Halloween II (2009)

NOTE - Download my commentary track HERE!

AUGUST 20, 2009

GENRE: REMAKE (?), SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

When you go to a trial, the lawyers can argue their point at the beginning and the end, but during the actual trial part, they’re supposed to just present the facts, without any sort of argument or opinion. For a while, I considered doing the same thing for Halloween II, because it’s been nearly 16 hrs since the film concluded and I still don’t even know if I liked it or not. I can answer any question you may have about it, but I cannot tell you if it’s “good” in any traditional sense. When someone asked me to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, I answered “both”.

Of course, many of you wonderful folks began coming to HMAD due to my review (and “differences list”) of Rob Zombie’s 2007 film, as I was one of the first to have one up. It’s also still the longest review in HMAD history (and I suspect this one might come a close second, so you best get yourself a coffee or something) (*Robert Stack voice* UPDATE! This one is actually a page and a half longer. Christ!), because clearly, it’s a film that demands some sort of discussion. I see a lot of movies that, good or bad, I just don’t have much to say about, but Christ, I’ve written three reviews of Halloween 07, plus recorded a commentary. It always seems to come up in the few blog/podcast interviews I’ve done, and to this day it’s a topic of heated discussion amongst friends. Well, incredulously enough, I think H2 might be talked about even MORE, mainly due to all of the strange imagery and hallucinations that are peppered throughout the film, principal of which is a recurring vision of a Deborah Myers and white horse.

As anyone can probably guess from the trailers, Sheri Moon returns, appearing as an angelic vision to Michael (and Laurie), along with his younger self (played by a new actor that is nowhere near as effective as Daeg Faerch. These scenes get more and more surreal as the film progresses, to the point where it looks like the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight” video as filtered through a Saw film (there’s even a big glass coffin like the one at the end of Saw V). Again, these scenes are nothing like you’ve never seen in a Halloween movie, but I didn’t mind that, and in fact I found them quite entertaining (in fact, I found the whole movie entertaining). I mean, the movie starts off with a definition of a white horse as symbolism - things are weird right off the bat, so it’s not like they spring it on you halfway through.

Now, some may bitch that this sort of stuff has no business in a Halloween movie*, but again - this is NOT the Halloween series as we knew it! Rob is free to change whatever he likes; anything outside the norm is perfectly acceptable. Bitching about it being different is like claiming that Dracula 2000’s “Dracula is Judas” nonsense doesn’t jive with what happened in Tod Browning’s 1931 version of the story. If he wants to make a vague ending, he can (I’ll get to that later). If he wants to have a Halloween film in which Michael Myers never really stalks anyone, he can. And yes - if he wants to leave out the theme music - HE CAN. It’s his goddamn series; it’s Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2, not Halloween 9 (or 10, now).

(For the record, the classic main theme never does appear in the film, only the end credits, but the “Laurie walking around” music does show up near the very end - a nice, sort of creepy touch).

Now, it’s no secret that Rob didn’t really want to do H2 at all. He swore up and down that he wouldn’t do it, but then it seems he sort got bullied into it by Dimension/Weinstein, who held up his Tyrannosaurus Rex project until he committed to doing H2 himself, and fast. So it’s not implausible to look at the film as a giant “fuck you” to them (and to his first film’s detractors; a cover (or remake, if you will) of “Love Hurts” - easily the most maligned moment in his first film - plays over the end credits). He made a weird movie, and while there are kills and pumpkins and such, it’s much unlike every other Halloween movie. Free of any sort of remake burdens (imposed by the studio or himself), this seems to be 100% Rob Zombie’s film. It’s got the degenerate rednecks, the weird humor (“COW!”), the uncommercial ending, the rockabilly and classic rock music... everything. There are also strange, “Film critic in Devil’s Rejects” type scenes, providing a warped sense of humor that was largely absent from the last one (Loomis bitching about his “old Loomis” photo is worth the price of admission alone). Again, Halloween purists may cry foul, but me - a fan of Rob’s previous films, and a non-moron who is able to separate the two incarnations of Michael Myers, I found this stuff refreshing; the type of movie I wanted his first one to be. I WANT a new take on the character(s). I WANT things to be different. By the end of Resurrection, every tie to the ‘true’ series was dead: Loomis, Laurie, Jamie, etc., which means if they made a Halloween 9, I probably wouldn’t have liked it anyway. But my problem here is not in that it doesn’t feel like a traditional Halloween movie... it’s that it doesn’t feel like Rob made a true sequel to his own film.

