Halloween 2

Okay, so I checked out Halloween 2. I'm sure a bunch of you are pretty pissed about the first one. Being a big fanboy myself, I have to admit I was pretty weary of it. Oddly enough, I ended up enjoying it. It's a well done slasher film. I could have done without the backwoods exposition of Michael's childhood, but the kills were great and we finally had a hulking, scary-ass Michael Myers. The only really decent Michael I remember was from Halloween 8. There were definitely other minor problems, but overall Halloween was a decent scare flick. Please note, I will NOT ever compare this movie to the original. It's like comparing The Office America to The Office Britain. They are two separate beings.

Zombie is a decent director. Say what you will about his music or his looks, but the man has a good vision and a good sense of what works(for the most part). I'm a huge fan of House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects: two very different halves of one story. In fact, I would go as far to say that Devil's is more of a road movie and House more of a horror movie. Zombie recognized that he couldn't mimic the first movie, so he created a totally different vibe and feel for Devil's. Ultimately, I think the film failed in the mainstream, but as a director, he succeeded.

So, cut to Halloween 2. Man, he really missed the boat this time around. As awesome as stabbings and face stompings are, there comes a point where they aren't fun anymore and it becomes difficult to watch. I would say 3-4 stabs is just about right. 21-24 stabbings is way, way over the line. Not to mention, one woman has her face smashed into a mirror about 17 times and they even cut the smashings to move it along more quickly. Here's a thought guys: only four smashings and you don't even need to speed up the process!

Characters are killed for absolutely no reason. A white horse, Michael's mother and Young Michael appear constantly to egg Present Michael on. A tough, nice survivor from the first film is killed(that's a major no-no in my horror book). So many things were wrong with this movie, there's too many to list here.

Let's stick to what worked. Zombie's eye once again shined. Great camera composition, lighting, etc. He really knows how to frame and light a scene. Roddy McDowell as Loomis was fantastic, and the turn his character took for this film was also very clever. Loomis has become a fame obsessed whore and will do anything for publicity. Unfortunately, they didn't know where to go with it and Loomis makes a quick and violent exit right near the end.

All in all, a sad, by-the-numbers follow-up to a decent re-imagining of the series.

Random Notes: Brad Douriff puts in a nice performance as the Sheriff. The kid from the ATT commercials(Matt Bush) that's always throwing away those rollover minutes has a few minutes onscreen in a mask before being dispatched, watch him in Adventureland, he's hilarious in that. Halloween 3-D has been greenlit with Patrick Lussier attached to direct and Todd Farmer to write. Lussier is best known recently for My Bloody Valentine 3-D and Todd Farmer is best known for writing Jason X and MBV3D.