Franchises: Halloween. Halloween II (2009)

I know that I was far from the only person who didn't care for Rob Zombie's Halloween. Not only was it nearly universally hated by critics (which is nothing new when it comes to horror films, anyway), but it polarized the horror community at large, to say the least. Some really enjoyed it and applauded Zombie for doing something other than just creating a carbon copy of John Carpenter's original, while others felt it was absolutely unnecessary (which it was) and a complete bastardization of a beloved classic. But, despite whatever your personal opinion might've been, there was no denying that it was an enormous commercial success, making over $80 million from a budget of just $15 million and becoming the highest grossing entry in the franchise up until the Blumhouse trilogy. In fact, it set a record for a Labor Day weekend opening, which it would maintain until The Equalizer 3 in 2023. And once those numbers came in, it was guaranteed we were going to see another one. Since I was absolutely livid about the film when I first saw it, I hoped there was a slim chance that the next film would be a continuation of Halloween: Resurrection and give proper closure to the original series. But, I knew in my gut that the next movie would most likely be a sequel to the remake. I didn't like it but I had to face facts, and once I did, I thought, "Well, if they get a different director who'll take it away from all that white trash BS, it might have potential." Then, I heard the news that Zombie was coming back to write and direct, and I promptly lost all hope and wrote it off. I had such a miserable experience watching his first Halloween and later dealing with some of its obnoxious fans online that I was not looking forward to reliving that with the sequel. And when I saw a teaser for it in either the spring or early summer of 2009, it solidified my decision not to have anything to do with it. In the months leading up to its release, I didn't read any news on its production, interviews with Zombie or the cast, nothing. I was through. And on the very day it was released, it was announced that Zombie's next film would be a second remake of The Blob, which made me despise him even more than I already did at the time. It wasn't bad enough that he'd butchered something that I love, twice, but he was now going after something else that was special to me. It was unbelievable, and I counted my lucky stars when that didn't work out.

Everything I heard about this movie just irritated me. For one, I'd wished that they'd kept the original title of H2, just to make some distinction between the original series and this continuity. Now, we had two movies called Halloween and two called Halloween II, meaning future generations were going to be as confused as to what order to watch the franchise (and, of course, Blumhouse would only make that worse by adding a third movie that's just called Halloween). For another, that teaser trailer, with the shots of the ghostly Deborah Myers telling Michael to kill, was not a good first impression. Not only was I aggravated that Zombie, again, just had to put his wife in, but that mother angle suggested that he really didn't know the difference between Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, or even Norman Bates, for that matter. But when I heard specifics from online reviewers and others who'd seen it, I was dumbfounded. White horses? Nonsensical images? More redneck nonsense? Laurie Strode becoming a foul-mouthed, hateful Goth chick? Michael Myers looking like a hobo with a big grizzly beard and not wearing the mask that much? It was nuts. Then, I heard some rumors as to Zombie's motivations behind making it in the first place, suggesting it was meant as revenge against those who didn't like his first Halloween. Needless to say, as far as I was now concerned, Rob Zombie could go straight to hell and I would never, ever subject myself to his continued sodomizing of a franchise that I love. And as bold of a statement as that is, if I hadn't started this blog, I might've stuck to that conviction, at least longer than I ultimately did. But when I first decided to review the Halloween franchise back in 2013, I knew I would have to swallow my pride and watch Zombie's Halloween II, which is exactly what I did that September. I braced and psyched myself up, as I knew it wasn't going to be pretty, but I eventually did hold my breath and dive in.

The first thing I'll say is that, in stark contrast to when I watched his first one, Zombie's Halloween II didn't enrage me as much as I expected. It still wasn't easy to sit through, and there are a lot of things about it that I don't like, especially in the Director's Cut, but I think I'd gotten used to Zombie's style by that point and knew going in what I was getting into. I also really think this one does a few things better than the first, and one thing I cannot deny is that it is often absolutely visually stunning. And I can't help but admire how this is a mainstream franchise entry that does not give a shit. Outside of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, this is definitely the most unique and outside-of-the-box entry. Halloween Ends comes close, purely because of its unexpected story direction, but it's nowhere near as bizarre and surreal as this one. And I'm not at all surprised that Halloween II has a very loyal cult following, as it's so unusual that it kind of merits one. But, it still has enough problems to where I can't say it's a film that I love or have revisited much since I first did these reviews. Unlike what I initially did with Zombie's first one, I've never given this the Movies That Sucks label, but this is still a flick that leaves me conflicted whenever I look at it, especially in regards to its two versions.

During one of her routine visits while he was incarcerated at Smith's Grove Sanitarium, Deborah Myers brought her son, Michael, a statuette of a white horse. He told her that it reminded him of a dream he had where he saw her dressed in white, leading a white horse down a hallway, telling him that she was going to take him home. Fifteen years later, Michael has broken out and gone on his Halloween night killing spree in Haddonfield in an attempt to reach his sister, Laurie Strode. After narrowly surviving his rampage, Laurie wanders the streets in shock after shooting Michael point-blank. She's found by Sheriff Brackett, who takes her to the hospital, where her friend, Annie Brackett, and Michael's psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel Loomis, are also taken after their own attacks. Michael's body is loaded up into a coroner's van but, en route to the morgue, the vehicle hits a cow, killing one paramedic and injuring the other. Michael emerges from the van and, after killing the survivor, follows a ghostly vision of his mother and a white horse. Later that night, Laurie awakens in the hospital, and after checking on Annie, is horrified when Michael appears. As he murders the nurse on duty, Laurie runs and hides, but is eventually tracked down and cornered. Just as Michael is about to kill her, she awakens from the latest in a series of nightmares she's had since that night. It's now one year later, and Laurie is living with the Bracketts, while working at a coffee shop. Badly traumatized, she's trying to come to terms with what happened through therapy, with little success. At the same time, Loomis is embarking on a tour promoting his newest book, The Devil Walks Among Us, but his exploitation of Haddonfield's tragedy and his unlikable, narcissistic personality garner more criticism than praise. Meanwhile, Michael, who has been presumed dead, despite his body never being found, is wandering the countryside, continuing to see visions of his mother, as well as of his younger self. With Halloween approaching, she instructs him to return to Haddonfield and reunite the family. Laurie also begins having visions similar to Michael's, which include her reenacting his murderous past murders. And when published on Halloween, Loomis' book reveals that Laurie is Michael's sister, which she learns by reading it. By that point, however, Michael has returned to fulfill his mother's wishes.

(Like with the previous movie, for the bulk of this review, I'll be talking about the theatrical version, unless I note otherwise, and will go into the Director's Cut near the end.)

In the lead-up to his first Halloween's release, Rob Zombie did a number of interviews where he made one thing perfectly clear: he wasn't doing a sequel, that he wanted to do something that had a definite beginning, middle, and end, and move on. This attitude was likely motivated by both his own disdain for ongoing sequels and the difficulties he had in working with the Weinsteins. So then, why did he come back after all? That's a bit of a tricky question to answer, as Zombie himself has, like before, given several different reasons as to why. Regardless, when it did seem like he wasn't going to return, the studio listened to pitches from various writers and filmmakers, and came very close to hiring Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, the directors of Inside (and who had also just left the ongoing development of the Hellraiser reboot). According to Malek Akkad, it was felt that there was something lost when these two French filmmakers attempted to create a follow-up to Zombie's film, despite their saying they were fans of his work. Speaking of Zombie, he's said in several interviews that he began feeling protective of what he'd created in his first Halloween, especially when he heard some of the rumored story directions that were being batted around. He then said that he happened to run into Matthew Stein, a Dimension executive (pictured) at the Scream Awards in October of 2008 and, out of curiosity, asked how the sequel was going. Stein's answer was, "It's not goin'," and Zombie later told Mick Garris that he told Stein, "Well, I'll do it if it's still there to be done." His involvement was officially announced that December.

Zombie has also said that, after more than a year away to recharge,  he was now more open to doing a sequel. What's more, Akkad told him that he could have free reign to do whatever he wanted and ignore any of the franchise's established rules, including Moustapha Akkad's commandment that Michael Myers could not die. Zombie has said that was too good of an opportunity to pass up. At the time the movie came out, however, I was hearing rumors that the agreement wasn't that amicable, that Dimension forced Zombie to make Halloween II, and he, in response, sabotaged it by making it so out there, bizarre, and difficult to market. Like I said, there were other rumblings that he made the movie as a big middle finger to all the fans who didn't like his first one and, when you look at it, part of you wonders if that's not so farfetched, especially given how Zombie doubled down on everything people complained about before (the profanity, the unlikable characters, the extreme violence, etc.). Of course, I have to add that I was hearing these "rumors" while I was involved with a certain horror podcast that had vendettas against certain filmmakers and were known for trying to spread discord among the fanbase. And given my own misgivings about Zombie's attitude, I could've also just been reading too much into things.

One thing does seem clear: as miserable an experience as shooting his first Halloween was, shooting Halloween II was even worse for Zombie. A big part of this was, again, due to the Weinsteins, whom Zombie has said he asked to be let out of a three-picture deal with in return for doing this sequel. He said, "I felt like they weren't trusting me on the first one because they wanted to make sure it was a hit, and now they weren't trusting me not to fuck up their hit." Among other woes, they slashed two weeks off his schedule literally the day before filming (Zombie said he literally tore pages out of the script in frustration), and bumped the release date from October, as Zombie had initially been told, to late August once again (although, when talking to Garris, Zombie said that Bob Weinstein told him from the get-go, "I need this thing by August,"). During shooting, several days' worth of work was ruined when, while being flown back to Los Angeles to be edited, the undeveloped film got x-rayed at the airport; there were false accusations of an unsafe working environment, which briefly got production shut down; Bill Moseley got so fed up with the disorganization that he quit after one day and his role had to be recast with someone who already had a role in the film; Daeg Faerch had to be recast as the young Michael Myers because he'd visibly grown since shooting the first one; and Zombie has even said that some crew-members were stealing from the budget! Between all that and, again, having to reshoot the ending, there's no denying that this was probably the most chaotic production he's ever been involved with (when you listen to his audio commentary, he sounds completely burned out and exhausted). Thus, like before, he said he during the promotion that he was not going to do another Halloween and, this time, he stuck to his guns.

Though it didn't do nearly as well as his first one, Rob Zombie's Halloween II still made close to $40 million on a budget of $15 million (Zombie has said he felt it could've done more, but Dimension didn't promote it as much). Regardless, as Matt Draper on YouTube said in his video about both of these movies (part of a series looking at the franchise's different eras), Zombie himself seems to have been the one who suffered the most from their ensuing fallout. Again, despite the announcement that he was doing The Blob next, nothing came of that, and though Zombie says he backed out because he didn't want to do another remake, you have to wonder if it had something to do with Halloween II's so-so box-office. Since then, except for The Munsters, which itself was made under Universal's direct-to-video banner, he hasn't made another studio movie, nor has he had a very substantial budget to work with or a major box-office success, for that matter. In fact, some of his later movies, like 31, have had to be crowdfunded, with none of them have getting any major theatrical releases. And like Draper, I also think it's very unlikely that Zombie will make another movie for the studios, as he doesn't like dealing with their interference or having to make compromises (even if those do sometimes improve the movie).

While Michael Myers himself was the main focus of Zombie's first film, this time the spotlight is on Scout Taylor-Compton's Laurie Strode. To say that Laurie hasn't held up well in the year since her first encounter with Michael is putting it mildly. She's a broken down, emotional wreck who suffers from horrifying nightmares about Michael, terribly misses her parents, and is having to see a therapist, which doesn't seem to help much. While she does have some new friends, Mya and Harley, whom she works with at the coffee shop/bookstore, Uncle Meat's Java Hole, and is also still friends with Annie Brackett, whom she's now living with, she's a pretty miserable person. She looks just as bad as she feels, too, coming off as very haggard and unhealthy, more like a middle-aged neurotic, and her constant squinting, head-rubbing, and other gestures tell you she's in a lot of pain, both physically and mentally. And as Michael heads back to Haddonfield, Laurie's mental state worsens. She appears to develop some sort of psychic link with him, as when he eats part of a dog, she experiences the taste in her mouth and vomits. Also, her nightmares morph into horrific visions of her acting out Michael's initial murders, only on Annie, and she too begins seeing visions of the late Deborah Myers. Worst of all, she learns that she's Michael's sister when, out of curiosity, she reads The Devil Walks Among Us, Dr. Loomis' new book. This causes her to all but snap, as she decides to move out of the Brackett home, lashes out at Annie over this secret, which her father kept from both of them, and decides to go out to a Halloween party with Mya and Harley. Of course, things only continue to get worse for her from there on out.