Part of that is the location. It’s supposed to be Haddonfield, but it looks nothing like the one in the first film (two scenes were shot in their original LA locations, making the difference even more apparent). The suburban aspect is completely missing; now we get isolated farmhouses and large fields. There’s a brief scene where Loomis does a news report in front of what I assume is supposed to be the Myers house, but it doesn’t look anything like it or any other house from the last film. The Halloween atmosphere is much improved; there’s a brief trick or treating scene, a big party, and the girls are wearing costumes this time around (Rocky Horror inspired ones - a telling choice for a film that is likely going to be a midnight favorite in 20 years; I’ve already told Brian Quinn from Grindhouse to book it for 2029), but at the expense of the “regular American town” feeling.

The overall look is also different, thanks to both a new DP (Crank 2’s Brandon Trost) and a different film stock (Super 16 - woo!). Both are fine (though I never thought his original looked “glossy”, as Zombie says now), but it’s also back to the 1.85:1 ratio, which feels cramped at times, particularly during the frenetic kill scenes. But it’s also a smaller film (i.e. no differing time periods, fewer characters), so the “intimate” look isn’t really bothersome otherwise, and even appropriate during the (few) quiet scenes.

The biggest change is Loomis though. His role in the film is largely superfluous; it isn’t until the final scene of the film that he actually interacts with anyone else we care about. Every single one of his scenes revolves around him making appearances to promote his new book, but only two really resonate. In one, he signs books at a bookstore, only to be accosted by Lynda’s father, who tries to shoot him. In the other, he appears on some late night talk show, where he is the B guest to Weird Al Yankovic. All of these scenes serve to show that Loomis has become kind of a douchebag; an attention-seeking prick who clearly hasn’t even bothered to keep in touch with Laurie and certainly no longer cares about his patient. He only shares a single scene with them, and it’s so brief that it’s almost weightless. And his scenes are so disconnected, they become almost confusing. The bookstore one, for example, takes place right after we see Laurie walking into a bookstore to buy the book - it took me half the scene to figure out that they were in different stores. Apart from the Myers house scene, we never know how far Loomis is from Haddonfield - if he’s not there, how does he get to the shack so quickly at the end, and if he IS there, why hasn’t Brackett or Laurie run into him until then? Via Twitter, Rob claimed that his first cut of the film ran nearly four hours - I’m sure this is an exaggeration, but the film clearly has marks of a rushed edit (it’s worth noting that a large chunk of the footage seen in the trailers is not in the finished film, nor are many of the scenes described in the set visit reports from Fangoria and other sites), and the Loomis scenes seem to suffer the worst from it. Hell, Rob could have cut Loomis out of the film entirely, save for the final scene (and even in that he barely makes an impact) and it wouldn’t make any difference. Half the fans thought he was dead anyway (he has no signs of having his eyes gouged out/head crushed in this film - guy’s a hell of a healer).

Speaking of the editing, for a film with so many obviously missing, potentially interesting scenes (Annie’s lament that Laurie “isn’t the only one who got messed up” is also missing, in fact, Annie as a whole is largely absent from the film), it’s got a bunch of seemingly pointless ones. Loomis’ bickering with his publicist grows tiresome after the first time; unfortunately there are about three more such scenes. En route to work, Laurie stops to play with a pot-bellied pig for a while - huh? And since Howard Hesseman is billed along with the other principals (instead of grouped with the other minor characters), one must assume he had a bigger role, and that they left in his pointless “damn the man” type rant (he runs an indie music store/coffee shop where Laurie works) simply because it was the only thing left of his performance. Luckily, the cameos in this one aren’t nearly as distracting, mainly because they are for the most part performed by regular character actors (Mark Boone Junior was a nice surprise) instead of convention staples.

