Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN 2

[KYGOTC]

Weird Al makes a cameo.

And that's all I have to say about that.

[lester1/2jr]

a remale of  sequal?  is that a first and don't say no it's the sequal

[Flick James]

 I saw it over the weekend.   It wasn’t the worst movie every made, but I wasn’t impressed.  So far, Rob Zombie has made four films:  House of 1,000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, Halloween, and Halloween II.  I like two of them, House and Halloween, but don’t care much for the other two.  Not a bad track record for a man who moved from music into film directing, so I will grant him much credit for that.

In the two that I liked, there was something that he was trying to accomplish and it came through.  In House, he was paying tribute to grindhouse and was having fun, and somewhere in there was a message about how it’s okay to be a horror geek, but just be careful if you decide to go f***ing with what you don’t know.  In Halloween, he was certainly paying homage to the original, but also doing his own thing with it, and it worked.  Meyers was twice as disturbing because of that kid who played the young MM.  Plus, there were scenes that were filmed really well and were chilling because of it.  The asylum scene where MM kills the nurse assigned to sit with him was amazing, and there are numerous other examples. 

In Rejects, he simply was not able to maintain my interest.  I made it through about half of it, fell asleep, and awoke to the final ten minutes.  I was never really sure what Rob was trying to do with that one.  The same is true of Halloween II.  There was nowhere near the character development that was present in the first one.  The young MM didn’t have a tenth of the intensity and strange, cold charisma that the original actor had.  Dr. Loomis was just an a***ole, and not a very interesting one at that.  MM didn’t fit with the MM of the first.  He made grunting sounds that didn’t match with the stone quiet MM.  RZ tried to make up for it with more killing.  At first it was effective and brutal, and made my body ache just watching them, but then it just got old and repetitive.  I walked away not really knowing what RZ was trying to do. I saw an interview with him where he was saying that he didn’t want any of the characters to have any redeeming qualities, that there were no “good” characters.  Well, Mr. Zombie, you had a film with no good characters alright.  It’s okay to have a film with no identifiably good protagonists, where the line between good and evil is thin and blurred.  Sergio Leone was one of the masters of that.  But the characters still have to be compelling and interesting.  I mean, how could some of the same actors, whose characters were engaging and well-developed in the first one, be almost unrecognizable as the same characters in the second?  How is that possible? 

I won’t say Halloween II was terrible, but there certainly was a significant level of disappointment in this viewer.
   

[Torgo]

There were a couple of  things I thought worked better than Zombie's original but overall I thought it was a complete mess. Rob didn't even want to do this movie and it shows. The Weinstein Brothers basically held off going forward on Zombie's Tyrranasorus Rex unless he gave them a sequel. So he was strong armed into it and it shows. Michael Myers doesn't even stalk people in this one.  He just walks around in non descript locations, runs into random people and then proceeds to stab each person like 20 times each.

[Monster Jungle X-Ray]

I thought it was okay... not as well made as his first Halloween. Rob's nepotism with his wife is starting to get annoying despite that I thought she put in her best performance yet in Halloween. The visions were extremely lame. Whoever did the sound effects though must have had a blast. Each knife stab is made to sound like it really hurts. I am not sure though how many times you can smash a stripper's face into a glass case and have the same pane of glass break each time. 

I think you might be onto something Torgo, it is as if Rob wanted to make sure that everyone in this film was unlikable. Rob populated this film (not unlike his others) with detestable people, I mean almost every character was a dirtbag including Laurie Strode!! Only Brad Dourif's sheriff came off as a real person. Trying to make the audience sympathize with the killer is not a new thing, this one tried that by making everyone around Michael worse in a way.

[the ghoul]

I loved House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, but I think remaking the Halloween movies is an uninspired idea.  Too bad he decided to join the ranks of the remake directors who prefer the sure way to make a buck over taking a little risk on an original creation.

[Torgo]

What I wish that Rob Zombie would have done with his 1st Halloween film is not have made the killer Michael Myers at all. He could have just created his own killer instead.

[BTM]

Weird Al makes a cameo.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Okay, here's a REAL dumb question... didn't the girl in the first film do something like, oh, I don't know, shoot Mike in the HEAD at the end of the first film? 

Could have also SWORN I read in an interview somewhere Zombie he deliberately ended the film with MM being killed because he wasn't out to "create a franchise." 

Course, my memory is playing tricks on me..

[Bmeansgood]

I wish he had been totally original and done something like ignoring Michael Myers and instead delving into a plot where a large Halloween mask-making company has plans to kill millions of American children with something sinister hidden in Halloween masks

Now that would have been original!  Oh well, maybe for the next sequel!

[Jim H]

Weird Al makes a cameo.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Okay, here's a REAL dumb question... didn't the girl in the first film do something like, oh, I don't know, shoot Mike in the HEAD at the end of the first film? 

Could have also SWORN I read in an interview somewhere Zombie he deliberately ended the film with MM being killed because he wasn't out to "create a franchise." 

Course, my memory is playing tricks on me..

Yeah, he was dead at the end.  So was Loomis.  Oh well.