I will give both Rob Zombie and Taylor-Compton credit for creating a pretty realistic depiction of Laurie's PTSD, and I do think the latter's performance is stronger than it was in the previous movie (though the Director's Cut makes it hard to sympathize with her, as we'll get into). However, why does Laurie now come off as a punk/Goth girl? Does surviving an encounter with a knife-happy killer typically inspire someone to go down this road? Maybe it does for some, but the way Laurie dresses, with some tattoos

here and there, her listening to rock and metal music, the nature of the place she works at, and her two new friends, make for such a drastic 180 from who she was before that it doesn't feel natural to me. And I can deal with Laurie having posters of Alice Cooper and the like on her wall, as well as all the rock and metal graffiti, and even the various tags and posters that say "fuck." But why, in the name of all that is decent, does she have a poster of Charles Manson, with graffiti around it that says, "IN CHARLEY WE TRUST?" You'd think after what she's been through, that's not something she'd want on her wall, let alone over her bed!

Going back to Matt Draper, as he said, of the three movies that deal with Laurie Strode's PTSD following her first encounter with Michael, this is the bleakest, by far. Unlike the previous movie, where she was at least capable of defending herself, Laurie's fragile mental state here leaves her unable to do much other than either run and scream, or sit on the ground, scream, and/or cry. During the climax, she does nothing but flail around, under the (possible) delusion that she's being held down. And by the end of the

movie, she's literally lost everything: Harley and Mya have been killed, Annie dies in her arms (Taylor-Compton's performance there is particularly heartbreaking), she's abducted by Michael and taken to an isolated shack in the countryside, and like her brother, is now seeing visions of both Deborah and young Michael. And both versions end with Laurie succumbing to what's going on, becoming like Michael, and suffering one of two different but extremely dark fates.

Some people have even suggested that Laurie herself was the killer all along, and Michael was simply a figment of her deteriorating mental state. But, like with High Tension, there are a bunch of reasons why this doesn't make sense. If that is the case, then what was all that business at the beginning with Michael getting out of the ambulance and first seeing the vision of his mother and the white horse? You could say it was all part of Laurie's nightmare but then, why do they talk about how Michael's body was never 

found in the actual story? (Plus, Rob Zombie himself has said that the sequence with Laurie and Michael at the hospital is the nightmare, which I already felt should've been kind of obvious.) How was Laurie going around and killing people in out of the way places, in the middle of the night, without Brackett and Laurie noticing she was constantly disappearing from the house? How do you explain people's reactions when they come across "Michael"? If Michael didn't exist, then how could that one cop have told Brackett that somebody saw "a large man" 

carrying Laurie away from the crash site during the third act? And if Michael was never there, then where did Laurie get the mask she's wearing when she comes out of the shack at the end? This interpretation mainly applies to the theatrical version and, specifically, how it ends, whereas the Director's Cut is much more cut and dry in that regard.

Utterly unlikable, albeit in an entertaining way, is Malcolm McDowell's second turn as Dr. Samuel Loomis. Like Laurie, Loomis has changed dramatically in the year since his near fatal encounter with Michael, and not in a good way. He's gone from an overall well-meaning doctor who, admittedly, did cash in on Michael's case, to a narcissistic, greedy egomaniac who has no qualms about exploiting his former relationship with Michael or the pain of all those who've come into contact with him. He's written this second book that goes into every sordid detail about Michael, including the secret that Laurie is actually his baby sister, and is milking it for every dime it's worth during his promotional tour. He even goes as far as to do an interview promoting in front of the Myers house, and also writes off the disappearance of Michael's body as "police incompetence." This stunt prompts his publicist, Nancy McDonald, to tell him that he might as well go to the cemetery and dance on the victims' graves. Speaking of which, Loomis disrespects and degrades her every chance he gets. And when she tells him that what he's doing at the house is "bad taste," he snarls, "My God, it's business, woman! Business! Besides, bad taste is the petrol that drives the American dream." He then gives her the cliché, "When I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you." Loomis also doesn't take kindly when he's criticized for making money off of other people's pain, or blamed for the previous movie's events (I don't know why, though, seeing as how he had washed his hands of Michael by the time he escaped). When asked at a press conference if he thinks Michael is still alive and will kill again, he loses it, yelling, "Look, let me make things nice and sparkling clear! Michael Myers is fucking dead! Now, do you brain-dead gossip-mongers want me to spell that out for you?! D-E-A-D!" Even after Kyle Van Der Klok, the father of Lynda, shows up at a book signing and pulls a gun on him, Loomis later just sneers, "All part of the job, I suppose. Spoon-feeding dribble to the masses. Argh! Comes with its own bloody price, doesn't it?" And when Nancy tells him there are going to be consequences for what he's doing, he brushes it off.

Even more so than Laurie, Loomis' personality change doesn't make any sense to me. Why did surviving Michael's rampage prompt him to drop all sense of integrity and morality and just become a greedy exploiter? It feels completely out of left field for someone who, despite his cashing in before, still leapt into action after Michael escaped from Smith's Grove, traveled to Haddonfield to warn Sheriff Brackett, and put himself in serious danger to save Laurie. What, did he just wake up in the hospital and

decide, "Alright, I'm done being a nice guy. I'm going to make money off of this any way that I can,"? Laurie decides something similar after learning that she's Michael's sister, but this does not feel natural. They could've gone into how this was Loomis' personal way of dealing with his own trauma and PTSD, or that he's doing it to squash a deep sense of guilt, but we get no such insight. But all that said, Malcolm McDowell is really fun to watch here. Loomis may be unlikable, but he's often so

exaggerated in how much of an arrogant asshole he is, with McDowell playing it to the hilt, that it becomes quite entertaining. He has some fun lines and moments, like in his first scene, when he says to Nancy McDonald, "Did you just mention 'journalists,' 'cool,' and 'positive' all in the same sentence without throwing up?... It's just quite an oxymoron, my dear." When she then asks if there's going to be a problem, he says, "Ooh, you are quite an odd one, aren't you?" He then complains about the picture of him they're using at the press conference, saying it's "old 

Loomis," adding, "Well, I'm not going in there until you go get me a cup of PG Tips, with a splash of milk, and I want it sizzling hot!" During the scene at the Myers house, before he starts ranting, he tells Nancy, "I'm selling the sizzle, not the steak." Also, before Kyle shows up at the book signing, Loomis has to deal with an overenthusiastic, kind of loony fan who calls himself "Chett, the Bringer of Death," which he absolutely does not want to deal with. He humors the guy, as he has to be forced to leave, and once he's gone, Loomis says to the others, "Well, we

always have one, don't we?" (That moment reminds me of some things I've seen at horror conventions). And he shamelessly hits on a few women, asking one who's much younger than him, as she's having her picture taken with him, "Are you a real redhead?"

Just like his personality switch, Loomis' sudden attempt at redemption at the end comes out of nowhere and feels forced. After he's taped a talk show where he was a guest, along with Weird Al Yankovic, and was absolutely humiliated, he's later sitting in his hotel room, watching the show when it airs, and realizes it's all over for him. He's then sipping on some wine and calls himself an asshole, when he sees a newsflash about how Michael has taken Laurie hostage inside a shack in the woods. This makes him

decide he has to go there and set things right. Now, remember, Lynda's father earlier told Loomis what a piece of trash he is, and even went as far as to pull a gun on him (the gun turned out to be empty), and all that did was mildly annoy him. But being humiliated on a talk show, forever ruining his credibility, suddenly makes him realize the error of his ways and that he must atone for his misdeeds by saving Laurie again. Even though he seems sincere when he arrives at the scene, determined to talk Michael down, and tries to snap Laurie out of her delusions, it really 

feels like he's doing it just to save face. And how stupid could he be to approach Sheriff Brackett at the standoff, especially after he so callously revealed something that Brackett told him in complete confidence in the previous movie? Regardless, in either version, Loomis, for the only time in the series, dies onscreen by Michael's hands.

Speaking of Sheriff Brackett, Zombie seems to have realized that he underused Brad Dourif in the previous film, as he gave him a bigger part here, and the movie is all the better for it. In a sea of foul-mouthed, depraved, and/or utterly unlikable characters that populate both of these movies, Brackett is about the only one who has a heart of pure gold. Having adopted Laurie after her parents were murdered, he's sincerely doing everything he can to give her a stable life and keep her safe, likely feeling guilty since his actions years ago eventually ended up putting the Strodes in Michael's path. He seems to realize it's not going well, though, and is unsure what to do. Besides being such a nice, decent guy who you really root for, the intimate scenes between him, Laurie, and Annie are quite charming and give off something of a warm, family atmosphere. During the scene where they're having dinner, Laurie says she's, "Starvin' like Marvin," and Brackett asks, "Has anybody at this table ever wondered who Marvin is? I mean, the original Marvin who was 'Starving Marvin.' Was it... was it Lee Marvin?" Annie then asks who Lee Marvin was and Brackett, shocked that she doesn't know, goes into this whole spiel, describing Marvin's performance in Cat Ballou. He does it with great enthusiasm, but when neither of them are impressed, he sits down and says they're, "Makin' me feel as old as Methuselah." He then pokes at both of them for being vegetarians, taking about how, "Man was meant to eat meat. We, all of us, have a little bit of caveman in us," and acts like one while eating a slice of pizza. Though Annie finds it embarrassing, Laurie does laugh. Speaking of Annie, I especially love the interplay between her and her father, with her obsession with eating healthy and forcing it on him, much to his annoyance. During the breakfast scene between them, he says he's going to get a sticky bun on his way to work, and when Annie tells him it's, "500 calories of sugar and shit," he enthusiastically responds, "I know it. I know it." On his way out, when she tells him to be sure to get a pizza with a whole-wheat crust, he remarks, "God, Annie. Why don't we just have 'em take the cheese and put it on cardboard? I mean, cardboard's got a lot of fiber, and it's cheap." And when he brings home the pizza, it has a regular crust, as Brackett tells Annie that he "forgot" to order the whole wheat one.

The best parts of Dourif's performance come during the latter half, starting when Brackett reads Loomis' book and learns he revealed that Laurie is Michael Myers' sister. Absolutely furious, especially since it was something he told Loomis because he absolutely had to, he realizes he has to talk to Laurie and tell her the truth before she finds out some other way. But by this point, it's too late. Laurie also reads the book, prompting her to run away from home, telling Annie to give her dad the message, "Angel says, 'Fuck

you!'" When Annie tells him that over the phone, you can really see the pain on Brackett's face. Knowing that Annie's now home alone, he gets one of his men to stand guard at their house and, being the overprotective dad that he is, continuously calls to make sure everything is okay. But his efforts are in vain, as he's later told they received a 911 call from his house, and he arrives there to find that Annie has been murdered. The scene where he finds her naked, brutalized body in the bathroom is hands down one of the saddest, most heart-wrenching scenes I've ever

seen in a horror film, and definitely the saddest in this series. When he first arrives and is told that he doesn't want to see what they've found, Brackett desperately yells, "Where... is she?!" And when he sees her, not only does he really look like someone who's in total shock, pain, and despair, crying his eyes out, but the sound goes away, save for this sad bit of music, and his men have to help him to his feet and escort him outside (this scene is even more gut-wrenching in the Director's Cut). 