And even moreso than in the last one, Michael’s rampage seems to make little sense. Despite the fact that, as far as we can tell, he hasn’t even seen Laurie yet, he goes out of his way to kill her new friend and a guy said friend just met (in HIS car no less - even if he knew her, how’d he know WHERE they were?). There’s a lengthy scene where he disposes of Lou (Daniel Roebuck) and two employees of the Rabbit in Red lounge, which again, doesn’t seem to serve any purpose. As extraneous as I felt some of the kills were in the first one (Danny Trejo, for example), they can at least be justified by the fact that the victims were part of Laurie’s life or crossed Michael’s path in some way, but I got nothing for these sequences. Hell, I can even buy him killing Lou in the FIRST movie, as he might need Deborah’s work records to find Laurie or something, but here it just seems like he did it out of boredom. He also starts killing on October 29th, so why he doesn’t get to Laurie until the end of Halloween night is a bit of a puzzler as well. Plus, the kill scenes are so disconnected, they can’t possibly carry a modicum of suspense, because you know there’s no reason to be cutting to these people unless they were about to die. In a Friday the 13th movie, everyone is at the camp, and there are occasionally scenes of people going off alone and coming back unharmed. The fragmented style of this film renders a great deal of it to be anticlimactic; you know how the next five minutes are going to play out as soon as there’s a location switch.

There is one exception - the opening scenes at a hospital. It’s perhaps ironic that the best part of the film would be the one that strays closest to remake territory, but that’s the way I see it. Michael chases Laurie around the hospital for a bit, outside into the rain, and then around a little guard shack. It’s somewhat suspenseful, it has cohesion, and the kills are scary while providing the brutality Zombie has brought to the table. Unfortunately, the entire scene is a dream of an event that never occurred (per Zombie’s own admission in one of his many interviews this week).

Another issue is the timeframe. It’s only been a year, but when Laurie is talking to her shrink, the shrink says “Halloween is a big trigger for you”, as if it’s a recurring problem every year, something that wouldn’t be possible if it had only BEEN a year. And I forget the exact reference right now, but someone mentions Austin Powers, Loomis has a widescreen TV in his hotel room, and his assistant constantly fiddles with a Blackberry, which just makes the early 80s feel of everything else (the music, the styles, the cars, etc) feel out of place. And if Michael IS still alive, where has he been all this time? Just sitting in his shack, waiting for Halloween-time? Does he have a calendar?

There’s also a slight problem with the “sister” issue. Namely, it’s not clear that Laurie hasn’t learned the truth yet. It’s been a year (or two), Loomis has been writing his book - the word hadn’t gotten back to her yet? She finds out the day the book hits shelves? No journalist got an early copy and contacted her? In fact, I wonder how many people will be baffled as to why she’s so upset when she begins reading the book in her car, because they probably assume she knows that by now. In the original Halloween II, they took the time to point out that Laurie Strode was only vaguely familiar with Michael Myers, and the plot never required her character to learn that they were related. Just seems kind of weird, and given the attempt to paint her as a truly messed up character, it’s a missed opportunity to not have her learn this information much earlier in the film. By the time she finds out, the film is already on Halloween night mode, which means the time to stop for lengthy character stuff has passed in favor of killing. Of course, on the flipside, this means less scenes that require Scout Taylor-Compton to act messed up (not her strong point), and less dialogue for Rob to write (likewise).

Oddly, the body count seems less this time (but again, kills seem to be on the cutting room floor - Fangoria’s set reporter mentions something about someone being hung - there’s nothing like that in the movie). I count about fifteen, as opposed to I think 20 or so in the original (Christ, please don’t make me watch it again to be sure). And considering how easy it would be to lose 5 of them (Lou and company, Laurie’s new friend and her boyfriend), it overall feels like a tamer film. It also seems less gory - the first two kills are pretty bloody, but after that it’s largely aftermath - we see Michael stabbing or whacking someone over and over, but no blood (or even direct contact in several occasions, just swings), and then we see the mangled corpse. It’s just a bit repetitive - Michael delivers what is obviously a killing blow, and then proceeds to stab/whack them ten more times for good measure. Anyone who hated the lack of suspense/stalking in the last one will be even more disappointed with this; apart from the scene at the hospital, there is no stalking at all. AGAIN - Zombie’s version of Myers isn’t Carpenter’s creepy stalker type, so that’s not my concern. I just got a bit bored with the sameness of all the kill scenes. At one point he snaps a guy’s neck, and I half expected him to proceed to break it 10-12 more times. Maybe Rob even got bored with it; the two most significant kills, which are also the last two in the film, are largely off-screen.

