It’s time for another reverse Uno card of a video. When we are looking at something standing the Test of Time, its usually through the lens of “is it still good” or “is it still impactful”? The holy grail or Mount Rushmore of slashers have an easy answer to that. Halloween, Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and A Nightmare on Elm Street are all unimpeachable in their legacy and entertainment value but what about their sequels and remakes? Weve looked at a few of them either through this show seeing if they are still fun as well as Andrew or Lance defending some of them in our Black Sheep videos. Rob Zombie is pretty divisive in general, but he had the extremely difficult task of making not only the remake of John Carpenter’s Halloween in 2007 but also a sequel to that in 2009. He was told he could have free reign and reluctantly agreed after the first one nearly killed him. After 15 years and a new trilogy of films to mull over, has Halloween II gotten any better or is it still derided and hard to watch?
Plot
Rob Zombie’s Halloween in 2007 could have been an abysmal failure. A lot of people still don’t care for it, and it wasn’t a critical darling but failure it was not. It made 80 million on its 15-million-dollar budget and that was more than enough to get another movie going. Malek Akkad would announce as much at the 30 Years of Terror convention in 2008. While it was announced as a sequel to Rob Zombie’s film, it was unclear if Zombie would come back for it. The creators of the French New Extreme movie Inside, Julien Murray and Alexandre Bustillo, were thought to be coming on but Zombie was convinced to come back. He wasn’t keen on the idea after the exhaustion of the first one caused him, but he was also told by the producers that not only did they really want him to return, but also that he could do whatever he wanted. He was allowed to ignore some of the franchise rules the Akkad family had put into place and was allowed to not have it feel like Carpenter at all.
For the record, the movie that we will be discussing today is the theatrical cut and not the director’s cut. We like a good director’s cut but with it not being the originally screened feature, it doesn’t really count in our minds as it could have made the movie better for some and worse for others. The main cast returned with Scout Taylor Compton, Malcolm McDowell, Danielle Harris, Tyler Mane, and Brad Dourif reprising their roles as Laurie, Loomis, Annie, Michael Myers, and Sheriff Brackett. Sheri Moon Zombie would also come back in a limited capacity as a ghostly version of her character from the first movie, Michael’s mom. New to the series would be a mix of classic horror actors and actors that either were already or would become a part of Zombie’s troupe of actors. These include Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’s Caroline Willimas, Margot Kidder, and Richard Brake. We would also have Howard Hessman, Brea Grant, Octavia Spencer, and Dayton Callie in various roles. One actor who did not come back was Daeg Faerch because he had grown too much for the role. He was replaced by actor Chase Wright Vanek.
The movie opens immediately after the ending of the first one with a severely injured Laurie stumbling down the road with the pistol she used to shoot Michael. She is found by the sheriff’s department and taken to the hospital where we see in gruesome detail just how much damage was done. Annie is also alive and in the same hospital where Laurie is, and she wants to watch over her friend. Unfortunately, Michael is alive and has made his way to the hospital where he has killed his way to Laurie. He chases her until he has a cornered and then finally strikes her down only to wake her up from the nightmare she is having.
It is now a year later, and Laurie is in rough shape. She lives with her best friend Annie and her Sherrif father but is in therapy and can’t seem to get it together. Michaels body was never found but she is certain he is dead. Sam Loomis has written a book on the events and is on a tour trying to hype it up. We see that Michael is in fact alive and sees a vision of his younger self, mom, and a white horse with his mother telling him to return to Laurie to make them whole again. He treks across the state and kills more and more people that get in his way. As he gets closer to Haddonfield and Laurie, her condition worsens, and she begins to have hallucinations that both have her act out his previous murders but also see parts of his early life and mother. Loomis is getting blamed for the rampage that Michael went on and his book has other unintended consequences. It reveals to the public, and Laurie herself, that she is Michael’s sister, and her real name is Angel.
This sets her off and she goes to a Halloween party with some friends. While she is there, Michael kills Annie and then her other friends before taking her to an abandoned shed. The police and Loomis find the shed as well and Loomis goes inside to try and save Laurie. Michael kills him and then is shot by Brackett before getting stabbed by Laurie. Laurie, now completely broken, puts on the mask and goes outside to be whisked off to an asylum where she now has visions of her mom. A sequel titled Halloween 3D was scrapped both after Zombie left the project and in general. The Unrated Directors cut was released on video and is actually the most common physical version, but not the most common streaming one.