Upon learning that Michael has abducted Laurie and they're holed up in a shack, Brackett, despite his overwhelming grief, becomes determined to save her.  He takes command of a major unit and surrounds the shack, ordering Michael to release Laurie and surrender himself. I absolutely love what happens when Loomis arrives on the scene. First, Brackett clocks him right in the face, then pulls him up and angrily tells him, "There's an innocent girl in there I might have kept safe, but for your greedy, fuckin'

book." Wielding a gun, he cocks it and puts it to Loomis' head, "I want to shoot you. I want to shoot you so bad." One of his deputies has to pull him off of Loomis, as he screams, "I want to shoot him! I want to shoot him! I want to fuckin' shoot him! You son of a bitch! He don't deserve to live." He also has none of Loomis' claims that he wants to help, saying, "There is nothing that you have to say that I want to hear," and when Loomis insists, Brackett screams, "GET HIM THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!". But, when Loomis then runs to the shack, Brackett, instead of

shooting him, like he easily could, tells everyone to stand down. Bit while he is instrumental in taking Michael down, actually sniping him through the window in the theatrical version, Brackett is ultimately unable to save Laurie.

As for Danielle Harris' second turn as Annie, I like her much more here than I did before. She's much more sympathetic, dealing with her own trauma over coming close to being killed by Michael Myers, as well as now living with her very troubled friend, often hearing her suffer from the constant nightmares. While fairly stable here, in the Director's Cut, Annie and Laurie's friendship is disintegrating, as they're often at each other's throats, and Annie has to suffer through a lot of verbal abuse, as I'll go into. Unfortunately, Harris doesn't have much to do other than that, especially in the theatrical version. We don't see what her day-to-day life is when she's not having to deal with Laurie's issues or trying to make her dad eat healthy (which, as I said, do make for some wonderful interactions); for that matter, we don't ever see her outside the house, in either version. I guess with so many characters and plotlines going on, Zombie probably couldn't devote more time to her, which is a shame. However, I do like the bit where this one deputy has to stand guard at Brackett's house and Annie, for whatever reason, doesn't like him and won't even let him inside. I know it's weird that I find it funny how douchey she is to the guy for no reason, but I guess since I find her more likable here, I can overlook it and get some snickers. And like I said, her death, both when she actually dies in Laurie's arms and when Brackett sees her body, are so well-done. 

Since Halloween 4, I've mentioned how several of the series' directors seemed to have gotten Michael Myers confused with Jason Voorhees, casting some really large, hulking guys to play him and having him come across as more brutish than he was in the first two movies. Well, here, he pretty much is Jason: he sees visions of his mother, lives out in the wilderness near Haddonfield (at least, I assume he's stayed close to Haddonfield; the movie makes it a bit unclear), is a huge man who kills people in extreme ways, etc. And, as you might expect, I don't care for this portrayal at all. Michael being spurred on by his deceased mother may be a different idea for the Halloween franchise, but we've already had two mama's boy killers in the pop culture pantheon with Jason and Norman Bates; it wasn't necessary to make Michael into one, too. Also like Jason, Michael's not that smart or methodical here. At least in the previous film, he seemed to think about what he was going to do or try to deduce where someone might be hiding, and also stalked and played with his victims. Here, more than ever before, he acts like a big, mindless brute who smashes and crashes his way through walls and doors, slaughters people in very over the top, grisly ways (some of which are almost comical), and often loudly grunts and yells like the Frankenstein monster. And going back to his visions of Deborah, they feel so sudden and random. I know in the previous movie, they were fairly close, and in the opening flashback here, he tells her that he had a dream about her, with the white horse, but why is he only now seeing her like that again? If she always had such a hold on him, shouldn't she have been what spurred him into breaking out of Smith's Grove to begin with? 

Although his attempt at making Michael come off as "realistic" in the previous movie already wasn't 100%, Zombie leans much more into the supernatural side of things this time. Michael not only survives being shot point-blank at the end of the previous movie, as well as the coroner's van crashing into a cow here, but is now basically able to teleport and show up out of nowhere, sometimes in places that are miles apart from where he was a few minutes before, and in spots he couldn't possibly hide in, either. His strength is 

also taken to more ridiculous extremes than before (in one scene, he flips a car over and sends it tumbling down a hill, like the Hulk did in that pilot movie for the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno TV show!). And yet, in both versions, he's taken out in ways that he would've shrugged off before. But what I don't like most of all is how utterly uninteresting this portrayal of Michael is. As much as I disagreed with Zombie's decision in the previous movie to make him into a realistic psychopath and a more fleshed out character, I did still find Tyler Mane's performance and presence to 

be very intimidating and brutal. Here, all Michael does is "talk" to his mother, wander around fields, and periodically stop to kill someone, often in scenes that don't advance the story at all. I also don't care about his purpose to "reunite the family," I find the notion that he obeys his mother's commands makes him even less terrifying and interesting of a character than when he was given a motive and a backstory (I actually think it makes him kind of a wuss), and the very idea of her influencing him, be it from beyond the grave or just in his mind, is so convoluted in.

Like I said at the beginning, because Daeg Faerch had had a growth spurt since Zombie's first Halloween, they couldn't reuse him for the scenes of young Michael here (which is a shame, since he was really good). He's replaced by Chase Wright Vanek, and while it doesn't really matter, since young Michael is not as major a part of the story this time, he's a real step down. Not only is Vanek nowhere near as intense or creepy-looking as Faerch, but he doesn't really look like him either, with his darker hair and completely different face. He also often comes off as more sad-looking and sympathetic, like in the opening flashback with Deborah or in the moments where the vision of young Michael talks with her. And when he does try to look creepy, like in the piece of film where Loomis tells him about Deborah's suicide and he says, "I'll see her again, but I won't see you," it doesn't work. (That moment also flies in the face of what we saw in the previous movie, where Michael's complete descent into psychosis and sudden muteness is what led to Deborah's suicide. I don't buy that this is the same kid who lunged at his mother like a wild animal when she removed his mask).

At first, I was perplexed by the visions of young Michael whenever he also saw his mother, as I didn't understand their context. But, when I hit upon how, in his mind, Deborah's image is probably working in conjunction with the symbolism of the white horse she brought him in the opening, I figured that's the version of him she would talk to and encourage. Plus, since his memories of her, including the dream where he first saw her and the horse, do come from his childhood, maybe he's trying to erase the memory of

when he caused her to kill herself and replace it with her telling his young self to bring them and Laurie all together as a family again. And yet, that idea is dashed, as Laurie also not only sees the young Michael but, during the climax, he's seemingly holding her down and preventing her from escaping the shack. One, she didn't know Michael when he was a kid, and two, even if these visions are due to her having seen photos of him in Loomis' book, why would she be seeing something that's so specific to

the adult Michael's psyche? (That's to say nothing of her also seeing Deborah, or her and young Michael appearing in scenes when adult Michael doesn't seem to be directly envisioning them, which I'll get into.) Unless Michael has recently developed some new mental powers and can make the vision of his young self into an invisible but tangible force, this makes no sense at all. 

Without a doubt, this film has the most drastic change in Michael's look than any other entry in the series. At the beginning, when he gets out of the crashed coroner's van and then chases Laurie through the hospital, he has the iconic look, with the mask and coveralls, and looks virtually the same as he did during the previous film's second half, albeit a little more weathered and ragged. The mask also has more wear and tear on it than it did before, with the hair looking more wild and frayed (it looks really good in 

the shots where Michael is standing outside in the rain, looking through the security guard station's windows, trying to find Laurie). After that, when we see him wandering the wilderness, he's wearing a big coat, often with his hood up, and he really does kind of look the way Jason did in the 2009 Friday the 13th. He also trades in the butcher knife for a big, Bowie-style hunting knife and, most significantly, spends a good chunk of the movie unmasked, only putting the mask on whenever he's about to kill. While his face is initially either framed in darkness or obscured by his 

hood, you do see it very clearly later on, especially during the Director's Cut's finale, when he rips it off himself (and there's no denying that, with that big, grizzly beard and long, stringy hair, he looks a lot like Rob Zombie himself). And during the third act, a big chunk of it gets ripped off, so Michael's face is mostly exposed during the climax.

Deborah Myers' presence in this movie is completely baffling to me, as I'm not sure if she's supposed to be a delusion in Michael's mind or an actual spirit. At first, I thought, since Michael dreamed of her and the white horse when he was a little kid, she had to be the former, and since he doesn't know any better, he does whatever he imagines her saying. In addition, there's that definition at the beginning of the film that says the white horse itself is linked to instinct and a drive to release powerful and emotional forces, "Like rage, with ensuing chaos and destruction." So, I figured that both it and Deborah could be a representation of Michael's desire to kill, and since she was the only good person in his life, he would want her to encourage him. Thus, he's actually the one coming up with the plan to reunite his family. That idea would work... if, like young Michael, Laurie didn't start seeing her as well. The explanation could be that, since they're siblings, madness is in their genes, but Deborah committed suicide when Laurie was still a baby, so Laurie had literally never seen her beforehand. And it's also quite a coincidence that she's seeing this same, ghostly version of her as Michael does.

Now, let's go with the idea that Deborah really is a ghost. You'd think that would make more sense, not only because she's seen by both of her children but also because, in some scenes, she appears to have more agency than you would expect a simple figment of a madman's mind to have, appearing when he's not around to see her. But the problem with that is her portrayal here doesn't match the woman we saw in the previous movie, to say the least. There was nothing at all sinister about her before; in fact, she was horrified

by Michael's murders and the firsthand glimpse she got of the monstrous rage within him at the asylum, the latter of which caused her so much despair that she killed herself. Why would she now not only be encouraging Michael to continue killing (she even seems to encourage him to rape Annie when he has her cornered, saying, "Now go have some fun,"), but also to "take them home" by seemingly killing Laurie? Wouldn't she at least want her daughter to have a happy life and thus, try to stop Michael from harming her? And if she is an actual ghost, I ask how 

it's possible for her to interact with the image of young Michael, which is supposed to be a creation of his mind? I really don't have a clear-cut answer for what these visions of Deborah are supposed to be. Maybe someone else can explain it to me, but I'm just dumbfounded and if that is the point... well, I guess Zombie did what he set out to do. (However, I have a sneaking suspicion it actually comes down to him being so incapable of doing a movie without Sheri Moon Zombie that he was going to find a way to get her in the sequel, even if it didn't make any sense.)

The majority of the supporting cast consist of the typical foul-mouthed, disgusting jerks and weirdos you tend come across in Zombie's films. Laurie's two new friends, Mya (Brea Grant) and Harley (Angela Trimbur), whom she works with at the Java Hole, are pretty typical slasher cannon fodder. Harley, whose first line of dialogue is, "What up, dick-lickers?", has one main personality trait: she's really out there and slutty (she describes her Halloween costume, based on The Rocky Horror Picture Show, as, and I quote, 

"A chick dressed up as a dude who wants to be a chick,"). Mya is the more sensible and understanding of the two, particularly towards Laurie's plight after she discovers that she's Michael's sister, and she tries to talk her out of going out to the Phantom Jam Halloween Party, worried that she might not be in the best mindset for that; Harley, of course, is all for it. While Harley, with a guy she hooks up with, gets killed by Michael at the Jam, Mya, seeing how badly drunk and disoriented Laurie is, decides to take her back to the Brackett home. When they arrive, they find the aftermath of Michael's attack on Annie, as well as her brutalized body, and Laurie gets Mya to call the police. She manages to place the call and give the address, before Michael kills her.