Which brings us to the ending, and, obviously, I’m going to spoil part of it here. The conclusion takes place in a shack that Michael has been presumably living in (Jason from F13 2 rented it out to him, I guess), and the police/reporters are unable to see what is actually happening. We see Michael kill a returning character (for sure this time), and then Laurie tells him she loves him (She actually says “I love you, brother!” - and all I could think of was that crazy Asian guy from American Idol) before stabbing the ever-loving shit out of him. But then it gets weird - she stumbles out of the shack wearing Michael’s mask, and Brackett has a look on his face that is equally shocked and saddened. We then fade to Laurie in an institution, who is giving a young Michael-esque smirk. My instant thought was that we had just witnessed a High Tension homage; that Laurie was the one actually killing everyone all night. This theory doesn’t completely hold up, but then again, neither did High Tension’s. Others suspected that the ENTIRE film was a dream, and still others just assumed that everything happened as we saw it and that Laurie has just gone crazy from the events, a la the real Laurie in Halloween: Resurrection. And an open-ended conclusion is fine - IF the director intended it that way. But in this interview with LatinoReview, he basically sets the record straight on what the ending was, which is nice - but it shouldn’t have been necessary if he didn’t intend it to be open to interpretation.

Well I’ve run out of notes, so I guess I’ll try to wrap this beast up. I still don’t even know what my overall opinion is of the movie; I plan to watch it again on release (unlike most horror fans it seems, I support theatrical releases - even if I have seen them), and maybe I can decide then. Was I entertained? Certainly. Did I feel like I was watching the vision of one guy (albeit somewhat compromised due to time/budget/edit issues)? Yes. Did I feel compelled to yell at the screen? Only once (when a character calls 911 from the Brackett residence, she stumbles about and wastes time looking for the address, rather than just point out that it’s the home of the goddamn sheriff). And as with the last film, certain scenes are great (hospital, pretty much every scene with Brackett, bookstore), others are pointless (again - what the hell is up with the pot-bellied pig?), but even with the whacked out hallucination scenes, it never feels as schizo as the 2007 film. So in all of those respects, the film is a success of sorts. But it’s also rushed, suspiciously lackluster, and never remotely scary or suspenseful, so in THOSE respects, the film is possibly even more of a failure than the first one.

And I say all of this on the authority
of someone who has seen it twice.

So I give it a ? out of 10.

What say you?

* I heard people bitching about a scene where Michael eats a dog. If it’s just because we actually SEE it, then fine, but if the actual idea is what bugs you - shut your damn mouth, because that was something in Carpenter’s film (“he got hungry...”).

HorrorBlips: vote it up!

31 comments:

  1. *Holds head in hands, rocks back in forth*

    I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do!"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good read.

    My review on Sequel-Buzz was positive for two reasons: 1) I was dared to, and 2) I actually liked the film. Like yourself, I seen it twice. I thought after seeing it again my review might change, but no, it stands.

    Take it easy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This sounds like an absolute jumbled mess. After all the reviews that I've read, at the end of the day, I keep going back to the same impetus that supposedly lead Michael down his whacked out path (as drummed up by Zombie): he was raised by a hillbilly family and he was picked on at school. Certainly not the most traumatic of childhoods. He said repeatedly that he would never do another Halloween after the first so definitely a lost bit of integrity there. All in all, I have zero desire to see this. I think The Final Destination will get my hard earned dollars this weekend. Great review, as always.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great review, completely fair (and frankly more merciful than I expected).

    Your pre-embargo "better than the first one!" tease was the only "review" I read beforehand, and literally the only reason I saw this in the theater. So, um, thanks? I guess?

    The theater was about half full when I saw the film on a relatively cool and rainy opening morning in NYC. Some audience members, including myself, giggled intermittently -- particularly when things went all Exorcist / Emily Rose -- but most people held it together. Until the last HORSIE! shot, at which point everyone who hadn't already walked out started to laugh, and didn't stop until the credits rolled. So yeah.

    (I didn't hate the first one: it was a misfire from a director who obviously loved the material. I'd even like to see a longer cut of this film; currently it feels choppy and sloppy, rather than the "organic" shambles of Zombie's other films.)

