Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 Was the Most Disappointing Movie By That Name Since the 1981 Original
There’s something strangely comforting about discovering that your contempt for a movie is shared by its creator, cast, or producers. I was consequently oddly relieved to learn that Rob Zombie is not a fan of the Rob Zombie Halloween dyad.
In an unsurprising development, the goofily gothic hard rocker turned auteur had a terrible experience working with the Weinstein brothers, who wanted the film to be as much like its predecessor as possible.
Zombie had a nightmare of a time making 2007’s Halloween. Though the film was a commercial, if not a critical success, its making and the Weinsteins’ unwanted input proved traumatic. Rumor has it that Zombie would drive home from set every night in his Dragula, feeling overwhelmed and defeated.
The musician didn’t like Halloween. He seemed to like its sequel even less. I am going to be diplomatic and say that they are both terrible, though there are things I enjoyed about both films.
To make filming the sequel to a Halloween reboot even remotely interesting, Malcolm McDowell pitched Zombie a radical rethinking of Dr. Loomis, the obsessed doctor Donald Pleasence played unforgettably in 1978’s Halloween, and less indelibly with each subsequent silly sequel.
What, McDowell proposed, if this version of Loomis is a sleazy opportunist obsessed with fame and money and not particularly interested in Michael Myers except as a springboard to celebrity? It was a bold proposal that marked a distinct departure from the way the character had been portrayed in every other film that featured him.
Dr. Loomis loomed large as one of the most iconic heroes in horror history. He was nearly as well-known as his most infamous, murder-happy patient. Making him an asshole and a buffoon risked antagonizing purists.
Thankfully, Zombie took McDowell up on his suggestion and transformed Dr. Loomis into a funny and pointed parody of a sleazy pop culture opportunist chasing every last dollar, even if it means ruining lives.
If I might heap faint praise on him, McDowell is the best part of Halloween 2. Its show business satire is a lot sharper and more fun than its gratuitous gore. It doesn't hurt that the star of A Clockwork Orange and Caligula gets to realize every veteran actor’s dream and share the screen with “Weird Al” Yankovic in a scene where the pop parodist plays the other guest on a Chris Hardwick-hosted talk show, where Loomis is promoting his new book. Loomis is humiliated.
Zombie’s love of horror is palpable and infectious. He’s reverent in his respect for the history of the genre, yet the movie’s most effective elements are the most irreverent.
Halloween 2’s other asset is Brad Dourif’s incongruously tender portrayal of Sheriff Lee Brackett as a dorky dad obsessed with protecting his children from Michael Myers. The lawman learns the hard way that all the precautions in the world won’t matter if your adversary is Michael Myers, an unstoppable killing machine who is “killed” at the end of each movie, then springs right back to life because he has a sister in need of being murdered.
Sure enough, we begin with Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) momentarily victorious. She’s shot Michael Myers. He sure seems deceased, but a traffic accident allows him to escape captivity so that he can get back to kill Laurie Strode.
Michael Myers is obsessed with killing his sister. It’s almost as if he’s being controlled by an evil Druid cult. How else could you possibly explain his seeming invincibility?
One year later, Laurie is living with the Bracketts. Halloween is difficult for her, on account of all the trauma and murders. It becomes even harder for the poor young woman when, on a limb, she decides to check out Dr. Loomis’ book about Michael Myers’ demise and is shocked to discover that her entire life has been a lie.
Her real name is not Laurie Strode but Angel O’Myers. And Angel has a brother by the name of MICHAEL MYERS.
Did that blow your mind? Isn’t that fucking nuts, that the hero and the villain are secretly brother and sister? That would be like Luke Skywalker secretly being Darth Vader’s son and Princess Leia’s brother.
What? That didn’t blow your mind? Everyone knows that Michael Myers is Laurie Strode’s brother? It’s one of the most famous twists in film history? I guess you’re right.
Laurie is understandably bummed to discover that her immediate family contains a mute, masked mass murderer. Her bloodline is tainted with mental illness and EVIL. She’s the sister of the boogeyman!
Laurie is already an angst-ridden teenager before she discovers that she has much of the same genetic material as a real-life monster who, as a special tradition, murders dozens of horny teenagers every spooky season.
In a more serious film, our heroine learning her dark secret would engender a powerful identity crisis and lead her to question everything she previously accepted about who she was and her place in the world. Halloween 2 is not a serious movie, however. So it just comes off as silly.
In a misguided attempt to give his stamp on this dispiritingly generic material, the adult Michael is haunted by visions of his mother in white, accompanied by his younger self.
It’s the kind of trippy image you might find airbrushed onto the side of a van in the late 1970s or on the album cover of a mediocre 1980s heavy metal band. It’s supposed to lend us insight into Michael’s warped psyche and lend an element of surreal psychedelia, but it feels simultaneously half-baked and overwrought.
Usually, Dr. Loomis spends his time risking his own life to bring down the evil that has haunted him for decades and done irrevocable damage to his psyche and mental health.
Not here! In Halloween 2, Dr. Loomis is looking out for Dr. Loomis. McDowell apparently based his portrayal of the sleazy doctor as a shameless opportunist eager to exploit Michael’s gruesome crimes for his own financial and professional gain on real-life charlatan “Dr." Phil McGraw. That's probably why it’s hard to feel bad when Michael Myers murders him.
Of course, Michael Myers is constantly seemingly murdering Dr. Loomis, just for him to pop up like some manner of serial slasher, but this time it feels permanent.
When played by Donald Pleasance, it felt like Michael Myers had penetrated his psyche to such an extent that he was only two or three traumas away from snapping and turning into Michael Myers himself.
That’s because in the Halloween movies, Michael Myers is less a flesh-and-blood human being than an abstract concept: evil personified, an unspeaking, unfeeling murder machine, the real-life boogeyman.
Michael Myers is so evil that his sinister mojo rubs off on other people. In the only memorable sequence in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Michael Myers’ adorable niece Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris, who segued into playing Annie Brackett, Laurie Strode’s pal and the sheriff’s daughter) contracts a bad case of Murderitis from Uncle Mikey and attacks her stepmother with scissors.
In Halloween Ends, Corey contracts Murder Disease from Haddonfield’s favorite mass murderer and becomes a slasher ten times more terrifying and popular than Michael Myers.
When I tell people that I’m writing about the Halloween movies,s they invariably say, “Oh my god, I love those! How badass is Corey? He’s my favorite character in all of entertainment, including all of Shakespeare’s work.”
When I respond that I’m more focused on the entries involving Michael Myers, they stare at me in a way that betrays that they have no idea what I’m talking about.
Sometimes they ask me if I’m talking about the Wayne’s World funnyman, and sometimes they just wander away confused.
Halloween 2 exists because the original was a hit. Because it sucked, it wasn’t the kind of sequel that left you hungry for more. The meager follow-up grossed a little less than half its predecesser. It didn’t fare much better with critics.
There were vague plans for a sequel to be named, inevitably, Halloween 3-D. As a fan of the format, I would have loved a 3-D Mike Myers movie, but by then, Zombie was over the Weinsteins and Halloween.
I don’t blame him. This was not the end for the franchise, its iconic slasher or equally iconic Final Girl. The 2018 Halloween would be the best-received entry since the 1978 original.
I haven’t seen it but I’m looking forward to seeing a late-period Halloween movie that hopefully doesn’t suck.