At the beginning, you have these two ultra sleazy and disgusting paramedics, Hooks (Dayton Callie) and Gary (Richard Brake), who take Michael's body away. Gary is especially sick, as he talks about how hot Lynda was and that it gave him the urge to engage in necrophilia, like some guys he heard were doing it elsewhere. He says he wouldn't actually do it, just that she still looked good, but then adds, "I got wood just zip-lockin' her up," (Brake is uncomfortably good at coming off like the type of person who would 

consider doing that). Hooks, at first, seems really creeped out and disgusted by what Gary is saying, and warns him that he'll be sacked if Sheriff Brackett ever hears him. But then, he himself makes a really nasty joke about it (which I'm not even going to write, because it's so wrong), and then they immediately hit a cow. Hooks is instantly killed in the crash, while Gary is eventually done in by Michael after he kicks his way out of the back (but not before a hilariously over the top moment that I feel was Zombie trolling 

his critics). Another memorably sleazy character is Big Lou (Daniel Roebuck), who runs the Rabbit in Red strip club and, in the Director's Cut, is dressed up like Frankenstein's monster while standing in the town square, talking to some kids, which isn't creepy at all. Later on, we see him at the club, watching an interview he did on the local news, along with a bubble-headed slut named Misty (Sylvia Jeffries), who sits on his lap, and Howard (Jeff Daniel Phillips), a really dickish, binge-drinking bouncer. The latter is constantly badmouthing Misty under his breath, as 

she apparently borrowed money from him to pay for her breast expansion, and when he joins her and Lou as they watch the news, his attempts at complimenting his boss make him look like a babbling moron. Howard also makes the dumb mistake of threatening Michael when he runs into him out back while taking out the trash. Needless to say, all three of them die horribly (this scene is notable for the image of Michael bursting in on and attacking Lou while he's wearing the Frankenstein monster headpiece and giving it to Misty from behind). 

Speaking of people who make the mistake of picking a fight with Michael, you've also got these rednecks, Floyd (Mark Boone Jr.) and Sherman (Duane Whitaker), who beat on him for trespassing on their property. Naturally, they get completely butchered afterward, as does Jazlean (Betsy Rue), their respective daughter and wife who took sympathy on Michael. And you have all of those weirdly dressed people at the Phantom Jam, especially the band's guitar player (Captain Clegg) who looks like a cross

between Elvis and Johnny Cash, and Uncle Seymour Coffins (Jeff Daniel Phillips), this drunken, unfunny stand-up comic who's dressed in a cape and hat, has this weird, skull-like makeup on his face, and huge sideburns and big false teeth, with pointy ends (his makeup is based on the look of Vincent Price's character in the 1974 movie, Madhouse).

As per usual with Zombie's films, you have some familiar genre faces throughout Halloween II, but unlike with his first one, he managed to really restrain himself in this regard. Oddly enough, not only did Bill Moseley not end up in the movie, but neither did Sid Haig or Tom Towles, which was a first for Zombie. However, you do have appearances by Caroline Williams from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 as Dr. Maple during opening at the hospital; Margot Kidder as Laurie's psychiatrist,

Barbara Collier (her name could be a reference to her character in Black Christmas); Weird Al Yankovic as himself on the talk show with Dr. Loomis; and Sean Whalen, who played the character of Roach in Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs, as Becks, a friendly passerby who tries to help Laurie near the end, only to be killed by Michael. Familiar character actor Richard Riehle appears as Buddy, the kindly hospital night watchman who tries to help Laurie (since this is revealed to be a dream, it's suggested 

that Buddy was actually a manifestation of a teddy bear Laurie has that's also named that). And the year before she appeared in her Oscar-winning role in The Help, Octavia Spencer appears here as a kindly nurse who suffers a drawn-out, brutal stabbing death early on. One other actor I have to mention is Howard Hesseman, who appears in one scene as Uncle Meat, the guy who runs the bookstore/coffee shop where Laurie and her friends work. I mention him not because I didn't know who Hesseman was before (although he had a very long and diverse career), but 

because, when I first saw him, I thought he was John de Lancie. Maybe I'm crazy, but doesn't he look and sound like de Lancie? In any case, he proves to be a really cool old dude, teasing Laurie when she's a tad late, saying, "Alert the authorities. Laurie has been replaced by a pod," and when Laurie counters that she's early because she worked overtime the night before, Uncle Meat says, "Oh, so you're too together. No, you gotta loosen up a little bit. You know, bring some anarchy to the party." She asks if that means she can come in whenever she wants and he says, "Not on

my dime, sister. You can save the slacker shit for those corporate bloodsuckers who can afford it." He proceeds to go on a diatribe about corporations, then realizes that Laurie and Mya aren't interested at all and walks into the backroom, grumbling, "I give in. You win. The old man caves again."

As per usual with his movies, Rob Zombie's Halloween II is quite impressive from a visual standpoint. In fact, I, for one, prefer its look to that of the previous movie. While Zombie shot that on 35mm, for the sequel, he decided to do what he did on The Devil's Rejects and shoot it on 16mm, giving it a much grittier, more washed out look than any previous Halloween (he also went from the series' traditional wide aspect ratio, as he shot the previous one in 2.39:1, back to his preferred 1.85:1). Instead of those overly warm daytime yellows and nighttime

bluish-greens we had in the last movie, this has an overall muted, dark gray and brown color palette, and the nighttime scenes are darker and more contrasting than before. When combined with the gray, overcast skies that dominate the movie, and the feeling of coldness that came about from their shooting in Georgia in the winter, it gives the movie a gloomy, hopeless look, as if Michael's previous Halloween night rampage sapped out any warmth and feeling of security that Haddonfield once had. It also

immediately dispenses with any notion that this story is going to end happily, as the opening flashback at Smith's Grove comes off as so cold and devoid of color that it might as well be black and white, and the first sequence at the hospital looks utterly gloomy and depressing due to the building's gray, clinical interiors and the pouring rain outside. The most notable exceptions to this visual style are the scenes at the Rabbit in Red and those at the Phantom Jam, which are quite colorful, with the former's interiors looking

downright garish (the colorful light looks really good on Deborah's vivid white look when she appears in there in the Director's Cut). The talk show set is also quite colorful, with a notable deep blue background. In terms of the actual camerawork, Zombie does, again, alternate between a handheld, shaky look to a more controlled one, only this time, I don't find it as hard to make out what's going on... for the most part. There are still some scenes, mainly during the third act, where I can't quite make the action out, but it's not as bad as it was before.

It seems that, while he was making Halloween II, Zombie was beginning to go for a much more bigger, painterly style, which he would later use to full effect in The Lords of Salem. For instance, there are many awesome-looking wide shots of the landscapes and countryside, particularly at night, like when Michael first sees a vision of his mother and the white horse in the middle of the room, the establishing shots of the Brackett house, the barn where Michael takes shelter, and such. There are also a number of shots of Michael walking through the wilderness, some of which look 

like they had to have been done from a helicopter, and, as I've heard some comment, make it look as if Michael is in The Lord of the Rings. However, I like the sense of scope those scenes give off, and I also appreciate how many of the nighttime sequences do have something of an atmosphere to them, which I felt was lacking in the previous one. And there are a number of striking shots with big shafts of light from the background, like when Michael sees a vision of his mother in the barn, when Floyd and Sherman park

their truck behind him, with their headlights shining very brightly (it makes the moment where he puts his mask on after he's been beaten on feel more impactful), when Laurie runs through the woods after fleeing the Brackett house, and when Michael turns the car over. And during the climax, the helicopters' searchlights coming through the shack's rotted roof give that sequence a very memorable, surreal look.

The real feasts for the eyes, however, are Michael's more elaborate visions of his mother. As confusing as the nature of her presence is, I can't deny that many shots of her are quite beautiful, including when she appears for the first time with the white horse. In that instance, it looks as if there's a spotlight of pure white light on them, making everything else look pitch black by comparison, as if they're standing in a void. She also looks good whenever those shafts of light are behind her. But the movie's most visual, and full-on bizarre, sequence comes when Michael has some sort 

of dream or vision that begins with Deborah appearing in a black dress, standing before both his adult and child selves while they're sitting at a table in Smith's Grove. This is already weird, as it's in black-and-white, and looks as though it's shot through a fish-eye lens, but then, young Michael says he has something to show her. It cuts to the image of a skeleton, with Michael's mask for a head, crucified on a cross (it took a while for me to make out the black cross it's nailed to), and pans down to show Deborah and young Michael standing in front of it, 

while what looks like snow drifts down onto them. Then, we see something that looks like it was taken from a Tim Burton movie on acid: a dinner table where some figures, who seem to be in 15th or 16th century clothing, are having a feast, with something akin to a giant skull behind them, as a bell tolls in the background. One of the figures has a jack-o-lantern for a head, and another looks like it also has a jack-o-lantern head, but with the face of a curly-haired girl, and they have somewhat normal-looking people 

filling their cups with wine. You eventually see that Laurie is lying on the table, and after young Michael shows her to Deborah, telling her that he found "Boo," arms burst up through the table and grab Laurie. The action of her struggling and screaming becomes unnaturally fast, and she suddenly shoots up in bed, suggesting that she had this dream as well.

Another surreal and out there sequence, memorable for how freaking crazy and unexpected it is, comes after the scene with Dr. Loomis at the Myers house. Laurie goes into the bathroom and fills the tub up with water, then sits down while waiting on it. It suddenly cuts to a shot of her fiddling with some candy corn at a table, then cuts back and forth between her still in the bathroom and her at the table, dressed in the clown costume that Michael wore as a kid. She turns out to be sitting in the Myers house's dining room, and just as Michael did in the previous 

movie, Laurie takes some duct tape and a butcher knife out of a kitchen drawer. She walks into the living room, where Annie is asleep in a chair, like Ronnie was, and duct-tapes her to it. She pulls the clown mask down over her face and slits Annie's throat, and the sequence then takes a sharp left turn into absolute madness. You're bombarded with a kinetic montage of images like Laurie freaking out in the bathroom, her voice screaming, "Die, you fucking bitch! I'm going to fucking kill you!", blood gushing out of Annie's slashed throat, close-ups of Annie's 

convulsing face as she screams for mercy, Laurie looking completely demonic, with an inverted cross cut into her forehead and blood running out of her eyes, fast camera pans across the fields we've seen Michael walking through, and Deborah, dressed in black and standing over a headstone that says "MYERS." All of this insanity culminates in an image of Laurie, lying in a coffin with a see-through, glass lid, on some snow-covered ground. It gets really still and quiet, but just when you think it's over, Laurie 

suddenly starts banging on the lid and screaming, and in that same sped up manner, which makes it look really distorted and freakish. And then, Laurie wakes up in the bedroom and we finally get back to normal. If nothing else, that sequence definitely grabs your attention. 

One other brief but still surreal moment comes at the Phantom Jam, when Laurie starts suffering from having too much to drink. Disoriented, she wanders through the crowd, as we get a montage of shaky, major close-ups of various partygoers and the band on the stage, possibly from her point-of-view. After she stumbles, she sees Deborah and young Michael for the first time, bathed in a white light, with snow falling around them (note the nice contrast that creates with the red light on Laurie). Behind Laurie is a large projection screen, and after a short interaction 

between her and these figures, Michael, looking the way he did in the previous movie, suddenly appears behind her and grabs her. We get another montage, cutting back and forth from Laurie struggling to close-ups of Deborah and young Michael, when we suddenly go back to reality and see Laurie flailing around amid the crowd. And the movie's final image, of Laurie sitting on a bed in the middle of a vivid white sanitarium, as Deborah and the white horse walk down the hallway towards her, is most definitely a memorable one.

