Halloween II (2009)

Directed and Written by Rob Zombie

Rated R for strong brutal bloody violence throughout, terror, disturbing graphic images, language, and some crude sexual content and nudity.

It has been almost 3 years since Rob Zombie resurrected the aging Halloween horror series. His first entry in the series, "Halloween" (2007) upgraded the murderous Michael Meyers for a new generation of horror audiences. In addition to the added stylized gore and nudity he gave Michael Meyers a back-story that explains the character's rage and psychosis more fully than ever before.

With "Halloween II", Zombie takes us a step further, into the very mind of Michael Meyers. A marked departure from the preexisting films in the series, Rob Zombie's "Halloween II" reinterprets the series' villain through the lens of Freudian dream psychology. Michael's dead mother, a white horse, and a manifestation of Michael as a child (wearing the iconic clown suit) haunt Michael throughout the film. The child-Michael and the adult-Michael often appear side-by-side, moving in unison. The eerie juxtaposition between the child and adult is an apt metaphor for the combination of Meyers' child-like brain and his monstrous physical presence. While this heavy-handed dream imagery has garnered it's share of criticism, I found these scenes to be the defining moments that kept this from being just another Halloween movie.

Scout Taylor-Compton reprises her role as Laurie Strode, the long-lost baby sister of Michael Meyers. After surviving the trials of the first film, Laurie spent the subsequent two years trying to piece her life back together. We get a realistic (although not optimistic) view of a young girl whose life has been irreparably scarred by the trauma of her experience with Michael Meyers. Her relationships with her friends have begun to suffer, along with her mental health. She sees a therapist throughout the course of the film, but this serves only to reveal to the audience the extent of her growing depravity. She manifests the same anger and rage that Michael Meyers did as a child, lashing out at those closest to her. By the end of the movie, Zombie has drawn a startling parallel between Laurie and Michael, leaving us to wonder whether she might not be the killer in Halloween 3.

At one point in Halloween II, someone asks Dr. Samuel Loomis (another survivor from the first movie) whether he believes that Michael Meyers was created by nature or nurture. The strong parallels between Laurie and Michael in Halloween II seem to imply that there is a genetic element to Meyers' madness. That he is in fact a "Bad Seed", with a genetically inherited predisposition to behave murderously, and that Laurie has been tainted by this innate evil as well. She even seems to be psychically connected to Michael, and has several hallucinatory episodes relating to Michael and his crimes. This would seem to support the "nature" argument. But Michael Meyers is shown in "Halloween" (2007) to have suffered abuse at the hands of classmates and his stepfather. And Laurie suffered horrible emotional trauma at the hands of Michael Meyers. Rob Zombie (like Dr. Loomis) dances around answering the nature vs. nurture question by making both answers not only possible, but likely. It could be that Michael and Laurie both inherited their murderous rage from one of their parents (making the question of who their biological father is very intriguing, since Zombie's films have yet to mention him). It could also be that Michael was pushed to his path of violence by childhood abuse and trauma (for which we see plenty of evidence in H1) and that Laurie's experience with Michael in H1 was emotionally damaging enough to push her to madness as well. In the end, both nature and nurture play a role. As Dr. Loomis says in H1, Michael is "a perfect storm"; the perfect combination of nature and nurture elements to create the perfect monster.

Dr. Loomis' character has changed the most since the last movie. In H1, Loomis (played by the amazing Malcolm McDowell) is a sympathetic everyman trying desperately to reign in the horror of the only patient he couldn't save. In H2, Loomis has become a cheap con-man, trying to cash in on his inside knowledge of Meyers by publishing books that expose the gruesome details of his crimes. Loomis was close to Michael when he was in prison as a child, but abandoned his case when Michael became introverted, unresponsive and silent. Child-Michael saw Loomis as a father-figure in H1, the last in a long series of father figures to disappoint him. His biological father is a virtual unknown, his step-father was abusive (and one of Michael's first victims) and Loomis left him to rot in prison when he needed human contact the most. In a riveting climax, Meyers confronts Loomis for all the crimes of all of his fathers, letting out a thundering shout of "Die" as he throws himself at Loomis. This is the only word that adult-Michael speaks in the film's franchise history.

Another thing that struck me about H1 was the amazing use of music. I particularly enjoy the murder scene in which the guitar jam portion of Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" is playing as Michael chases one of his victims around a house. H2 just didn't do as well in the music department. While "Nights in White Satin" is used to some effect, the overall soundscape seemed to fall victim to several different horror soundtrack cliches, including going silent during shocking, violent scenes and using slow-motion and heartbeat sound effects during action sequences. These are common and forgivable errors within the horror soundtrack genre, but I had expected more from Mr. Zombie, him being a musician and all.

One major detractor for me was the absence of Daeg Faerch, the boy who played young Michael Meyers in H1. His performance of a boy on the edge of madness completely sold me on Rob Zombie's version of Meyers' back-story. Faerch's H2 replacement, Chase Wright Vanek, is just not as good. He doesn't look as creepy, and he's not as good an actor.

Overall, I'd give it an 8/10. If you've watched Zombie's other films (House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects, and H1) there is very little chance you will not enjoy this movie. There is plenty of gore, seasoned with occasional, strikingly beautiful cinematography. The story is above-par for the series, and takes the characters of the original places they've never been before. It fell a tad short of H1 (in my opinion, Zombie's best film to-date), but expanded the series in a valuable way that has set us up for several interesting possibilities in Halloween 3. Is Michael alive? Will Laurie become a killer? Will we hear from Michael's long-lost father? I, for one, am eager to find out. 












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