Halloween 2
Written and Directed by Rob Zombie
Cinematography by Brandon Trost
Editing by Glenn Garland & Joel T Pashby.
CAST: Scout Taylor Compton, Brad Dourif, Danielle Harris, Tyler Mane

Let me start off by saying that I don’t envy Rob Zombie.  To many the thought of remaking John Carpenter’s original Halloween was, and still is sacrilege. Strange when you consider that the same community has no qualms with all of the shitty inferior sequels that have damaged the memory of the original Halloween far more than anything Zombie has done.  As a result, regardless of how you feel about Zombie as a filmmaker he’s been walking around with a bullseye on his head as soon as his name was attached to the project. Things didn’t get any easier once people realized that Zombie had taken their idealized image of an ethereal, faceless Michael Myers and stuck him in a trailer park with a bunch of rednecks to grow up in.  All of the classic Myers mysterious phantom evil was explained away and given a real world origin.  Oh and he cast his fucking annoying wife in it.  Needless to say the purists were unimpressed. I for one felt that the film was not so easy to dismiss. Sure it wouldn’t have hurt if he curtailed his liberal use of the word “fuck” but I will argue that of all of the numerous remakes of classic horror films in the last 10 years, Zombie’s first half of Halloween is the most cinematically experimental meditation on pop culture serial killers since Wes Craven’s The Final Nightmare.  Yeah yeah, Unmasked: The Rise of Leslie Vernon might be a better film to reference but fuck mockumentaries.  Anyone with a mini-DV camera can pull that shit off.   Unfortunately the 2nd half of the film plays it safe and reverts into full-on remake mode, whereupon Zombie feels it necessary to revere the original shot for shot.  In a way it’s almost an apology for trying to make his own film and it’s pretty infuriating to watch Zombie castrate his initial approach.  As a result you got the sense that if Zombie had another crack at the series he’d get the chance to make his own Halloween.

Halloween 2 opens with probably the worst scene of Zombie’s career, and naturally, his wife is in it.   In the scene a young Michael tells his mother that he had a dream of his mother leading a white horse looking all glowing white and angelic.  The dialogue exchange is laughably corny and when coming out of mother and son’s mouths, entirely insincere.  I started to squirm in my seat; perhaps I was wrong about the previous film and Zombie’s abilities. Thankfully adult Myers shows up in a hospital recovery ward and proceeds to stab a nurse in the head over a dozen times.  Now here’s the point.  I bet when first reading my explanation of that scene you were horrified, but then, you started to laugh at the thought of how ridiculous it sounds.  Once the laughter subsides you remember that fuck, this isn’t funny.  Most slasher films don’t want you to get to this level of realization.   Simply put, it takes the fun out of the violence.  Myer’s explosions of cruelty and blunt force trauma are prolonged and staged to the point where his actions evolve beyond murder as entertainment in a horror film.  In doing so Zombie communicates the complete and utter destructive force that the act of murder represents.  There is nothing sexy about the violence, and it punishes you for expecting it. So lets cut to the chase and say quite simply that Halloween 2 is wholly Zombie’s film.  There’s not a shred of anything Carpenter in this film and it is stronger for it. Let me count the ways.

For starters, I’ve always thought to myself when I was wee lad, what do killers like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees do when it isn’t a Halloween or a Friday the 13th?  Most of the time they happen to be dead until the night before, or they wake up from a coma, or some equally lazy plot contrivance.  Well Michael Myers in Zombie’s world walks around as a longhaired bearded hobo.  He survives off the land, and for the most part just wants to be left alone.  It’s peculiar feeling to watch Michael Myers walk alone in a field in the daylight towards Haddonfield. It’s a visual motif, which Zombie frequently uses up until Halloween day.  It’s a weird, almost private moment in which the viewer is looking at Myers as something other than just a killing machine.  It’s not sympathetic in any way, but it encapsulates Zombie’s entire approach to the film and characters; to make you look at these characters from a different perspective than we are used to.  All of this points to the question of what drives Myers, but thankfully it isn’t fully answered.   Zombie’s explanation of Myer’s psychosis is an abstraction itself.  We get scenes of Myers interacting with his dead mother leading a white horse, saying very little thankfully, and a macabre last supper attended by Myers, some weirdo ghouls, and his sister Laurie.  They aren’t the most complex visual metaphors possible, but what was the last slasher film that even attempted anything remotely resembling metaphor?  And therein lies the films greatest strength, and also it’s greatest weakness.