That leads me into how, as he often does, Zombie tends to play around with the editing. Like in his first Halloween, he uses slow-motion and sometimes takes the sound out, while leaving the music in to try to enhance a scene's impact. As I said earlier, that definitely works in the heartbreaking moment where Brackett finds Annie's dead body, and that surreal scene with Deborah and young Michael is made all the more effective in how it's silent save for the music and the dialogue. And speaking of Annie, when she realizes that Michael is in the room with her, we get a

haunting, slow-motion shot of her fleeing him, with the only sound being the score, as well as what sounds like a record skipping. Then, as it fades to black and transitions to Laurie and Mya pulling up outside, we suddenly hear the sound of Annie's desperate screams, Michael's enraged yelling, and the sound of the place being torn apart. However, I do think that Zombie, again, uses those methods a little too much, to where they start to lose their impact. He sometimes speeds up the film; for instance, when Halloween itself arrives, we get a short, time-lapse

shot of the Haddonfield town square. Speaking of which, the transition from the opening to the aftermath of the previous movie, and the countdown to Halloween throughout the story, are indicated by those Shining-like title cards from before. There are also some notable instances of cross-fading, particularly in a shot of a sign that reads, "ENTERING HADDONFIELD," which the camera lingers on as it slowly fades to Michael making his way there, and cross-cutting, like when it cuts back 

and forth from Loomis angrily telling the reporters that Michael is dead to him wandering the wilderness, and Michael killing Harley at the Phantom Jam to Laurie and Mya rocking out at the party. The most interesting example is when Laurie and Mya go upstairs in the Brackett house, unaware that Annie has been attacked by Michael, and as they find and follow the trail of blood leading from the hallway to the bathroom, it continually cuts to very quick, loud flashes of the attack, which stop when Michael

corners Annie, and before we see exactly what he did to her. I thought that was a clever way to show what happened before Laurie and Mya arrived at the house. And during the ending credits, we see black-and-white crime scene photographs of Michael's killings in both the previous movie and this one.

Like I said, Halloween II was shot almost entirely in Georgia (which is also where Halloween Ends would later be filmed), as the filmmakers wanted to take advantage of the state's tax breaks, and also because Zombie said the state had the look he wanted. The downside is that this creates some continuity snarls with the previous movie, as Haddonfield now looks completely different. Granted, we don't spend as much time on the town streets as we did during the last movie's second half, but that shot of the town square, which I'm sure is Covington, doesn't look at

all like what we saw before. Fortunately, the only major returning location is the Myers house, which is in just one scene, but you can tell from that wide shot that it's not the same house from the previous movie. On the flip side, as I noted earlier, their shooting in Georgia during the time of year they did helps with the movie's cold, gloomy, and hopeless atmosphere, with the often overcast skies and the pouring rain during the opening. Most importantly, it makes me able to buy that this is indeed late October in Illinois,

which I had a hard time with in the previous movie, and I also feel that this has much more of the Halloween vibe, with all of the pumpkins, decorations, and people in costumes, particularly at the Phantom Jam, as well as the old horror movies and Halloween-themed cartoons playing on the TV.

The production design kind of moves away from the white trash feel that permeated the previous movie's first act. The Brackett house, for example, mainly just has a very lived-in look and feel, with Laurie's bedroom acting as a representation of her state of mind: cluttered, disheveled, and often very dark, with all of the stuff on the wall, like the Charles Manson and Alice Cooper posters, the graffiti of a pentagram on the inside of the bathroom door, a couple of stickers on the bathroom mirror that read, "WAKE THE FUCK UP," another bit of graffiti that says, 

"Keep Your Side Clean, Bitch," and a bunch of other details that you could pick out if you freeze frame those scenes. Incidentally, that bathroom personally makes my skin crawl, particularly with all the graffiti and bizarre posters and stickers, the greenish painted walls, and the overall cluttered and grimy feel to it, not to mention how the medicine cabinet is full of bottles of pills that Laurie has to take. We get to see more of the Rabbit in Red strip club and, even 

though it's been over a decade since Deborah worked there (they now advertise that Michael Myers' mother once worked there to drawn in business), the place is as sleazy-looking as it ever was, with the tacky red and blue lighting and the abundance of neon on the inside, the pornographic advertising, and the bar. Big Lou's office is even more unsavory, with more red/pink lighting, little orange lights around the window, and drawings and pictures of naked women covering the walls.

Like in the original Halloween II, Haddonfield Memorial Hospital at the beginning makes for an effectively cold, clinical, and uncomfortable setting, with the amount of whites and grays in its color scheme. For me, that kind of atmosphere makes Laurie's surgery, which you see in graphic detail, all the more wince-inducing and hard to take. Also, the hospital's corridors and stairways are shot in a manner that make them come off as very imposing, and the sparse Halloween decorations at the nurse's station are a nice little touch. When Laurie tries to escape 

from Michael, running outside, into the pouring rainstorm, the place becomes all the more nightmarish and unwelcoming, right down to the wide open, desolate parking lot where she comes across Buddy's security station. And speaking of unwelcoming, the brief flashback to Smith's Grove (which was actually done in a pool house at the location used for one of the locations used in the previous movie) looks even colder, no doubt due to the gray, washed-out look of those images, and the establishing shot, where we see it's winter and there's snow everywhere.

This could be the most rural Halloween movie there is, as so much of it takes place out in the countryside around Haddonfield. In addition to the fields you often see Michael wandering (while most of those were in Georgia, the location where he gets beaten on at night was a reshoot done in New Milford, Connecticut), which look great, especially when they're set at dusk, sometimes with a setting sun in the background, we have some nice, wide shots of farmlands and barnyards, which remind me of the opening of Halloween 4, and the barn that Michael 

takes cover in, which makes me think of the Tower Farm location in Halloween 5. I really like how isolated both the latter and the shack where the climax takes place feel, and you also can't go wrong with some dark, creepy-looking woods, like those Laurie runs through before she's captured during the third act.

Like he did in his first Halloween, Zombie does step out of his comfort zone with some of the settings, like Barbara Collier's nice-looking, upper class home, where she conducts Laurie's therapy sessions; the very posh hotel where Dr. Loomis make his first appearance; the nice-looking bookstore where he does his signing; the talk show studio; and his upper-class hotel room. My personal favorite setting in the whole movie, though, is Uncle Meat's Java Hole, as it looks so interesting, with all of the weird Halloween stuff, books, and other things, as well as the multi-colored, storefront windows.

While Zombie's first Halloween was already pretty bleak and nihilistic, he doubles and even triples down on that vibe with the sequel. This is, by far, the darkest, most mean-spirited, and depressing film in the series by a country mile. In fact, it may be the darkest film in Zombie's entire filmography, as it features a number of horrific and grisly death scenes, many of which go on much longer than they really should, and sometimes involve some decent and even likable people suffering fates they don't deserve, not to mention a story that pushes the surviving 

characters from the previous one to their breaking point and beyond. This is the Halloween that hurts, as by the end of either version, Laurie has learned she's Michael Myers' sister, lost all of her friends, including Annie, and is either dead or has ended up in an asylum, Sheriff Brackett has lost his daughter and his attempts to keep Laurie safe have failed, Annie has suffered another horrific attack by Michael that, this time, proves fatal, and Dr. Loomis, after losing himself in his greed and desire for fame, ends up dead at the hands of his former patient when he tries to redeem himself.

Another thing that's obvious about Halloween II is it's the work of a very angry man. Be it due to the fan backlash, the difficult time he had making these movies, or a combination of both, you can sense that Zombie is just fed up with it all, especially when you listen to his audio commentary. You can feel his disdain for the fanbase, from his refusal to explain how Michael survived Laurie shooting him at the end of the previous movie (he's often grumbled about that, off-handedly saying that maybe Laurie has poor aim), to how, even more so than in the remake, he seems 

intent on doing the exact opposite of what people expect. And he also appears intent on going after not only fans of the series but slasher fans in general. I've noted before that, as ironic as it may sound, he's not a fan of slasher movies, having mentioned, in an interview with Scream Magazine, that he doesn't like how they trivialize death and make onscreen murders entertaining, when he feels they should be horrible and uncomfortable. That's the main reason why the deaths here are even more brutal and visceral than

they were in the previous movie. He also goes one step further in the scene where Dr. Loomis encounters the guy who calls himself Chett, the Bringer of Death at his book signing. Not only does this guy look like a total nutbag, with his disheveled hair, and crazed eyes and expression, but he absolutely worships Michael, i.e. an honest-to-God serial killer in this world. He not only has a T-shirt with an acronym that means, "What Would Michael Do?", complete with a knife and a splatter of blood as part of the design, but he tells

Loomis, "I just wanted to let you know that Michael is so much deeper than those other guys, like Dahmer and that bitch, Bundy. Because he eats at the core of the victims' soul, you know?" (When talking about this in the book, Taking Shape: Developing Halloween From Script To Scream, one of its two authors then asks, "Does this mean that, in the grander scheme, we are Chett and Rob Zombie is Loomis for selling us the sizzle of bad taste? Maybe.") 

Speaking of Loomis, Zombie told Mick Garris on Post Mortem that he initially did write him in the classic Donald Pleasence mold but then decided, "This is ridiculous. He's like some, you know, a doctor. He's not gonna run around with a Magnum, shooting people. This is absurd. It just seemed to silly." So, he instead decided, "We'll just make him like Dr. Phil, this sort of like, you know... sort of a phony sort of, like, doctor for hire." He also said that another inspiration was Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor during the Manson family trial who later

co-wrote the book, Helter Skelter, and who was criticized for profiteering over the tragedy of others. While it does tie back into Zombie's commentary on serial killer worship and their glorification in conjunction with his disdain for slasher fans, I also think he did it just because it so different from the traditional figure of Loomis. And because he doesn't like the trend of ongoing sequels with these franchises, Zombie, in his original version of the ending, seen in the Director's Cut, intended for everyone to be definitively dead, so there would be no

chance of another one. (Not that it stopped the producers from trying to go on in this continuity without him, but still.) Even with some of the stuff he himself created, Zombie is very flippant. For example, he's said that the white horse, which I, like so many others, did try to assign a deeper meaning, is just meant to be a representation of Michael's lost childhood. Talking about how it's established during the opening in Smith's Grove, when Deborah brings young Michael the figure of the horse, Zombie told 

Scream Magazine, "It could have been anything... She could have given him a fire engine... It could have been any object, but I thought that was particularly cinematic." (It was also a late addition to the screenplay, inspired by an actual white horse that Zombie claims to have seen while driving to the set one day.) Even the opening text meant to define what the horse means symbolically is something he made up, right down to its source.

Ironically, for as much crap as Zombie gives the slasher subgenre, both of his Halloweens often fall into their familiar tropes, especially in how so many of the people who get killed are so loathsome or annoying that you want to see them die. Halloween II may have more sympathetic people dying gruesome deaths, but there are still plenty of unlikable ones, as well as characters who show up for no other reason than to be cannon fodder. Even the trope of people, both teenagers and adults, who die when they have sex, smoke, and/or drink beer is followed. And let's

be honest, the scene with Harley and the guy with the werewolf mask she hooks up with at the Phantom Jam (who is officially called Wolfie) is a classic slasher moment, right down to their preparing to have sex in the back of the guy's van, Wolfie going out to pee, dying first, and Harley immediately following.

By now, it's virtually pointless to complain about the amount of profanity in a Rob Zombie movie, and normally, I wouldn't mention it. But the amount of foul language here reaches such new heights of absurdity that it makes me wonder if this was Zombie sticking it to those who complained about it in his first Halloween film. Seriously, there are scenes, especially in the Director's Cut, where virtually every other word is, "Fuck," and others where it's the only word, like when Laurie learns she's Michael's sister, or when she's driving away from the Brackett house

and just screaming, "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!", both to herself and other cars passing her on the road. But the most egregious example is near the beginning, when Hooks and Gary hit the cow while transporting Michael's body. After the crash, Gary just sits there, all busted up, and repeatedly says "fuck" over and over. There are a few "shits" in there too, and he may have initially been saying "Hooks," but mostly it's just, "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck. Fuck." He stops screaming it and says it casually a few times, as if it really is the only word he knows. I'm not even sure if

that's him saying it in rapid succession after the shot of Hooks' body or if he's just making noises because he's in pain, but either way, it's ridiculous. This is where I have wonder, "Zombie, are you trolling your critics here?", because I can't believe somebody would think that's actually real and authentic. (Seriously, look at how many times I've written "fuck" in this paragraph alone. Do you use it that much in your daily life? Maybe I'm just not that naturally profane, and others aren't as affected by it,

but it's so exaggerated.). I will give him some credit in how, save for Hooks and Gary's conversation about necrophilia (which, as you can see, involves a close-up on the latter's perverted mouth), and Harley suggesting that she's into golden showers, there's not as much as that really filthy dialogue that you often get in his movies.

