Halloween 2

Release Date: August 28th, 2009

Click here for the Halloween 2 Trailer.

Following the Halloween massacre in Haddonfield, Sheriff Brackett(Brad Dourif) finds Laurie Strode(Scout Taylor-Compton) walking down the street covered in blood and in a state of shock after having shot the crazed murderer Michael Myers(Tyler Mane). Sheriff Brackett takes Laurie to the hospital along with her friend Annie Brackett(Danielle Harris) and Dr. Loomis(Malcolm McDowell), both of which suffered terrible injuries from Michael. Michael's presumably dead body is loaded into a coroner's van and begins to be transported to a nearby morgue. While in transition, the van hits a cow, destroying the vehicle and waking up Michael, who escapes the van and kills one of the coroners. Michael then has a vision of his dead mother, Deborah Myers(Sheri Moon Zombie), who tells him that it is time to bring his sister home, and Michael sets out for Haddonfield.

While in the hospital, Laurie wakes up confused and goes to find Annie. A nurse finds her and leads her to her room. Laurie goes looking for the nurse later who comes out with a large cut in her face. Michael then appears behind her and brutally stabs her in the back multiple times before going after Laurie. Laurie attempts to escape the hospital, passing by the mass of bodies and blood Michael has left in his wake. Laurie makes her way to a guards station outside and hides only for Michael to find her and begin breaking down the walls with an ax. As Michael reaches out to grab Laurie, she abruptly wakes up, realizing that it was all a dream.

It is one year after the murders in Haddonfield and Laurie is living with Annie and her dad, Sheriff Brackett. Dr. Loomis, another survivor of the last year's events, has taken the tragedy of what Michael did and turned it into a book while going on tour to promote it. Michael's body has been missing since the night of the crash but is still presumed to be dead by everybody. Laurie hasn't been the same, attending therapy to deal with her nightmares and lack of sleep. As Michael makes his way back to her, Laurie begins having visions of Michael's murders, placing herself in his position and substituting his victims with close friends of her own. Aside from the murders, Laurie also begins having visions of Deborah Myers and a young Michael that mirror Michael's own visions.

While out touring his book, Dr. Loomis has been taking hits from the public who are accusing him of exploiting the deaths of all the people Michael killed and even going as far as blaming Loomis for their deaths. Upon release of his book, Laurie discovers a grim truth that she never knew before. Laurie finds out that she isn't actually Laurie Strode, but is instead Angel Myers, Michael Myers' younger sister. After finding out the truth about her past, Laurie decides that she wants to go to a party with her friends, Mya(Brea Grant) and Harley(Angela Trimbur), and get drunk to forget about what she just learned. While at the party, Michael shows up and finds Harley in the back of a van and kills her and the boy she was with. Michael then leaves and goes to Annie's house, killing the police officer out front and then finding Annie and brutally stabbing her multiple times.

Laurie then returns home to Annie's house with Mya. When the two go inside, they see the destruction in the house and rush upstairs to find Annie lying on the bathroom floor dying. Laurie tells Mya to go outside and call the police. As she does, Michael murders her and then heads upstairs to find Laurie. Laurie escapes Michael once again and flags down a passing motorist who stops to help her. In doing so Michael throws the man through the windshield of the car, killing him and then flips the car over, knocking Laurie unconscious. Sheriff Brackett hears about the call to the police from his house and rushes over there to find Mya and Annie both dead. He then gets a tip about a person seeing Michael carrying Laurie's unconscious body to an abandoned barn where he has been holding up.

Sheriff Brackett, along with the police force surround the barn and try to get Michael to give up. When nothing is working Dr. Loomis shows up and runs into the barn in hopes of convincing Michael to let Laurie go. Laurie believes that the younger Michael is holding her down when in reality there is nobody there. As Dr. Loomis tries to reason with Michael, Michael grabs Loomis and begins slashing his face and stabbing him in the chest repeatedly. As he steps in front of the window with Loomis' body in hand, Sheriff Brackett shoots Michael twice who falls over onto some old farming equipment impaling himself through the chest. Laurie, now released by her vision, crawls over to Michael and tells him she loves him before taking his knife and stabbing him multiple times in the chest and once in the face. Laurie then runs out of the barn wearing Michael's mask. The scene then transitions to Laurie sitting in a psychiatric ward, grinning at a vision of Deborah, dressed in white with a white horse, the same vision Michael used to have.

