Laurie is found armed with a gun and covered in blood as she wanders the dark and deserted streets of Haddonfield. The girl is picked up by the police and hospitalized, and the same happens to Dr. Loomis and Annie Brackett, who are seriously injured. Michael Myers' body is transported to the morgue, but the ambulance carrying the killer is involved in an accident, and Michael wakes up from what was only apparent death.
One year later. Laurie has moved in with her friend Annie and her father, Sheriff Brackett, but she is continuously tormented by nightmares in which she sees Michael. Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis has become a successful writer thanks to a book in which he recounts the behind-the-scenes story of the Myers case. But Michael returns to Haddonfield after a year of wandering and is ready to claim Laurie's life, his sister.
Let's revisit some recent history.
In 2007, Rob Zombie brings the iconic masked killer Michael Myers back to the screen in a prequel/remake of Carpenter's film. The singer/director's fans are divided: on one side, those enthusiastic about the restyling provided to the assassin, and on the other, those disappointed by seeing the eccentric director bent to the logic of the recent Hollywood market. Zombie achieves the highest box office ever seen by the saga with his "Halloween – The Beginning" (over $80 million worldwide), and despite the producers' requests, the director says he is absolutely against returning for a possible sequel.
News soon denied, since Zombie agrees to direct "Halloween II" saying he cares about continuing his "own" creature rather than leaving it in the hands of others. The production of "Halloween II" begins immediately in December 2008 with a pre-production period of just two months, one month of filming, and then a rush in post-production for a release in American theaters in August.
The production chain that involved "Halloween II" immediately makes one think of two things: contradiction and haste. The contradiction lies in the sudden change of mind the director had regarding his participation in the film, but we estimate Zombie for everything he represents and has done in his long career in the entertainment world, and if it were the lavish compensation to push him back into the arms of Michael Myers, we like to think that his desire to complete a story already begun is the true motivation. However, regarding the production haste from which "Halloween II" was born, there are no excuses: the film was made in a short time, and the result shows it very clearly.
The film is a patchwork of confused and poorly assembled ideas that cancel each other out, and the screenplay's very approximate level only makes "Halloween II" a product that is difficult to save.
Zombie started from the idea of transforming his Michael from a supernatural monster into a suburban psychopath, with a "realistic" genesis to his violence, and in this sequel, he tries to continue on this path. Michael eats, expresses his anger even verbally, seems to feel emotions, has a long beard like a hermit, in short, he is a human being in every respect. However, he survived a point-blank gunshot to the face, which is not explained at all (strange...), and his almost psychic contact with his sister has a supernatural quality. The tangibility of evil elaborated in the first film, therefore, has some unclear second thoughts here.
Another new element is the interest in the world of psychoanalysis and dreams in general. Michael dreams awake of his mother, spectral and elegant like a fairy tale fairy, who urges him to reunite the family; moreover, he dreams of a white horse, which the director insists on making known with a caption at the beginning of the film that represents the desire for freedom and the impulse. Laurie also dreams, but if the killer's dream activity is paradoxically "angelic," hers is filled with horrible nightmares in which she is both the perpetrator and the victim of the atrocities of her brother and his family. The introduction of the dream element, beyond the ridiculous presence of the stallion and the too obvious reference to psychoanalytic theories on the unconscious, could have been an interesting element, also because it is unprecedented for the saga, but unfortunately, it was handled very poorly.
The idea is of great approximation and superficiality, given the lack of real motivations that would link this dream element to the unity of the narration, as well as the frequency – too frequent – with which the director resorts to it, also tends to weigh down the development of the action. In the end, the numerous dream scenes appear simply as gratuitous demonstrations of Zombie's talent, who seems to have returned to the times when he directed the music videos of his songs, and the easiest way to bring back the always beautiful wife Sheri Moon.
Unfortunately, these touches of poorly managed visionary talent, which nevertheless allow us to recognize the director of "The House of 1000 Corpses," are accompanied by a really disarming writing that aims at the subversion of the main characters and absolute narrative emptiness. The plot could be summarized with a simple body count, and, if it is true that "Halloween" was born and grew as a slasher, one could still aspire to greater narrative complexity, given also the considerable duration of almost two hours and the noble intentions of the author, rather than reducing everything to a simple alternation of dream scenes and
killing sprees. The film often goes in circles, seeming almost like a sterile celebration of murder; in the long run, the mechanism tires, bores, and gives the impression that some killings are really superfluous (especially that of the hunters on the pickup truck, not to mention the long scene in the hospital).
Another sore point, as anticipated, is the subversion – for the worse – of all the main characters. We appreciate Zombie's (also screenwriter) good intentions to change the cards on the table, but often the characterization appears either too approximate or completely unbelievable. We'll skip Michael Myers, who, although endowed with a new and really appreciable look, begins to resemble Jason in everything, and focus on Laurie Strode and Dr. Loomis. The former is described a bit superficially as a hysterical punk who shouts-gets angry-cries, completely lacking a connection to the background given by the previous film; she is almost another-Laurie, unreal and unbelievable, whose only point of interest is the ambiguous mental contact with her brother, although the idea has been
widely used in chapters 4-5-6 of the original saga (it was the niece Jamie). Loomis, on the other hand, comes out as a completely new character (and he himself says so at the beginning of the film!), a bit of a dandy arriviste, bordering on the ridiculous, who can no longer be seen as the historical nemesis of the monster, given his own negative connotation. And we all know how every villain needs a counterpart, otherwise, the loss of effectiveness is just around the corner.
If taken for individual scenes, therefore, "Halloween II" may present some points of interest, but its overall vision does not do justice to the saga of which it is a part nor to Rob Zombie himself, who with this film crafts his worst work to date.
Fans of ultra-violence will still have something to enjoy.
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