While Halloween Kills later came pretty close, this is still the most brutal, raw, and nasty film in the series by far, with Zombie making good on his promise to force you to wallow in all the death and suffering, rather than have fun watching people get picked off in creative ways. From severed heads and stomped in faces that look like hamburger meat, to a dog that gets mutilated and partially eaten after it's been killed, it's nasty, and the makeup effects, again created by Wayne Toth and company, are uncomfortably realistic, especially those that we first see. Just a little 

over three minutes in, we're bombarded with a smorgasbord of horrific, wince-inducing images. Laurie is taken to the hospital and wheeled into surgery, screaming at the top of her lungs, with blood all over her face and in her mouth, some cuts in her cheeks, a nasty slash in her leg, and another bad cut on the inside of her elbow. Dr. Loomis is lifted into an ambulance at the same time this is going on, but he just has some cuts on the side of his face (I still don't get why he's not more messed up, given how it

seemed like Michael crushed his skull in the previous film). We then see the gruesome details of Laurie's condition in the lead-up to her surgery, with close-ups of bloody injuries as her clothes are removed, including a piece of shrapnel that I think is supposed to be from Michael's knife embedded near her shoulder (I don't remember her getting that); her wounds being washed and cleaned; and a far too clear look at her fractured fingers, which have big, bleeding gashes in them (from the way it's filmed, it also 

looks as if she's missing the end of her pinky). As you can see, it hurts just to look at any of this, and the actual surgery has shots of the wounds on her face being sewed and stitched up, a broken part of one of her fingernails being pulled off (which especially gets to me, as I can't stand that stuff), and pliers being used to put her fractured finger-bones back into place.

Despite how darkly filmed it is, when Hooks and Gary slam into that cow, you can make out enough to see that they completely decimated it. Hooks is killed instantly and his head is now a bloody mess, while Gary has some cuts on his face and forehead, coughs up quite a bit of blood, and his facial movements make it seem as though he's trying to realign his jawbones. That's when Michael gets out of the back of the van, comes around to the front, takes a big piece of broken glass from the windshield, grabs Gary by the hair, holds his head up, and slowly saws it

clean off! I'm pretty sure you can't do that with a piece of glass but the nasty slicing sounds, the close-ups of said slicing, and Michael lifting his severed head up afterward make it feel all too real. We go back to the hospital and get our next kill, as Nurse Daniels appears at her station and turns around in front of Laurie to reveal a bleeding stab wound in her chest. Laurie panics and runs, while Daniels falls to the floor and attempts to crawl away, when Michael appears behind her. He walks over to her, grabs her by the back of her shirt, lifts her up, and relentlessly

hacks into her. He stabs her eleven consecutive times (I counted), and we keep cutting to close-ups of her face as she coughs up blood and convulses, as well as quick shots of the blade going into her back and blood spurting out. After the tenth stab, you think Michael's done, as he stands up and looks down at her... and then stabs her one more time for good measure, leaving the knife sticking in her! We also get long, lingering looks at the hideous aftermath once he leaves to continue his pursuit of Laurie. While this is 

going on, Laurie comes across a female surgeon whom Michael massacred in the stairway, having gouged her eyes out, splattering blood on the wall and floor, and left her lying on a gate, which Laurie has to get through to go down the rest of the stairs.

Following that sequence, which has the death of Buddy, the security guard by an axe to the back, the next kills are Floyd, Sherman, and Jazlean. After the guys beat the snout out of Michael and leave him there, he gets up, puts his mask on, takes out his big hunting knife, and gets down to business. He slashes Sherman right across the eyes, while Floyd gets stabbed in the gut and impaled on the deer antlers on their truck's front. Michael even pushes Floyd further onto the antlers, and then finishes off Sherman by hacking into his gut a bunch of times. He also takes

care of Jazlean, pulling her out of the truck, dragging her across the ground, stabbing her once, then dragging her a little further before stabbing her again and again until she finally dies. But, we're not through yet, as we've still got their dog, Ivan, who's in a cage in the back. We don't see Michael actually kill the dog, but what we do see is even more horrific. Shortly after this scene, we see him feed himself by cutting big, bloody chunks out of the dog's corpse and eating it. Again, it's so darkly photographed that you can't

see much detail, thank God, but nevertheless, it's really disgusting and unnecessary. The implication in the original John Carpenter film that Michael had munched on a dog was much more powerful and creepy than this, which only exists for shock value. It does establish some sort of psychic link between Laurie and Michael, but nothing else is done with it, so it's still pointless. (At the end of the credits, when you get the customary note from the humane society that no animals were harmed, it actually says that some of the animal action was monitored and no animals were harmed in those scenes. I'll just let that little factoid sink in as we move on.)

Next is when Laurie has that violent dream about duct taping Annie to a chair and slicing her throat open, like how Michael killed Ronnie, with quick close-ups of the blood gushing out. Then, we have the massacre at the Rabbit in Red, starting with Howard when he foolishly threatens Michael after coming across him out back while taking out the garbage. Michael knocks him to the ground and proceeds to give him his version of a curb stomp: smashing his face in repeatedly with his foot until, when you see his body again later,while Misty is trying to escape, it's hard to

tell that there was even a face there. Michael goes into Big Lou's office, as he and Misty are having sex, and beats Lou repeatedly, snapping one of his arms with his bare hands. He slams him against a wall, finishing him off, and grabs Misty by the back of the hair and bashes her face into the mirror again and again (noticing a theme, yet?) until he finally drops her onto the floor, dead as a door-nail. (That's an instance where I feel the drawn-out, repeated nature of these murders becomes laughable rather than disturbing.)

At the Phantom Jam, Harley and Wolfie die when they go out to his van to have sex. Michael disposes of Wolfie when he goes out to take a leak by stabbing him right in the back, and then kills Harley by knocking her around while also choking her, before finally breaking her neck. 

Michael kills the cop standing guard outside of the Brackett home by garotting him from behind and eventually breaking his neck. Later, when Laurie and Mya arrive, we get a brief glimpse of the cop's body, sitting in his squad car. Next is when Michael kills Annie, which I've described before, as we don't see the details of the kill itself, just the aftermath, where Laurie finds her on the bathroom, naked, covered in blood, and cuts on her body. She dies slowly and painfully in Laurie's arms, while Mya calls 911 downstairs, only to be killed herself when Michael

grabs her, slams her onto a table, and hacks her to death. The last batch of kills include Becks, the passing motorist whom Laurie manages to flag down, only to get thrown right through the windshield, and Michael and Loomis' own deaths, which are different depending on the version. Continuing to stick with the theatrical version for now, Michael slashes Loomis again and again inside the shack, while Michael himself is sniped out through the window by Brackett, impaled on some spikes, and then stabbed with his own knife by Laurie.

Halloween II's most notable suspense/chase sequence is the one at the hospital near the beginning. Some time after her surgery, Laurie regains consciousness in a dark room, as a storm rages outside and the person who's meant to be sitting up with her has fallen asleep. As the music video for Nights in White Satin randomly plays on the TV, Laurie gets out of bed and slowly makes her way down the hallway, towards Annie's room, taking her IV stand and hobbling on the massive cast on her right foot. When she's in 

Annie's room, she sees her lying in bed, comatose. She walks over, sobbing at the sight of her condition, and caresses her face, begging her not to die. Nurse Daniels finds her in there and tells her that she has to go back to her own room. She helps guide Laurie back down the hall, when she hears over the intercom that she's to report to Emergency Room A. Laurie says she can make it back on her own and Daniels turns and leaves. But then, when she gets halfway down the hall, Laurie begins to feel dizzy. She turns 

around and slowly makes her way back to the nurse's station, asking for some medicine to help with her head. She doesn't get a response and, finding the station empty, rests there for a few seconds. She then hears a door to her right open and sees Daniels walk back out. Laurie, again, asks for something for head, when Daniels turns around, revealing the badly bleeding stab wound in her chest. She stumbles towards Laurie before finally screaming in pain and terror, as Laurie falls back. Daniels falls against the IV stand and grabs onto it, while Laurie, detaching

herself from it, runs off down the hall. As she heads to the door to the stairwell that leads outside, Michael Myers emerges behind the helpless Daniels, who tries to crawl away. That's when he walks over and utterly butchers her. Laurie, meanwhile, has trouble getting down the stairs due to the cast, as well as her bandaged right arm. After getting past the corpse on the stairway, she literally tumbles down several flights. She tries to get through one locked door, when she looks up and sees Michael coming down the 

stairs after her. Laurie continues to run and stumble down them, eventually reaching the bottom and making it outside, into the pouring rain. With Michael not far behind her, she rushes down a narrow exterior corridor and climbs up a flight of stairs. On the way up, Michael comes across a case housing a fire-axe. He easily breaks the glass and takes it.

Running through a vast, empty parking lot, Laurie makes it to a security station. She tries to escape through a gate next to the station, but it's locked and she, obviously, can't climb over it. She then bangs on the station's door, but gets no answer, and it's locked as well. She is, however, able to open and crawl through the station's window, and hide under the desk, as Michael walks out into the rain on the opposite side of the lot. That's when Buddy, the security guard, returns after going out for some coffee and

doughnuts. Seeing him pull up, Michael stomps towards him, wielding his axe, while Buddy unlocks the station's door and walks in to find Laurie. Pulling her out from under the desk, he gives her something to keep her warm and tries to calm her down, as she frantically tries to warn him about Michael. He doesn't really listen to her, instead telling her that he's going to get his car and he'll drive her back to the hospital. He also gives her a hot drink and goes back out the door, locking the outer one. Laurie is then left 

alone in the station for about a full minute, terrified and yelling for Buddy, no doubt thinking he's been killed. Buddy then appears at the door, telling her that he had trouble getting his car started. But just as he's about to unlock the door, Michael puts the axe to his back. He slams face-first against the door and slowly dies as he slumps down to the ground, with Michael jamming the axe deeper into him. Once Buddy's dead, Michael yanks the axe out of him, but when he looks through the window, he sees no sign of Laurie. He walks around the station, peering through the other 

windows, while Laurie is back hiding underneath the desk. After looking through the outer door again, Michael walks out of sight and all is quiet for a few seconds. Then suddenly, he violently smashes the axe through the windows, then  the walls, growling and yelling, while Laurie screams in terror beneath the desk. He continues this ferocious attack, virtually demolishing the small station, before finally barreling inside. Finding Laurie, he looms over her, raises the axe, and brings it down on her, which is where we cut to reveal it was a nightmare, as Laurie wakes up, flailing around and screaming in her bed. 

The next major sequence isn't until around 34 minutes in, when Floyd, Sherman, and Jazlean come upon Michael roaming through a field on their property. Parking their truck behind him, the first two get out, wielding a tire iron and a bat respectively, and stomp towards him, as he stands there, not moving or paying them any mind. Perplexed and angry when he doesn't respond to their threats, Floyd comes up behind Michael and whacks him in the middle of the back, sending him down onto his knees. He hits him again,

causing him to fall all the way down, and then orders Sherman to give him a taste of the bat. Even though Sherman recoiled when Floyd first whacked Michael, he comes in and pummels him with the bat three times. Jazlean gets out of the truck and comes running, telling them to stop. Ignoring her, Sherman whacks Michael with the bat again, then whoops and hollers about it, twirling his bat in his hand. Floyd tells Michael not to come back, as he and Sherman walk back to the truck. Concerned for him, Jazlean

asks Michael if he's okay, and when the men yell for her to come on, she profusely apologizes before rejoining them. As she does, Michael gets back up onto his knees, slips his mask on, then stands up, wielding his huge hunting knife. Just as Sherman is about climb into the truck after Jazlean, Michael grabs him from behind, turns him around, and slices him across his eyes. Floyd runs at him with the tire iron and hits him, only for Michael to stab him and then impale him on his truck's deer antlers. Michael finishes Sherman off, before turning his attention to 

Jazlean, who's been watching this from the front seat. After a slow motion section where the only sound is Michael's breathing, he smashes through the passenger side window, yanks the door open, grabs and pulls her outside, then drags her along the ground before stabbing her to death. He goes to walk off, then spies Ivan the dog, who's been barking at the chaos from his cage in the back the whole time. He runs his knife's tip across the cage, as the dog whimpers, knowing he's in for it as well.