    I was intrigued that Michael repeatedly reenacts his primordial murder scenario, enduring taunts -- "dirty hippie!" -- and even physical abuse that serve to "justify" his own violence. (He's like a 7-foot tall, supernatural Billy Jack.) As you note, though, he also slaughters random innocents. Combined with Tyler Mane's Monica Seles-like grunting during several of the (over)kills, this makes him seem more like a garden-variety thrill killer than anything more resonant. This isn't The Shape; this is just a mad dog. Which is my problem with Zombie's other Nietzsche Wannabe killer-protagonists, as well: they're basically just arrested-development assholes with lousy taste in music.

    Oddly, one of Tyler Bates' cues reminded me very much of Carpenter/Howarth's "Prince of Darkness" theme.

    P.S.: Weird Al wisecracks about "the Austin Powers Michael Myers" as part of the talk show patter. One of the kills is actually shown hanging by the neck, but that's not the cause of death.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Just kinda out in Saturn or Uranus (pun intended) here but why hasn't William Shatner ever made an appearance in a Halloween movie, I wonder? That would be fun. And where was the older sister in the visions, if it was supposed to be a family reunion? Hmmm...

    ReplyDelete
  6. or rocks back AND forth. either one is fine really.

    ReplyDelete
  7. BC, your review was well written, but I'm frankly baffled you were so kind to this film, especially since you are such a huge fan of the original Carpenter film. Look, I consider myself a huge horror fan, and, yes, I myself purchased my own copy of Zombie's first Halloween film. Now, after having time to reflect about H2, I'm still trying to figure out how I didn't walk out of the theater. You're right, the movie felt terribly rushed. Zombie has never been known to be a good screenwriter, but here it's as if he pounded this out over a weekend. What was the plot of this turkey? Hobo Michael Myers walking across field after field? The best part of the movie (hospital scene) being a dream? If it was a dream, then how the hell did Michael wake up from his gunshot and magically escape the crime scene? And where the hell did he go such that he had to walk for miles across field after field to get BACK to Haddonfield? Speaking of Hobo Myers, loved the bedroll. Where does your typical psycho go to get a bedroll? Don't even get me started on Loomis. You're right, Zombie should have just cut him out completely. I can't believe Zombie wrote him the way he did. Donald Pleasance would be ashamed. Why did McDowell even accept this part anyway? Enough ranting. I just hope you see the light and realize this movie makes the first one look Oscar worthy.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I compared the two side by side and I agree with what you said, it's unfair to judge the quality of the movie if all you're expecting is for it to be similar to the original, because it's not. hell, if he changed the characters names and such, you'd have no idea it was of the same "series."

    All in all, I'd say i should have waited to see it at a cheaper theater that plays movies several weeks after its release, but what can you do?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yup my fav part was also the not so real hospital cop out. Wow the cinematography sucked through the entire film. The only cool shot was a high contrast helicopter shot of Hobo Meyers walking through a field. Strode was pretty annoying also. *whine and cry in a high pitched manner* And yes wtf was up with the pot bellied pig business? Then there is the visions of the meyers mother IE any way to get moon zombie back into the film. Give me a break, they should have just made her a stripper again. She could have played that one who runs into the wall (funniest part of the movie).

    ReplyDelete
  10. for what its worth-- i havent seen this movie yet-- but the film critic's scene in DR is one of my favorite scenes!

    ReplyDelete
  11. ... Nice review, but as for the "unlike horror fans" comment.. IDK about the rest of us, but I have been on a Really Sucky budget for a while, so, I got to be really choosy about what films see in theaters, and at least on this weekend, I decided to give my 12 bucks to FD, and Brother, I do not regret it.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I agree with alot of what you said, but there are a few things I want to point out. As far as senseless killings...Myers kills Laurie's new friend and "WolfBoy" because that's what he does, he kills her friends! That's what he did in Carpenter's Halloween and that's what he's always done. Big Lou and Co. at the strip joint getting murdered makes perfect sense to me. After all, when Michael was being bullied in school, what was it about? His mother being a stripper! The kids thought that made his mom was a whore and tormented him because of it - in Zombie's Halloween, him being bullied is the catalyst to his downward spiral (among all the other fucked up shit going on in his life)! So it makes sense that he would harbor some kinda resentment towards her former boss and the whole stripclub world! Don't forget...Michael, even when he was stuffing dead cats in his book bag and skinning his rats in the sink, was a momma's boy. His whole mission in this is to kill Laurie so he can be with his mother again. It's all about his mother!

    The bookstore scenes are pretty obvious. They show Laurie outside of a small-town cozy "bookshop" and then cut to a line of people wrapped around a busy city block waiting to get into a huge "Borders"-like chain store.

