HALLOWEEN II
(director/writer: Rob Zombie; cinematographer: Brandon Trost; editors: Joel Pashby/Glenn Garland; music: Tyler Bates; cast: Scout Taylor-Compton (Laurie Strode), Tyler Mane (Michael Myers), Chase Vanek (Young Meyers), Malcolm McDowell (Dr. Samuel Loomis), Brad Dourif (Sheriff Lee Brackett), Sheri Moon Zombie (Deborah Myers), Danielle Harris (Annie Brackett), Brea Grant (Mya Rockwell), Margot Kidder (Therapist); Runtime: 105; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Bob Weinstein/Harvey Weinstein/Matthew Stein/Andy La Marca; A Dimension Films; 2009)
“Panders to the base seekers of cheap thrills.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Rob Zombie (“Halloween”/”House of 1000 Corpses”/”The Devil Rejects”) writes and directs this tasteless and witless remake of the 1981 sequel to John Carpenter’s classic Halloween (1978). It’s also an unpleasant grisly sequel to Zombie’s own remake in 2007. Zombie not only makes this slasher story unpleasant and pointless, but makes it even more unpleasant by filming the grainy visuals in Super 16mm.
After a flashback to young Myers (Chase Vanek) acting nice in the company of his loving mom (Sheri Moon Zombie), the rebooted film returns to the aftermath of the previous film’s carnage. There the lone survivor of the massacre, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton), is in a roadside shack when discovered in a catatonic state by Illinois sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) and brought to intensive care.
The indestructible knife-wielding giant maniac Myers (now played by Tyler Mane) is presumed dead, but his body is missing since in actuality he has escaped from a coroner’s vehicle after it crashes into a cow. The film then skips to a year later. Laurie now lives with Sheriff Brackett and his feisty daughter Annie (Danielle Harris). She has no idea that she survived Myer’s attack and shot him, and is now a punk-styled record-store employee who is plagued by nightmares and is treated by a therapist (Margot Kidder).
The very much alive masked Myers continues slicing up vics, as the pompous profiteering shrink who treated Myers, the hammy Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), swears he’s dead and the celebrity author comes out with another bestselling trashy book on the maniac that reveals that Laurie, living under an assumed name, is Myer’s damaged-goods younger sister. The delusional Myers, who envisions being influenced by a white stallion (a pretentious and silly artsy-farty psychological dream sequence), aims in this bloody horror/slasher flick to go on his rampage to reunite the family with his deceased mother–she appears as a ghost.
It’s a messy, non-suspenseful, graphically violent and repulsive film, that panders to the base seekers of cheap thrills.
REVIEWED ON 9/1/2009 GRADE: C- https://dennisschwartzreviews.com/