Next is the sequence at the Rabbit in Red, starting when Howard comes across Michael out back while he's taking the trash out. He tells him to leave, that Lou doesn't like bums hanging out back there, and when Michael doesn't budge, he tries to intimidate him, saying he already sent one guy to the hospital that night. He tries to go back inside, but Michael steps right in his way (you got to love how even Michael himself is a dick in these movies). Howard then threatens him again, and when Michael still 

doesn't move, he throws a punch. He manages to hit Michael, but seriously hurts his hand, and Michael responds by utterly flooring him. Lying on the ground, coughing up blood, Howard then gets his face brutally stomped in numerous times, with Michael grunting and yelling. As Michael stands over him, the figures of Deborah and his young self are there as well, the latter slipping on his clown mask, indicating that the killing is really about to start. In the next scene, just as Lou starts banging Misty from behind 

in his office while wearing his Frankenstein monster headpiece, Michael appears in the doorway. Shocked at the sight of him, Lou yells and curses at him, telling him to get out. He even takes a gun from his desk drawer and points it at him, then charges at him. Michael grabs and slams him onto his desk, and as Misty runs out the door and down the hallway, coming across Howard's body as it hangs from the ceiling, Lou receives a brutal beating. Michael breaks his right arm, and while Misty futilely tries to get out through the locked back door, Lou stumbles out of 

the office, yelling in a very high-pitched, sissy manner that comes off as really silly. He runs towards the back door as well, then yells at the sight of Howard's body. Michael comes out of the office, stomps towards Lou, and finishes him off by bashing him against the wall. He then grabs Misty by the hair, yanks her back, and when he rips off a chunk of his mask as she struggles, he bashes her headfirst into some glass on the wall a total of eleven times. He drops her body onto the floor and, in a darkly funny bit of business, the "OPEN" sign outside switches off and the "CLOSED" one comes on.

Before we get to the next batch of kills, there's an interesting moment after Halloween night falls where Michael encounters this little kid who's trick-or-treating while dressed up as a clown. As he towers over him, the kid asks, "Are you a giant?", which I'm sure is meant as a reference to a similar moment in the 1942 Universal movie, The Ghost of Frankenstein. He then asks Michael if they can be friends, when the boy's mother or, more likely, sister (I say that because she looks a little young to be his

mom) comes and pulls him away, telling him not to talk to strangers. Michael walks after them, but we don't see if anything else happened afterward. Laurie, Mya, and Harley then head out to the Phantom Jam and, after a montage of their partying, Harley and the guy dubbed Wolfie head out to his van. Just when they start making out in the back, Wolfie has to run back outside to pee. He goes over to the side of a tree to relieve himself, as Harley impatiently waits for him. But then, Michael suddenly appears and stabs Wolfie in the back, easily killing him. After a 

cutaway back to Harley, we see that Wolfie's body is gone. She continues lying in the back of the van, when Michael smashes through the window and climbs in after her. Harley tries to crawl away, but doesn't get far before he grabs her by the throat. At the same time that Laurie and Mya are partying hard, Michael violently throttles Harley, before finally breaking her neck, the latter of which is also shown in slow motion.

As Mya gets the now very drunk Laurie to leave the party, Andy, the deputy whom Annie doesn't like, is standing guard outside on the porch. While Annie talks with her father on the phone inside, Andy walks out into the dark front yard, stopping to light a cigarette. That's when Michael, in a moment similar to something Freddy Krueger did while chasing Tina in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, suddenly walks out from behind a tree to Andy's right, comes up behind him, and garrottes him. (How he was able

to stand there for so long without being seen is anybody's guess, as that tree is not big by any means. I guess Andy's glasses don't work at all.) After forcing him to the ground and snapping his neck, Michael turns his attention on the house. Inside, Annie heads upstairs, preparing to take a shower, when Deborah and young Michael appear in one shot of a nearby room. And when she walks into the bathroom, opens the medicine cabinet, takes something, and then closes it, we see Michael's reflection in the glass. He

stands in the room's back corner, and it takes a few seconds before Annie turns and sees him. Following the disturbing prelude to his attack, after Laurie and Mya arrive and head inside, there's a nice, big wide shot of the house's exterior, where Michael passes by the upstairs window, in a shot reminiscent of Psycho. When they find Annie up in the bathroom, Laurie has Mya, who's just as horrified as she is, go downstairs and call the police. While Laurie comforts Annie and tries to keep her from dying, Mya manages to call 911, tell them what's going on, and give them the

address, when Michael grabs her by the hair, yanks her back into the house from the front porch (she went out there to look at the address), and slams her onto the kitchen counter, before stabbing her to death. Laurie hears the commotion from upstairs, and closes and locks both of the doors leading into the bathroom. While Sheriff Brackett learns of the 911 call from his own home, Annie dies, leaving Laurie completely shattered. She barely has any time to mourn before Michael is banging on the other side of the bathroom's rear door, forcing her to escape through 

the other. She runs downstairs, where she finds Mya's body, while Michael smashes his way into the bathroom. Seeing that Laurie has escaped, he heads back out through the bedroom, as Laurie, having made it outside, runs around to the back of the house and off into the woods; Michael, brandishing his knife, isn't far behind.

Laurie later makes it to the road and manages to flag down a car being driven by Becks. He puts her in the passenger seat, intending to take her to the hospital, when he's grabbed from behind and flung through the windshield by Michael. He then walks around to the driver's side and manages to turn the car over, sending it down the side of the embankment (not exactly the safest way of capturing someone he's meant to take alive).. As the horn blares continuously, and the car starts to catch fire, Michael pulls the unconscious

Laurie out and, along with Deborah and his young self, takes her to the nearby shack, as the car explodes in the background. Elsewhere, when he hears about the crash and Laurie's abduction, Brackett heads to the site, along with his men. At the shack, Laurie is faced with her mother's ghostly image and is being forced to say, "I love you, Mommy," when a helicopter's spotlight comes through the roof. Michael then hears a man on a bullhorn ordering him to come out and surrender. Elsewhere, in his hotel room, Dr. Loomis sees a newsflash about this situation on the TV and decides he needs to help.

Upon arriving and entering the shack, Loomis tells Michael that Laurie needs to come with him. But when he tries to get her to do so, Laurie tells him that she's being held down. All Loomis sees is her flailing about on the ground, and he tries to convince her that it's all in her mind. Deborah then tells Michael, "We are ready. It is time, Michael. Take us home," and with that, he turns and lunges at Loomis. He grabs him, slams him against the wall, and then flings him to the floor. He takes out his knife and slashes Loomis

repeatedly, before picking him up and delivering a number of ferocious stabs. He lifts up the doctor's body and looks at his slashed face, when Brackett manages to score a shot with a sniper rifle equipped with a night vision scope. Other cops fire on Michael, causing him to fall back and get impaled on a bunch of sharp tools on the shack's rear wall. Laurie finally stops flailing around and, as Brackett orders everyone to hold their fire, she walks over to Michael, sobbing. As he looks at her, still barely alive, she tells him, "I

love you, brother," while Michael, seeing his mother again, holds up his knife behind Laurie's back, possibly in one last attempt to kill her. But he's far too weak to go through with it and drops the knife to the floor. Laurie then takes it and, looking at Michael, who is almost dead, furiously stabs him a bunch of times, repeatedly screaming, "Die!" She even jams the knife really far into him to ensure he's dead, then sits there, completely broken. As Brackett and the other cops watch, Laurie walks out of the shack, wearing Michael's mask, then kneels down, takes it

off, and stares at it in her hands. The scene fades to her in a psychiatric hospital, where she sees the vision of her mother with the white horse and smiles evilly, having succumbed to the madness.

Like with his remake, the Director's Cut of Rob Zombie's Halloween II has become the more accessible version here in the United States. But, while I feel the theatrical version of Zombie's first Halloween is the superior one, I'm more mixed on the sequel and feel that there are some things the Director's Cut does better, while still preferring the theatrical version in other respects. The first significant changes come during the sequence in the hospital, where, as Laurie is fleeing Michael, she comes upon a huge bin full of body parts. This is 

either meant to be more of Michael's handiwork, a sign that this hospital is grossly corrupt and keeps the corpses and parts of people who've died to be disposed of later, or, most likely, another sign that this is really a nightmare that Laurie's having. Anyway, with Michael closing in, Laurie climbs out and runs across a walkway. She comes upon the fire axe that Michael himself later uses and feebly tries to break the glass herself, which she fails at. Zombie has said this was meant to be a joke, especially when Michael 

easily smashes the glass a few moments later. And after she wakes up and goes into the bathroom to take her meds, the captions tell us that it's two years later, as opposed to one year in the theatrical version. I personally like that better, with the notion that poor Laurie has been suffering from this for almost two full years.

Speaking of Laurie, her depiction is one of the Director Cut's major changes, as she's much more damaged and bitter here. Zombie himself said as much, stating, "In the other version, she’s an incredible mess and gets worse. She never has any good moments, she’s just messed up, she’s lashing out at everyone, she’s horrible. Messed up on drugs, she’s just completely spun out through the whole movie. It makes for a real challenging movie to watch and I feel like I don’t know if fans would’ve embraced so much darkness." And that's a big problem, as Laurie

is not the most likable character in this version. I may understand that she's going through a lot, but it's still hard to care for someone who takes her anger out on everybody around her when they're just trying to help. For instance, in this version, when Annie tells her, "One day at a time, babe," at the breakfast table, the scene continues, as Laurie becomes enraged and growls, "One fucking day at a time. You know what, if I hear that fuckin' phrase one more fuckin' time... I mean, she just fuckin' sits there in her fuckin' leather chair and judges me like she's fucking God!" By

extension, this version also shows that Laurie's relationship with Annie is falling apart. Following that outburst, they have this exchange,:"It's her job, Laurie. My God. What am I supposed to say? Boo-fucking-hoo for you." "See? You don't fucking care." "Right, I don't fucking care. I don't understand, Laurie." There's another scene where the two of them have an even nastier fight. Annie comes in on Laurie while she's sitting in her room, drinking some beer, and when she asks her about it, Laurie cops an

attitude. The tension escalates until Laurie tells Annie, "I don't need your shit." Annie loses it at this and yells, "You don't need my shit? You don't need my shit?! I put up with your shit 24/7!" Laurie tells her to back off but Annie yells, "Or what, huh?! The fuck are you gonna do?! You know what, you act like you're the only one whose life got fucking trashed! I am so not buying the new Laurie act." Laurie growls, "I'm not putting up with your moaning shit," then screams at her to get out of her room. Annie tells her,

"I'm not impressed," and leaves, while Laurie turns around and again yells, "Fuck!" at the top of her lungs. Honestly, if I was Annie, I would've punched her lights out. Traumatized or not, she's such a bitch to everyone except Mya and Harley in this version that it's often hard give a crap about her. However, I will say that this does make the scene where she loses Annie more tragic, as she now has the regret of having been so horrible to her lately. So, again, I'm torn.

Her mental deterioration and rage continues into her sessions with Barbara Collier, who has more scenes here than her brief appearance in the theatrical version. After the insane nightmare that starts with her murdering Annie, Laurie is still in the bathroom when she wakes up, rather than in her bed, and takes some meds. Horrified when she realizes she's out, she sits on the toilet and cries. It cuts to the next day, with Laurie walking to a session, when she sees Big Lou in his Frankenstein monster getup, yelling and playing to some kids. We then hear Laurie telling Barbara this

in a voiceover, and how she thought it was funny. She's clearly very disoriented and rambling, going on to talk about how she came upon this spot that was like a small petting zoo, and she held and petted a little pig (snippets of a scene presented as is in the theatrical version). Barbara finally gets her to stop rambling, and Laurie tells her about the horrific attack she said and asks for some more prescriptions. When Barbara refuses, Laurie becomes verbally abusive, saying that she's not strong, demands her meds, and becomes angry when Barbara says she's going to give

her some Haldol instead. She yells, "Fuck, you know what? Fuck you and fuck this! I'm tired of your, 'How are you, Laurie? I'm so concerned, at 100 bucks an hour.' You know what, I would be fucking concerned at a hundred bucks an hour!" Barbara tries to tell her that she is concerned for her, only for Laurie to call it "bullshit" and scream, "You know what, you're more fucked up than I am, you crazy bitch!"