    Having Dr.Loomis as the fame whore was a great idea, but it definitely served no purpose to the structure of the story...i wish his character did, but I can deal with that. He took Donald Pleasance's character and flipped it on it's fuckin head...good for Rob Zombie...I dig that kinda shit. What I didn't like about that whole thing was when the father of Laurie's friend from the 1st film approaches him with the picture of his daughter, Loomis doesn't recognize her. If he had been writing a book on the whole ordeal and spent his whole life engulfed in Micheal Myers' life, I would think that he would at least have a knowledge of his victims! Pictures, names, faces?! WTF?!

    I saw it twice this weekend and it was definitely better the 2nd time because the 1st was marred by "the expectation factor". I think his directing gets better each time. He created a dark, tense and brutal slasher film like I've never seen before. When he goes after the hillbilly chick in the truck and it goes silent except for the sound of his "snarling" under his mask...that is great directing! Same with Annie Brackett's murder scene...the silence heightened the tension to the point of being uncomfortable. You can't tell me that the head stomping scene wasn't one of the coolest fucking death scenes in Halloween history!

    I think you really liked it, but you wanna find reasons to NOT like it because you don't want to get bashed by all your B-D cohorts, who are the biggest bunch of Zombie-Haters out there!

    You can pick apart any slasher movie and find a thousand things wrong with it...but at the end of the day, let's not forget...they are SLASHER FILMS!!! Carpenter's original Halloween was a classic because it started something HUGE, not because it had a great story and everything about it was perfect! It was a guy in a mask killing babysitters for no reason! All the reasoning came later in the series.

    I don't make excuse for Zombie's fuck-ups in his movies...his wife's bad acting, his inability to pinpoint a year as to when things are happening...no movie and no director is perfect. But when I hear so-called "horror fans" saying in their reviews that they didn't like it because there's too much swearing or too many STABS! I can only shake my head and say "WTF!".

    When did horror fans become such pussies!

    ReplyDelete
  13. You contradict yourself - Michael had no reason in the 1978 original, so yeah, it was fine for him to kill her friends. But now he DOES have a reason - to be with (or kill, they still haven't made it clear) Laurie. But yet he for some reason goes to the concert (let's assume that there's a scene where he actually sees them there - because there isn't) and kills her new friend in the van (again, we have to assume that there was a scene where he followed her, otherwise how would he know that she was in the van of a guy she just met 5 minutes ago?). But then why would he leave the concert to go kill (and rape) Annie? Laurie was right there!

    And since he was up and about on Oct 29th, we have to assume that's been "awake" since the night he escaped, a year ago. So why did he take so long to kill Big Lou if he had - as you say - such a resentment toward him?

    That's the whole problem with both of the films - Zombie gave Michael a motive this time around, and then had him spend most of the film(s) doing everything BUT go about accomplishing it.

    ReplyDelete
  14. And no, if I really liked it, I would say so. If you were a regular reader, you'd know I really like a lot of movies the other sites hate (The Hitcher remake, The Return, Friday the 13th 8) and dislike a lot of movies the other sites rave over (Laid to Rest being the most recent example). So that's BS. I thought the movie was OK, and my review states as much.

    ReplyDelete
  15. The most amazing thing to me about this is that Zombie spent SO MUCH TIME talking about how he hated that Michael was just a killing machine, a boogieman, so he spent half his remake making Michael "human", and then spent the entirety of the sequel with Michale as a n unstoppable killing machine. If Carpenter's Myers was the boogieman then Zombie's H2 Myers is a terminator. Shot in the head? Followed by horrific car crash that rips a guy's face apart? No injuries whatsoever. Beaten to a pulp with a bat and a tire iron? No injuries. Laurie locks herself in a car? Well, just flip it over with your bare hands!

    Nevermind his apparent teleportation abilities. I don't know how far the party was from the Brackett house, but Michael walks from the party to the house, kills the cop then stalks and kills Annie all before Laurie and the other friend get to the Brackett house, leaving a couple minutes after Michael kills the OTHER friend.