Signs of the Time
This is very much in the height of the remake boom. From 03 to, well, now, we had everything from Texas Chainsaw to Halloween to Friday the 13th to My Bloody Valentine all getting the remake treatment. While this is a sequel to a remake, it also slyly remakes the original Halloween II in the opening sequence. Another sign of the time, or at least sign of the Rob Zombie movie, is his casting choices. We have our standard actors that show up in a ton of his work like Richard Brake, Malcolm McDowell, Sheri Moon, Jeff Daniel Phillips, and Daniel Roebuck but we also get some fun random actors too. These include Howard Hessman from Clue and WKRP in Cincinnati, Margot Kidder from Superman and the original Black Christmas which is one of Zombie’s favorites, and Bill Fagerbakke, or, Patrick Star from SpongeBob. His other movies do this as well with Lords of Salem having a rare Patricia Quinn from Rocky Horror sighting.
There are a couple other things that are signs of the time too. While there isn’t any social media presence here, Loomis writing his book and going on tour to make money and capitalize on the tragedy is very much a thing. Think of those TikTok or Instagram reels where someone sets up an artsy shot to then explain something tragic. It can’t be that tragic to you if you had the time to be a cinematographer. This movie was also a bit of a trendsetter both with the series and other remakes and legacy sequels by really showing off the trauma caused by the events of the first movie. Personally, I think it was done much better than in Texas Chainsaw 2022 and right on par with Laurie in Halloween 2018 which brings us to…
What Holds Up?
I know that Scout Taylor Compton gets grief for her portrayal of Laurie but it’s good in the first movie and it’s even better here. She goes through it all and is justifiably upset. Compton acts like she is actually going through it and the PTSD as well as scenes of her trying to figure out her life are really good. That PTSD even extends to Michael as he allows people to beat on him a little bit before fighting back. He even goes maskless during a large chunk of the movie and only goes back after Laurie and Haddonfield after he starts having delusions of his younger self and his mom. The rest of the cast does a good job too with a special shout out to Danielle Harris who has survived and fought more than anyone in this franchise apart from Curtis and Donald Pleasence. She plays it well with trying to help her friend but also put her own life back together after the events of the first movie. Other standouts are the always delightful Daniel Roebuck and the legendary Brad Dourif who gives a great speech about meat and Lee Marvin.
The sly recreation of the original Halloween II was a nice touch with the opening hospital scene. It does a good job of being realistic right up until the end of it when Michael stabs Laurie and wakes her up from her dream. It is a complete remake of that movie in the sense that it takes what that movie brought to the series, mostly that Laurie and Michael are related, and does its own thing with the material. The score throughout is also pretty good and they show restraint by only using the music from the OG movies until the very end. From score to gore and the FX in this movie are complicated with the opening being easily the most uncomfortable part and most of the rest, apart from Roebuck’s death, being much more subtle than you’d expect from both the source material and director. What they do show is effective and even what they don’t show works with the very squishy sound effects. The final two things to point out are Laurie learning of her heritage through the book and the ending. Brackett trying to tell her himself but failing almost sets the last act off and may have led to his own daughter’s death and the ending makes good on what Halloween 4 promised with a new person taking over the Myers killer lineage. The director’s cut is more direct, but the theatrical is more horrifying.
What doesn’t hold up?
People that were upset with how young Michael was handled in the first part of this duology will bite their togue as the replacement for Daeg does not do a great job. While the kills are cool and how Tyler Mane plays the Shape are nice, how Michael is written and directed does not hold up. I understand that the Akkad family gave Zombie free reign but that should have been just his idea to kill Michael in both movies. Someone should have definitely stopped Rob from having a maskless, grunting, and thinking Myers. The directors cut is even more egregious with him actually saying “Die” but the grunting and walking around in a hoodie take away from the spirit of the franchise and killer as a whole.
While I think Loomis being a prima donna and a bit of a dick is annoying, the character does go full crazy in part 5 so its at least an interesting direction to go and he does have somewhat of an arc when he tries to do the right thing at the end. On a similar train to that, people being mad at Loomis is dumb, at least for the reasons they give. Loomis is capitalizing off of a tragedy to be sure, but he wanted to stop Michael, so the deaths are not his fault. Finally, a lot of the people are just crummy and written poorly. Zombie is a visual filmmaker who knows how to make people uncomfortable and write with the nihilism of the movies he grew up with but his dialogue and character development usually falls flat.
Verdict
This is a tough one. I think that the director’s cut is the one I was most familiar with, and that version is easily the worst of the two. The theatrical cut tries different things with the characters and series and even does some things better than the last two David Gordon Green movies were able to pull off. This movie is finally starting to age well like Halloween III eventually did and while it doesn’t quite hold up now, its getting better and better and I’d rather watch it than Kills or Ends. Halloween II needs some more time to soak but like its masked killer, its stalking its way towards a better reputation.
A couple of the previous episodes of The Test of Time can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