Laurie's first therapy session with Barbara has more details that I think should've been kept in the theatrical version. Rather than talking about missing her parents, here Laurie discusses her fracturing relationship with Annie, saying, "She's a constant reminder. Every time I see her face, and I see those scars...I know that it's my fault. And I get angry. And there's something in my body that snaps. And I get this zero to a hundred rage, and I just wanna go up to her...and I just... wanna..." She's reluctant to finish that sentence, out of fear that Barbara would have her

put away, though she assures Laurie that wouldn't happen. Had that been left in the theatrical cut, the explosion of rage that Laurie has later, where she dreams about killing Annie and screaming at her to die, would've had some more context. Laurie then notices this large, Rorschach painting on the room's back wall and asks what it is. Barbara tells her, "That's... whatever you think it is, is what that is. The theory is that this ambiguous stimuli here will bring your subconscious thoughts into the light. Illuminate

them. So, what do you see?" Looking at it, Laurie answers, "A white horse?", then adds, "So, what does that tell you? Am I crazy or sane?" Barbara answers, "It tells me you're a girl who likes white horses." While it still doesn't explain everything by a long shot, that moment does, if nothing, makes Laurie and Michael's connection with their dead mother feel less random.

There's a bit more of Deborah in the Director's Cut, such as in a moment where, after Michael kills Howard, she appears inside the Rabbit in Red club. Standing on the very stage where she herself once pole-danced, she tells Michael, "We're done waiting. Only a river of blood can bring us back together. It's up to you. It's always been up to you, Michael." That moment does have an otherworldly vibe, as it's completely silent, save for the music score and Deborah's dialogue. More significantly, when Halloween arrives, there's a scene where Michael 

sees a billboard advertising Dr. Loomis' new book, inter-cut with shots of people lining up for the book signing. As Michael approaches the billboard, Deborah and his young self are also there, and she says, "He's still out there. Rich and famous, all because of our pain. I hope he's having fun." That last line is heard when the scene cuts to Loomis having picture taken with that cute redhead he makes a crass comment about.

There are some additional bits of dialogue during the scene at the Rabbit in Red in the Director's Cut that I do find funny. Rather than simply ordering Howard to take out the trash, here Big Lou says, "Hey, Howard, let me ask you a question. I got a riddle for you. What does a stripper do with her asshole before she dances?... She gives him 10 bucks and she tells him to take out the trash!" Howard, not getting it, laughs along with them, when they both tell him to take out the trash, much to his frustration. And before they start screwing and Michael kills them, Lou and Misty

have this exchange: "Hey, baby, you know what? It's after midnight." "So? I don't think my pussy is gonna turn into a pumpkin." As much as I usually don't like the nasty dialogue that Rob Zombie writes, I did laugh at that one.

Loomis is even nastier and more egotistical in the Director's Cut. In his first scene, he makes more condescending remarks towards Nancy McDonald, saying, "I mean, look at you. Are you color-coordinated? Pink clogs and this orange thing? Are you a clam digger or something? I don't mean that in the lesbian sense." Nancy responds, "I think you mean carpet muncher," and Loomis says, "I'm not judging. I'm not judging." By extension, in the scene in front of the Myers house, after Loomis tells Nancy, "When I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you," he

gives her back the cup he drank from and orders her, "Now, take that and go sit in the car. Go on. Get your ass in there." He even shoves her a little bit, then turns back around to the TV reporter and pleasantly asks where she wants him to stand. There's also more to the press conference Loomis has early on. When he first walks onstage following the clip of young Michael's reaction to the news of his mother's death, he says, "I think you can all see quite clearly here that Michael's psychotic perception is in complete denial about his own mother's suicide. Freud would certainly

have a field day with that little one, wouldn't he?" That lame joke gets no reaction, so Loomis continues, "So, it is the fate of all of us to direct our first sexual impulses towards our mothers, and our first murderous hatred against our fathers. Now, in Michael's case, I became the surrogate father. The last father in a long series of fathers." There's an additional question from the reporters as well, with one asking, "You never really made it clear whether you believe it was nurture or nature that contributed 

to Michael's condition." Loomis answers, "I would like to answer it, in part, by quoting the great George Bernard Shaw, with a little Loomis twist at the end. He says, 'In the arts of life, man invents nothing. But in the arts of death, he outdoes nature herself and produces, by chemistry and machinery, all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, famine...' and Michael Myers." He laughs at his own addition, noting, "Well, sorry, but I like that little one. That's my own little twist." 

It's a shame that most of Annie's additional moments here are mostly made up of her nasty fights and arguments with Laurie, as I do like seeing Danielle Harris getting more to do. When Laurie becomes sick from sensing Michael eating the dog, Annie has to be coaxed by Brackett into checking on her. Walking into the bathroom, she wets a washcloth, pats Laurie's face down with it, and gives it to her. Laurie tells her, "Sorry I was such a bitch earlier," Annie says, "Ah, I get it," and comforts her. Like I said, the scene where Brackett discovers that Annie has been killed is even

more affecting in this version. Here, the sound doesn't cut out immediately, and you hear Brackett's devastated reaction, as he yells in absolute anguish, and in the midst of this, it cuts to home video footage of when Annie was a little girl (actual home movies of Danielle Harris when she was a kid) in order to further punctuate his loss. It's absolutely gut-wrenching, and perfectly gets across Rob Zombie's desire for murders in horror movies to have significance and repercussions. As Brackett's 

deputies, after trying to comfort him, help him to his feet and lead him out of the house, it cuts to silent, slightly slowed down footage of Laurie running through the dark woods. Zombie said on his audio commentary that it gets into how Brackett has now failed to keep both of these girls safe from harm.

Like with the previous movie, the ending had to be reshot, as the Weinsteins hated what Zombie originally filmed, mainly because of how final it is when they, naturally, planned to keep going (and had already planned a Halloween III without Zombie's knowledge). I personally prefer this original ending, not only because it's much more straightforward and the conclusion is more powerful, but also because, since this did end up being the last film in this continuity, it does make it feel more concrete. Here, when Loomis tries to intervene in the shack, it cuts to 

the exterior, and after a few seconds of silence, he and Michael burst out through the wall. Ripping his mask off, Michael yells, "Die!", and stabs Loomis (I used to really hate that, but now, given how much else this movie deviates from the series tradition, I don't really care). After dropping Loomis' body, Michael is gunned down by Brackett and the rest of the police, as they pump numerous bullets into him (which, of course, is mostly done is slow-motion). He collapses, and Laurie, guided by the vision of Deborah, walks out of the shack, goes over to his body, and takes the 

knife out of his hand. She walks up to Loomis' body, but before she can do whatever she's planning, some trigger-happy cops shoot her several times, as Brackett yells at them to hold their fire. Laurie then falls to the ground and we get an angle that starts way up high, showing her, Michael, and Loomis all lying on the ground, dead, and it slowly zooms down into her face, as we fade to the ending with her sitting in the psych ward and seeing her mother with the white horse. Unlike the theatrical ending's suggestion that 

she was taken to a psychiatric hospital, Zombie has said that in this ending, Laurie is indeed dying from the gunshots and those visions are the last thing she sees. Besides the aforementioned finality, I really like that shot of Laurie, Loomis, and Michael all lying dead, with the helicopter's searchlight hovering over them, as Nan Vernon's cover of Love Hurts plays, as it is effectively sad, showing how this affair ended so tragically for all of those involved.

While watching Halloween II, you may notice that it sounds nothing like any other Halloween film. That's because, up until the ending credits, you don't hear the classic main theme once. In the theatrical ending, as the scene fades, you do hear an eerie version of Laurie's Theme, which is suitable for the idea that she's gone insane like her brother, but there are no classic John Carpenter themes throughout the length of the Director's Cut.  The main theme's absence supposedly wasn't intentional on Zombie's part, as he's said that he and composer Tyler Bates simply couldn't find a good spot to put it. Looking at the movie, I myself am not exactly sure where you could put it without it being intrusive or out of place, and it does reinforce the idea that this is one of the most unusual Halloween movies you'll ever see. The version of the main theme they use is the big, bombastic one heard in the previous one's advertising and it works fine, accompanied by some eerie female vocalizing. As for the rest of the music, I think Bates was able to come up with some more distinctive original pieces this time around. He still uses that loud, droning sound for much of the horror and tension moments, but he also comes up with a distinctive, otherworldly-sounding theme to signify the presence of the ghostly Deborah, and a very effectively sad piece with female vocalizing for when Brackett finds Annie's body. And there are some other nice, doom-laden themes that he uses to signify Michael's ongoing return to Haddonfield as Halloween approaches.

As for the songs, you have your expected classic songs from yesteryear, most notably Nights in White Satin by The Moody Blues, the music video of which you see playing on TV several times during the opening hospital sequence (which also acts as a sign that it's a nightmare), as well as some more modern music, notably a lot of hard rock and metal, like the stuff Laurie and her friends listen to, as well as on various car radios. You hear Mozart playing in the background during Laurie's horrific surgery at the beginning, as if that scene wasn't already uncomfortable enough. And there are a number of songs performed by Captain Clegg and the Night Creatures at the Phantom Jam (and if you're a Hammer fan like me, you know and appreciate the significance of that group's name). The one I most remember is Honkytonk Halloween, which you see a bit of the music video for in the Director's Cut, and then hear in full over the latter part of the end credits. I wasn't too happy about hearing it there the first time I watched the movie, as I felt it was really inappropriate and too silly to close out what I'd just watched, as well as felt it was another instance of Zombie mocking the series, but now, I just deal with it. 

When I'd heard that Zombie put Love Hurts over the Director's Cut ending, I was rather pissed, as it was confirmation that he didn't care at all about this movie and was another example of him trolling those who complained about something in his first Halloween. When I first got around to watching Halloween II, I was bracing myself during the finale to hear that very inappropriate song again... but what I got instead wasn't the original by Nazareth, but a very slow, soft, and somber cover by Nan Vernon, who sang the cover of Mr. Sandman in the previous one. This works perfectly with how tragically the Director's Cut ends, and I thought to myself, "I guess Zombie wasn't treating this whole thing as a joke after all."

Probably more than any other movie in his filmography, and definitely more than any other entry in this franchise, Rob Zombie's Halloween II is a love it or hate it type of movie. On the plus side, it has an enjoyably hammy performance by Malcolm McDowell; a truly great, sympathetic, and relatable portrayal of Sheriff Brackett by Brad Dourif; a more likable performance by Danielle Harris; a well-executed visual style, as well as a nicely grim atmosphere and some memorably surreal scenes; gruesome, brutal kills, aided by some convincing makeup effects; genuinely affecting scenes; and a well done use of music and songs. But, it still has its fair share of flaws: some of the kills are so over the top and drawn out that they become unintentionally funny; the amount of profanity, especially in the Director's Cut, is still a major distraction; Michael Myers is essentially turned into Jason Voorhees, complete with an unnecessary mama complex, and is stripped of any intrigue he had left at this point; and there are some parts of the story, such as a random link between Laurie and Michael, and the nature of his mother and younger self, that make no sense. And both of the film's cuts have their own strengths and weaknesses, which unfortunately include Laurie Strode being very hard to like in one as opposed to the other. In the end, I'd say I would watch this over the previous one, but it's still far from perfect. For any Halloween fans who haven't seen it, I'd say give it a shot, but be prepared for a Michael Myers tale unlike any other.