So, Rob Zombie's Halloween II starts out much the same as the sequel to the original in that it picks up on the same night as the previous movie, with Laurie Strode wandering the streets in a state of shock after having attacked and been attacked by her long lost sibling, serial killer Michael Myers.
She is promptly whisked to hospital, along with best friend Annie, who also survived her attack, and stitched backed together again.
In the meantime, as Michael's seemingly dead body is taken away to the morgue the vehicle crashes and he awakens. He tracks Laurie to the hospital and proceeds to slash his way through the hospital staff in a bid to get to her.
Just as Michael zeros in on Laurie and it seems as though he will succeed in killing her, the movie then abruptly cuts to two years later, where Michael's body is missing and Laurie, struggling to cope with what has happened to her, awakens from a nightmare.
And that's where the similarity with the 1981 movie begins and ends. Which is fine - it's not like the sequel to the original Halloween is some untouchable classic - and we see that Laurie has basically turned into what she would have become had she grown up in her original family; foul-mouthed, greasy, grungy, unpleasant, whiny, bitter and angry.
Her anguish is understandable of course, but when she is even angry and mean towards Annie and father, who take her in and let her live with them after Laurie's adoptive parents were slaughtered in the first movie, and raging at her therapist she is a very exhausting character to root for and sympathise with; and one of the strengths of the original movie (and even the sequels) was the likability of it's heroine(s) - even poor, tragic Jamie Lloyd who was stalked by Michael Myers from the age of eight, abducted into a cult at age nine and gave birth to her uncle's baby showed more resilience and less self-pity than Zombie's Laurie Strode.
During the course of the movie, thanks to Dr. Loomis (now a selfish, fame chasing, money hungry pseudo-celebrity) who wrote a book on Michael Myers, she learns of her true identity as Angel Myers - Michael's estranged baby sister. She breaks down at the revelation and in an effort to escape her pain, she goes out and parties the night away on Halloween night, with disastrous consequences for her and her friends, as unbeknown to them, Michael is very much alive and eager to finish what he started.
To give credit where it's due, this does present a very interesting premise; is it possible to change your fate? Can you escape who you were always destined to be? Is tragedy rooted in your DNA?
Unfortunately, all of this is COMPLETELY OVERSHADOWED by Zombie's reliance on extreme gore, violence, mean-spiritedness, insistence on making every other word an 'F' bomb and completely bizarre and odd plot choices.
For instance, were the first twenty four minutes of the movie real? A dream? And if it was real, how did Laurie escape? Who knows? The movie never explains.
What was the point of Michael's 'white horse' visions of his mother? Was there a point? Or was it just an extremely forced way of giving Zombie's wife, Sherie Moon, a role in the movie?
What was the point of showing Michael traipsing across the countryside as an unmasked, hairy, dishevelled hobo? Most of the murders he commits during these scenes are completely unnecessary and gratuitous, it lessens the impact when he finally shows up on Halloween night knowing he's just been trawling through fields eating dogs and killing rednecks (imagine how terrifying and impactful it would have been if he had just appeared without any warning or explanation!) and his physical appearance just looks like a lame attempt from Zombie to insert his own image into Michael.
And don't even get me started on Loomis, who in the original movies and sequels was always a worthy adversary to Michael - the 'woodcutter' to Michael's 'big, bad wolf' if you will - is now just a narcissistic, selfish jerk.
She is promptly whisked to hospital, along with best friend Annie, who also survived her attack, and stitched backed together again.
In the meantime, as Michael's seemingly dead body is taken away to the morgue the vehicle crashes and he awakens. He tracks Laurie to the hospital and proceeds to slash his way through the hospital staff in a bid to get to her.
Just as Michael zeros in on Laurie and it seems as though he will succeed in killing her, the movie then abruptly cuts to two years later, where Michael's body is missing and Laurie, struggling to cope with what has happened to her, awakens from a nightmare.
And that's where the similarity with the 1981 movie begins and ends. Which is fine - it's not like the sequel to the original Halloween is some untouchable classic - and we see that Laurie has basically turned into what she would have become had she grown up in her original family; foul-mouthed, greasy, grungy, unpleasant, whiny, bitter and angry.
Her anguish is understandable of course, but when she is even angry and mean towards Annie and father, who take her in and let her live with them after Laurie's adoptive parents were slaughtered in the first movie, and raging at her therapist she is a very exhausting character to root for and sympathise with; and one of the strengths of the original movie (and even the sequels) was the likability of it's heroine(s) - even poor, tragic Jamie Lloyd who was stalked by Michael Myers from the age of eight, abducted into a cult at age nine and gave birth to her uncle's baby showed more resilience and less self-pity than Zombie's Laurie Strode.
During the course of the movie, thanks to Dr. Loomis (now a selfish, fame chasing, money hungry pseudo-celebrity) who wrote a book on Michael Myers, she learns of her true identity as Angel Myers - Michael's estranged baby sister. She breaks down at the revelation and in an effort to escape her pain, she goes out and parties the night away on Halloween night, with disastrous consequences for her and her friends, as unbeknown to them, Michael is very much alive and eager to finish what he started.
To give credit where it's due, this does present a very interesting premise; is it possible to change your fate? Can you escape who you were always destined to be? Is tragedy rooted in your DNA?
Unfortunately, all of this is COMPLETELY OVERSHADOWED by Zombie's reliance on extreme gore, violence, mean-spiritedness, insistence on making every other word an 'F' bomb and completely bizarre and odd plot choices.
For instance, were the first twenty four minutes of the movie real? A dream? And if it was real, how did Laurie escape? Who knows? The movie never explains.
What was the point of Michael's 'white horse' visions of his mother? Was there a point? Or was it just an extremely forced way of giving Zombie's wife, Sherie Moon, a role in the movie?
What was the point of showing Michael traipsing across the countryside as an unmasked, hairy, dishevelled hobo? Most of the murders he commits during these scenes are completely unnecessary and gratuitous, it lessens the impact when he finally shows up on Halloween night knowing he's just been trawling through fields eating dogs and killing rednecks (imagine how terrifying and impactful it would have been if he had just appeared without any warning or explanation!) and his physical appearance just looks like a lame attempt from Zombie to insert his own image into Michael.
And don't even get me started on Loomis, who in the original movies and sequels was always a worthy adversary to Michael - the 'woodcutter' to Michael's 'big, bad wolf' if you will - is now just a narcissistic, selfish jerk.