Zombie’s H2 is filled with great ideas but they don’t always gel as a cohesive whole.  The film can be divided up into three narratives streams:
1: Myers’ journey back to Haddonfield for his final confrontation with his sister
2: Laurie’s struggle to overcome the emotional and physical trauma she endured in the last film, as well as attempt to re-integrate into a surrogate household, all of whom were affected by the events of the first film.
3. Dr. Loomis’ attempt to capitalize on his new found fame through a tell-all book that ends up having serious ramifications for Laurie.

For starters, one most applaud Zombie for even attempting anything resembling a complex narrative structure in a slasher film.  The problem is that the Loomis storyline is the weakest of the film.  In fact, it’s kind of unnecessary.  If it wasn’t for Malcolm McDowell always welcome presence it could have sunk the entire film.  His story never really connects with what else is happening in the film until the last 20 minutes.  Loomis is too segregated from Laurie and Michael.   Instead he is immersed in his own world of celebrity book signings and late night talk show appearances.  Although the book does play significantly into Laurie’s character development, you get the sense that it could have been as easily accomplished in a single scene cameo with Loomis. It’s unfortunate, but once again, Zombie has enough sense to cast good character actors even in bit parts to at least make it interesting.

Speaking of great character actors, Brad Dourif’s portrayal of Sheriff Brackett, and his attempt to forge and maintain some semblance of familial stability after the events of the first film is fucking heartbreaking. It adds even more weight to the violence and in doing so we give a shit about Laurie, and especially Annie, and Brackett.  When was the last tim eyou didn’t want someone in a slasher film to die?  That’s usually the whole point isn’t it?  Kill off the annoying prankster and stuck-up debutant so that the audience will cheer when their heads roll.  Not the case here.  This isn’t a “fun” slasher film by any means.  Both Danielle Harris and Dourif’s performances are standouts in the film without whom, combined with the problems of Loomis’ narrative, would have probably sunk the film entirely.

The one thing I have always admired about Zombie’s work is his visual style.  He never frames his images for visual effects or jump out scares.  The compositions are always meant to convey something larger about the narrative, the characters, or the violence itself.  Take a look at the agonizingly long-take crane-shot in a scene in House of a Thousand Corpses to show the execution of a police officer, or the Sam Peckinpah styled climax to Devil’s Rejects.  He is obviously educated in cinematic stylistics beyond that of typical horror film conventions.  It’s something that has continued throughout into his Halloween films, but I do have to say I think he got fucked in this film.  Not that the compositions are any less striking, in fact they are among some of Zombie’s most compelling images, but someone fell asleep at the wheel of the blowup from Super 16mm source negative to the 35 mm answer print.  I know there is always a grain issue when blowing up from the 16 mm but it’s almost unbearable in certain scenes.  I know Zombie used the same process for Devil’s Reject’s that served him well, so I must put the blame on the film’s DP, Brandon Trost.  The guy is only a year older than I am, (son of a bitch) and he’s somehow shot over 50 fucking movies!  I guess the point that I’m trying to make here is that the grain and degrading of the image has no real function in the film.  It might feel “gritty” but it undermines Zombie’s carefully composed shots and in fact tends to just blur a lot of the night photography, which comprises a lot of the film.  I think this will definitely be limited in the transfer to DVD and HD, but in the mean time, not so impressed with Mr. Trost.

Halloween 2, although flawed, is the work of a modern horror auteur.  Can you name 3 modern horror directors who possess any singular aesthetic or narrative style though out each of their subsequent films?  We don’t live in an age of Carpenters, Cronenbergs, or Romeros any longer.  Every horror fan pines for those types of filmmakers, the ones that say “Fuck off, I’m going to make the film that I want to make”. The problem is that the same people who yearn for the good ole days of the original Halloween just want to see that same film, over and over again.  Rob Zombie makes Rob Zombie movies.  That’s not to say that you have to like the man or his films, but he is truer to the spirit of those past filmmakers than any other working American horror director today.  Make no mistake, I recognize the problems in his work, and I really wish he’d direct from a better writer’s script, but I have to respect his complete disregard for audience expectation.  And for those out there, who bitch about the sanctity of the original Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or Friday the 13th, grow up.  You can always pop in the original movie and wash away the worries that Rob Zombie and the remake Gestapo have raped your childhood.