    Another question: was there ANY point to having Loomis back? Was there any reason to have Loomis on the Chris Hardwick show with Weird Al? Was there any point to having Howard Hesseman and the whole Uncle Meat scene? (Not REALLY complaining because along with Brad Dourif and Danielle Harris, his was the only good performance)

    And lastly, it kills me that Zombie's been saying that now, since he wasn't encumbered by the well-written, well-plotted story that Carpenter came up with, he could FINALLY tell the story he wanted to tell. Really, Rob? So the Halloween story you really wanted to tell was a disjointed mess with awful dialogue, basically no plot, no motivation and GIANT contradictions to the STORY CHANGES YOU MADE for the first movie?

    The thing that pisses me off the most is that I actually had some fun with it...

    ReplyDelete
  16. I have to disagree with one of the posters above as I thought the cinematography was on of the best things going for this movie. There were some truly great shots and camera movements that rarely show up in horror movies.

    For the most part, yes, this movie is messy and a bit all over the place with both characterization and logic. However, I think we have all likely glazed over some of these same problems from the original series in nostalgic hindsight.

    I went in this movie with zero expectations so I was a bit suprised that I actually enjoyed watching the film (unlike The Final Destination). I am curious as to how Zombie would direct a film he did not actually write. His all-task storytelling doesn't serve him well and it would be interesting to see how he would direct from the script of another.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Man, some people need to chill out. Geez! That's all I have to say.

    ReplyDelete
  18. hmmm, for someone who is a self proclaimed self righteous horror supporting fan who detests torrent downloads, you seemed to have no problem downloading 'wolverine: origins' and other screener copies. me thinks you be a tad on the hypocritical side.

    ReplyDelete
  19. I downloaded Wolverine after paying to see it in theaters, because I wanted to see if it was any different as the FOX people were saying it was (and they were lying). And if I watch a screener it's a copy from the studio itself, not a download. So uh, no, I'm not a hypocrite, and people who download movies instead of paying for them are scumbags, period.

    ReplyDelete
  20. I agree with the sequence of events it terms of being at the concert and then Annie's house, I asked my friends the same question when we left the movie...Again, this movie isn't perfect, but I think it makes sense that he kills the people that she cares about (and wolfboy too). The "ghost" of young Michael keeps asking the mother "ghost" if it's time for Laurie yet, it she ready...and the mother keeps saying, "not yet". It's almost like the mother wanted her to go completely fucking insane first, and killing everyone around her seems like a pretty good way to make that happen.

    As far as why it took so long to kill Big Lou...why did it take a year later for him to do any of it?! It's HALLOW-FUCKING-WEEN!!! It's a movie! I guess he could've got things started the following week after some resting up, but then they would've had to call it NOVEMBER 6th!!! Things like that about a movie are the things you should "let go" of.

    I agree with you on LAID TO REST...that shit was overrated.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Fair point, B.Stank, but answer me this: how does he know he's killing people she cares about? How does he know to kill her friend at the party? How does he know about the party at all? How does he know that she's going to be at the party? Does she care about the people at the strip club?

    The only people that Michael had a reason to kill were the rednecks (what? Rednecks in a Rob Zombie movie? The hell you say!) who beat him with the bat and tire iron.

    Also, a random weirdness question: Why in the hell does the Rabbit in Red have a picture of a half-naked, fifteen-years-dead Deborah Myers up on the wall? Talk about creepy!

    Patron: Can I get a lap dance from that broad?
    Waitress: Sorry, she doesn't work here anymore. Her son killed her husband and family and she killed herself.
    Patron: Um....ok... Nevermind then...

    What a terrible fucking movie...

    ReplyDelete
  22. i feel that Loomis was the biggest part of the suck that this movie had. otherwise, i LOVED watching Myers in this..the towering hulk, the hobo effect they gave him, etc.

    but you make great points about how its all .. just...missing something.

    The brutality of the stabbing was kewl in the movie. But it ultimately..was just the fun of watching this big mofo kill people. not necessarily looking for gore.

    but..after watching FD4 I left the theater liking H2 more.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Garth...I already made my point about the strip club murders in another posting above. And as far as the poster of his mom being there, they're trying to cash in on the fact that some dead/now famous chick danced at their club! So a patron would never ask for a lapdance from her because the murders are now MANSON -LIKE in terms of notoriety! That's obvious...that's what businessmen do...people pay to sleep in the same house that LIZZIE BORDEN murdered her parents in! Thats not crazy? Big Lou's character was a scumbag who made money by exploiting women and now he's just exploiting one of his dancer's death! That's why his bouncer kept making comments about him and $$$...he was on TV as Frankenstein promoting his club for $$$!

