Just got finished watching the Halloween II Blu-Ray I bought this week, and I am so glad that I failed to make it to the theaters to see it. My general assessment is that Zombie must have read all the hate from Halloween ‘78 purists on the internet after the release of his first remake, and said, “Oh yeah? You think that’s white trash? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” And then he thought, “But Halloween ’78 fanboys aside, I must create a script solely for the purpose of making sure my wife can be onscreen about every 10 minutes.”
After throwing us a crumb in the first half hour of the movie with an homage to the original Halloween II, we are catapulted two years into the future…and can’t help wonder how Laurie managed to make it through the first anniversary of Halloween night as she struggles to make it through the second anniversary. She is no longer the happy go lucky virginal sweetheart who grew up in a gorgeous suburban home in Haddonfield, Illinois. She is now a white trash bitch living in the white trash home of the town’s sheriff and his daughter Annie out in the middle of the woods somewhere. In fact, all of Haddonfield, the quiet suburban town from the first film, has turned into some sort of Midwestern nightmare where nearly toothless ambulance drivers who like to talk about screwing dead bodies can crash their ambulance into a rogue cow on desolate dirt roads.
But back to Laurie. Scout-Taylor Compton deserves an Oscar just for memorizing her complicated dialogue: “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” That’s right folks. When she’s not boozing it up, Laurie spends the majority of the movie dropping the F bomb. It makes for a great drinking game with friends at a party: “Everybody drink! She said ‘fuck’! Oh wait! She just said it five more times while I was saying that!”
Trailer trash Laurie isn’t the only beloved character who has been forever re-imagined as wholly unlikable. The character Donald Pleasance spent over a decade making an iconic horror hero has now become a despicable gold digging author who hopes to cash in on the Michael Myers story and can’t even remember the face of one of the victims.
And then, there’s Michael. Don’t know where he was for two years and where he’s coming from now, but when he’s not visiting a strip club (which he does in this movie), he spends his time trekking across meadows killing any hick who gets in his way as he heads back to Haddonfield…you know, the place where he was believed to have been killed by Laurie in the first movie. Michael has changed. Gone are the mechanic’s overalls and the vacant white Halloween mask. He still wears the mask occasionally, but it’s in terrible shape with one whole side ripped off and he doesn’t bother to make a pit stop at a convenience store this time to get a new one. Instead, he most often keeps the mask hidden under a hoodie! Yes, a straight out of the 70s hoodie. Michael Myers looks like Ben Kenobi on a murderous rampage in this film. And Michael Myers also has a long scraggly beard and hair that stick out from under his mask. In fact, most of the men, including Sheriff Brackett, have a long scraggly beard and hair in this film. You know, they all look like Rob Zombie.
As for young Michael Myers, who is featured prominently in this movie along with his dead mother (aka: Sheri Moon Zombie), there’s a failure in continuity, because the Hanson-looking actor that most seemed to hate from the first movie does not reprise his role here. Danielle Harris, whom hardcore Halloween series lovers adore, reprises her role as Annie. She starts out dressed when she comes face to face with Michael Myers, but as in the first movie, afterwards, she’s inexplicably pretty much naked again. Are these two having some sort of torrid sexual affair we don’t know about? Will the next installment be called Halloween 3-D: The Birth of Annie’s Lovechild?
Other highlights include cameos by Howard Hesseman, Weird Al Yankovic, Margot Kidder, and a unicorn-looking white horse. The horse was pretty gay, but the film was way too hetero and could have been fagged up a little more. Sure, the girls went to a Halloween party dressed like characters from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but EVERYONE in this film listened to psychedelic 60s rock, 70s classic rock, and thrash metal, including Laurie! I was praying for a real scream queen to jump on stage at the Halloween party and start performing “I Will Survive”. Yes indeed. A cameo by Adam Lambert could have saved this film for me.
