
nudity. 02/100
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