    ReplyDelete
  24. Michael didn't rape Annie. She was wearing a loose fitting robe and about to get in the shower. I assumed Michael just pulled it off when he was trying to grab her. I never even thought of rape for a second.

    ReplyDelete
  25. I liked your review there bud. I'm an entertainment editor for my college's newspaper and i'm doing an article on this movie and looking over other people's opinions such as yours help a lot. Yours was in extra detail so you really helped and I like your opinions on it all. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  26. BC i agree with you..i love the Halloween franchise but i went into this with an open mind and honestly it was a jumbled mess..but i enjoyed it.. it was different and it was Rob Zombies vision (even if the weinstein douchebags did rush it) I believe he went back to the strip club because they are using his mother as a way to make money now and killed the owner for that (my thoughts) as for the pot bellied pig i think it was showing her sane side one last time before she read the book and lost her mind...I need to see it again and plan on it when i buy it on blu-ray...I agree with what u said...i left the theater going..did i like this...my girlfriend loved it because she got scared and jumped but she is just being introduced to horror so its understandable haha... I wanna see the directors cut that will be released..cuz i have a feeling the directors cut from rob will be a completely different movie..i truly believe the weinsteins douchebagged this film but the dreams were intense and kinda surreal...now i just have to wait to see who they bring into do Halloween3D... and what they will do with michael since he is now dead in the rebooted series

    ReplyDelete
  27. I was disappointed with the film. Michael was scary because he was silent, quick and deadly. Zombie killed the human componant of Michael, and replaced it with a violent killer. There is too much violent pointless killing. Despite the disorganization of the film, Rob did try to tie in the "original" Halloween series. Obviously the hospital "dream" sequence in the beginning. The Halloween party is reminscent of Halloween 4 where Jamie's (Michaels neice)adoptive sister and friends go to party. Similar killings occur in that film. And the ending where Lori comes out in Mike's mask is similar to Jamie coming out with a bloody knife in a clown halloween costume in Halloween 4. I was not a huge fan of the "angel/mother" sequence.

    Personally I think Rob set us up for a really great and interesting addition...Laurie in the institution, smirking like Mike...could be a great new killer on our hands.

    ReplyDelete
  28. this movie coulda been soooo much better. i thought cutting rob zombie loose and lettin him make his own halloween movie was awesome but it just didnt work out. the most baffling plot hole to me was that nobody seems to care that michaels body AND the one guy's head disappear from the accident...its just yea he'll turn up, did they not find the truck? he still shows that he could direct the shit out of some scenes (annies death) but his writing is atrocious. Brackett was the shit tho, i wish they killed laurie during the scene where annie died n just had brackett hunt him down n go charles bronson on his ass

    ReplyDelete
  29. The ending couldn't just be her. Some killings couldn't have happened in the timeline. Like the sherrif at her door while she was at the party. She also would not have been able to overpower people like Michael did for example at the strip club. Not to mention that there was a witness that actually saw the car tipped over and a girl being carried off to a shack.

    ReplyDelete
  30. As I've told many friends, "this is a movie that deserves to be seen, even if only to look at it". I completely understand when people tell me they hate. I'm very on-the-fence about it.

    ReplyDelete
  31. I know I'm years late on a reply but I seen this movie twice in theaters, mostly because I felt the way you felt during the first remake, like I had to have missed a chunk of the story somewhere. I wound up walking out of the theater during my second viewing. The only thing is, I found this movie to be very inconsistent, even with it's own first film. Such as Mrs. Zombies character. In the first she was kind of the glue that kept the red neck family together, and the only one concerned with the well being of her kids, (shown by being the parent to leave work to go to a parent teacher conference even though his step father wasn't working.) Also, how she made regular visits to Smith's Grove for Michael but they want you to believe in this that she wants Michael to kill Laurie. To me that conflicts with her character. I won't even begin to talk about the absurdity of Dr. Loomis.... Also the lack of wearing the mask in this film was out of character for Michael Myers being in the remake he wouldn't take his mask off. If you take away the psycho flashes and the dream sequence at the beginning, and literally the entire rest of the movie is a complete mess of inconsistencies of it's own first movie.

    ReplyDelete

Movie & TV Show Preview Widget

Google