Halloween II (2009)
Rob Zombie's take on original "Halloween" was decent and pretty watchable. I thought it was a nice tribute, and it added some dimension to the Myer's character. Unfortunately, everything I liked about the first movie has been abandoned in the sequel. In "Halloween II" Zombie had to condense a lot of his story to appease the requirements of the remake. Here he's given much more freedom, but unfortunately he is not able to follow it through with a strong narrative force. My biggest complaint along these lines is that the movie begins with a cheat - the 'it's only a dream' sequence - so for the first half hour, you're trying to figure out what actually happened in the opening scenes and what was part of Laurie's dream. Furthermore, when they pull the same 'dream' trick later in the movie it gets a bad laugh. Zombie clearly is not interested in normal behavior and all of his characters in this movie have issues, but, because of the constant changes of perspective, it's hard to develop much interest in any of them. Taylor-Compton's shrill, nearly non-stop shrieking and crying never lets up for a second. She's not believable during her big dramatic moments and hilariously unconvincing trying to play a hard-edged tattooed punkette. Then we have Rob's wife Sheri Moon. Thankfully she's playing a delusion so her vacant facial expressions and monotone line delivery are at least somewhat acceptable for the part she's playing. It's still hard not to be annoyed that an utterly pointless role was grafted on just so she could participate in the film. The only one who seems to put together a complete performance is Brad Dourif. Nearly every single horror scene is botched by split second cuts that get increasingly more tiresome as the film progresses. The kills themselves are forgettable. Everything looks extremely ugly, grimy and dreary thanks to 16mm film stock and dim lighting. As a result, a lot of the footage was difficult to make out. Rob Zombie has a style that is well-suited for horror movies, but he would be better served in the future if he could collaborate with a screen writer that would help him with story structure. He definitely needs one.
- My Rating: 4.50/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 21% (3.7/10)
- IMDb: 5.1/10
2 comments:
Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 isn't any better or worse than his last one. It's probably the least crazy of his four films and is more straight forward horror.
I thought his latest was better. Not much better, but better! Part 2 was anything but straight forward. I could describe Zombie's first Halloween movie as straight forward. THanks for the comment.. and MERRY CHRISTMAS! :)
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