Where do you begin when a movie is as bad as this one? I'm all for doing a remake of a cult classic like Halloween but when you take pretty much everything that was good about the original and completely screw it up the tail pipe then we have a problem. Rob Zombie makes his 4th directorial debut with this sequel to his 2007 remake of Halloween. With a list of negatives as big as mine is for this movie, it's kind of hard to know where to begin.

My first problem with this movie was the depiction of Michael Myers himself. Tyler Mane reprises his role as the iconic killer and he definitely had the potential of being a truly epic Myers. Mane, who towers at 6ft 9in tall and weighs roughly 275lbs, was definitely an intimidating and and truly scary looking Myers.......in the first movie that is. The way he was portrayed in this film was less than stellar. First off, he forgoes the traditional blue jumpsuit, which became iconic in the original films, for an old, dirty jacket and hoodie combo. Mane was also seen sprouting a rather large viking-like beard which protruded from underneath his mask. The mask was another problem I had with the movie. In the originals, Myers never, under any circumstances, took off his mask. The whole concept of wondering what his face looked like was one of the key factors that made him terrifying. However, Zombie decided it would be a good idea to only have Myers putting on his mask when he was ready to kill somebody and then leaving it off the rest of the time. This completely ruins the effect of Michael Myers. By showing his face, though it is blurred by the massive beard, you humanize the character and thus, make him less terrifying.

There is also the fact that Michael Myers decided to make noises when he killed people. Aside from the mask, the other particularly scary thing about the character was his complete silence. No sounds were ever heard from him except for the occasional breathing. But alas, Zombie decided to change that aspect of Myers as well, having him grunt and growl while stabbing and murdering his victims. The silence was truly scary and the noises Zombie decided to have Myers make again, deterred away from the scariness of the character. And then there is the character of young Laurie Strode, played by Scout Taylor-Compton. In the first film, Laurie was this sweet, pretty, innocent girl who everybody liked. The kind of girl "you can bring home to mom". But Zombie decided to screw her up as well. In this film, Laurie changed from the good girl everybody loved to a grungy, punky, dread locked dirty-looking girl who was the complete opposite of everything she was in the first film. I can see where Zombie was trying to go, making her seem really messed up by the events, but it didn't seem to work.

Then there was the cursing. I don't care if a movie has cursing in it. I believe that in a lot of cases it actually sets the tone and is essentially to the overall feel. But there is, in any case, a line where it goes from sensible to just down right ridiculous and unnecessary and Zombie didn't just cross the line, he leaped over it in a fit of joy. One of the most prevalent scenes with over-used cursing was when the coroner's van hit the cow. The driver was killed instantly but the other man survived. He survived and then preceded to drop the "f-bomb" probably in excess of 40 times in a row with no other dialogue in between. The whole movie was filled with unnecessary cursing which made the experience feel stupid and childish.

As the list grows, another problem I had was the weird visions of his mother that Michael experienced. The visions seemed like they would best fit in some of the other Zombie flicks like House of 1000 Corpses or The Devil's Rejects. But in this movie they seemed very out of place and kind of dumb. There is also the fact that Laurie's character experienced some of the same visions. They just didn't fit in a Michael Myers film.

The gore was immense and the violence intense but neither were enough to save this film. It's surprising because Zombie's first remake of the original Halloween was truly a great movie. It was different but not to the extent of destroying everything that was great about the originals. This sequel seemed like it sought out to do just that, destroy everything we loved about Michael Myers. I would recommend you stay away from this movie. The only possible way I could justify spending money on this is if you got it from one of the Red Box things, at least then you only wasted a dollar on it. But this movie is bad. That is why it is getting the lowest rating I have ever given on Zack's Movie Reel.

I give Halloween 2 3 Crazy, Murdering Uncles out of 10.