| Halloween II |
| Written by Mob | |
Rob Zombie and I have a checkered history, cinematically speaking. I liked House of 1,000 Corpses (warts and all), really liked The Devil’s Rejects (in spite of his ridiculous penchant for cursing every other word at times) and was rather let down by the 2007 Halloween re-imagining (though webmaster Skinny liked it), so I wasn’t sure what to expect with this new sequel. I even passed on the theatrical run because I honestly wasn’t just dying to see if I’d be let down even further. The film opens amidst the aftermath of the first film, with Laurie Strode (Taylor-Compton) and her friend Annie (Harris) being taken to the hospital after they’ve barely survived the attacks of Michael Myers (Mane), who Laurie remains unaware is actually her long lost brother. While a montage of gruesome shit happens at the hospital (close-ups of the docs cleaning all the wounds inflicted in the first film), the coroner and his assistant cart away Myer’s body, but are waylaid by a car accident, which leaves one of them gouting up blood in the wreckage and repeating the word “fuck” about 38 times, which just plays into the generalization I’ve developed in my mind that Zombie’s writing skills are akin to a 10 yr old who’s just learned a new swear. Myers sees the apparition of his dead mother Deborah (Moon Zombie) and wanders away from the meatwagon, never to be found. We sit through what is revealed to be (POSSIBLE SPOILER) a rather extended dream sequence that pays homage to the hospital scenes of the original sequel and then Laurie wakes up screaming in her room at the Brackett household, revealing that we’re now set two years after the killings. Sheriff Brackett (Dourif) has been kind enough to take Laurie in, yet she seems fairly antagonistic towards her best friend Annie, which a therapy session later reveals is because she finds her to be a constant reminder of the killings. Y’know, because in typical selfish teenager fashion, all this happened just to Laurie and no one else… Dr. Sam Loomis (McDowell) has meanwhile parlayed his involvement in the Myers case into a lucrative book deal, becoming something of an assholish prima donna, under attack from the families of the victims from the first film. His promotional tour coincides with the release of a new book called The Devil Walks Among Us, which is set to be released on Halloween. Michael Myers is now a bearded hobo who’s evidently been hiding in the woods, living off the land for the past 2 seasons; I suppose that the cops didn’t look very hard for the missing corpse of a guy that killed 15 people, because who needs closure? He suddenly powers on and begins the long trek back to Haddonfield, led by the ghostly visage of his mother and a younger version of himself, accompanied by a white horse. He makes short work of some hillbillies (it is a Rob Zombie film after all, don’t think we’ll go too long without some redneck color), then pays a visit to the strip club that his dear old Mom used to work at along the way. By the way, this is the saddest, most depressing strip club evar, two gross dudes working there with one tired stripper: you pray there’s not a cover charge. Laurie lives with what used to be her best bud, but spends most of her time with a couple of trampy co-workers/pals, which makes me think that she’s a real ingrate, because all she does is argue with the person keeping a roof over her head. Laurie is out with her ‘real’ friends at a Halloween party when Myers finally starts his killing spree, but everything eventually comes full circle. This film is amazingly frustrating, because there are moments of clarity, gorgeous images framed in just such a way as to hint at what a great looking film Zombie could make if he wasn’t so hellbent on throwing in as much cursing, vulgarity and oddball cameos as he can: Margot Kidder as a psychiatrist? Hilarity! Imagine all this happening while he intersperses the whole mess with some vigorously violent kills that border on cartoonish at times and it borders on maddening. Laurie isn’t a sympathetic character, all she does is treat the very people helping her like complete shit, and while I’m mentioning the Brackett home: why is Laurie’s room a graphitti-painted nightmare? It looks more like an abandoned crackhouse than a sheriff’s home. And talking of the sheriff’s home, in the latter half of the film, once the murders are happening, a girl calls the authorities and tries desperately to remember the street address, rather than simply blurting out “IT’S SHERIFF BRACKETT’S HOUSE!” ? It’s just such a poor flub of writing that it just made me sigh a bit. The film treats Loomis as something of an afterthought, removing him from things entirely wouldn’t change the story at all; he turns up in Laurie’s life again after seeing the climactic scenes of the film on the news. I also wonder where he was, because he’s watching the news, then five minutes later is on the scene at a remote barn somewhere; where was his hotel, anyway? Rob Zombie continues to be a maddening filmmaker, clearly exhibiting the ability to make a sharp looking arthouse horror film if he would apply himself to the idea even slightly but instead he chooses to fall back on the old standbys of redneck trappings and vulgarity for the sake of hearing characters say fuck every other word. The weird thing is that I would criticize Tarantino for making his actors sound exactly like him at times, but I don’t even hear Zombie’s voice in here, as he’s not like a Redd Foxx album in interviews, which makes me wonder how the hell he can write this dialog and think that it rings true as it is being spoken? Oh, and the director’s cut ending was pretty unexpected, actually had me gut laughing for about 5 minutes because it was so ridiculous and surprising. I can’t honestly recommend this unless, like me, you’re driven by morbid curiosity. 3.5/10 |
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