Halloween II

Some people either like or hate Rob Zombie's remake, but most can agree the sequel is just one big mess. It's quite the experience i must say. Zombie managed to make the characters more irritating with a lot more unnecessary swearing, i swear youll hear the F word every minute in this movie. It seems like it's trying hard to make us care for Laurie but we don't. Shes so damn obnoxious & whiny with zero sympathy. Annie is written kinda bad too. She gets so mad at her dad cuz he calls a cop to watch her even though she was almost killed by Michael the year prior. Dr. Loomis is pretty much unrecognisable in this movie and every scene hes in other than the ending is pointless. The kills are even more bloody & brutal than before & I hate the excessive grunting Michael does too. The ghostly mom visions with the white horse are ridiculous and this whole relationship with his Mom just feels too much like Jason Voorhees. Only character I cared about in this movie was Brad Dourif as sheriff bracket.

As for positives I actually like the hobo Myers approach to this version. It's a more realistic way of what a killer would be doing till next Halloween. I didn't mind him having the mask off either cuz when he puts it back on it makes it feel a little more special. And it's a pretty stylistic movie. I like the grain of the camera Rob shot the movie with. And there's some pretty cool decorations especially at that party scene. Definitely feels more like the Halloween season compared to some of the other sequels in the series. Other than that this movie is just plain bad. And like the first one I recommend tracking down the theatrical version. Unrated director's cut is just too long for a slasher movie & that versions ending is terrible. Also you get a lot less screaming & annoyance from Laurie.

Yes I'm one of the few people who thoroughly enjoyed rob zombie's remake of halloween. So I was extremely excited to find out he was making the second one.

I love Zombie's directing style and I do think he is somewhat talented. But this movie just wasn't his best. The style and feel of the film was perfect. But the storyline was complete trash. He should have stuck to the original story.

Zombie's "re-imagining" of the second coming of Michael Myers was way off. Yeah he spiced up the original with Michael's backstory, but he completely redid the second one.

So if you just want to see people get stabbed with a cool directorial style and nice lighting(oh and boobs, lots of those) then yeah you might like it.

But for what it's worth, the backbone of any good movie is good source material, and the source material for this was Zombie's lackluster screenplay.

Shame. The first one was so promising. This one definitely ended it. Not only because Zombie says he won't direct another, but because it went so far downhill from the first one it basically killed itself.

Oh and the final scene in the movie is ridiculously laughable and will most likely give you a WTF look on your face.

5/10 for this one. Just don't take it too seriously and think of it as another slasher flick and you may enjoy it for what it is. Just another slasher flick. Nothing special here.

It was quite the dilemma deciding whether Halloween II was a good film or a bad one. One thing is certain: it's a "weird" film, undoubtedly the most bizarre major studio release of the year. Rob Zombie's sequel or "vision" – as it's being touted – seems to have been envisioned with the aid of various hallucinogenics and mind-altering substances, withering away whatever was left of the original John Carpenter Halloween mythology after Rob Zombie's remake and leaving a nonsensical, uber-violent mess in its wake. This isn't a so-bad-it's-good movie, nor would I call it a just-plain-bad one; this is a so-weird-it's-good movie, a blood-drenched collage of absurdities and irrationality, which like a train wreck (a term some would use to refer to previous Zombie efforts), is hard to look away from. Little of the iconic original Halloween is left here – all that's left is Michael Meyer's mask, which itself is less recognizable beneath the grime and torn pieces – but perhaps it would be foolish to try to match the original masterpiece anyway. Zombie has crafted something entirely different; something quite frankly silly, dumb and, for lack of a more politically correct term, "retarded", but nonetheless entertaining, not in spite of, but because of this.

Picking up where the remake left off, Halloween II sees Laurie Strode recovering from her ordeal with psychopath Michael Meyers. Mentally-traumatized after both the Halloween day massacre of nearly everyone she knew and her own dispatching of Meyers – by way of shot to the head -, Laurie finds herself dreading the one-year anniversary of the serial killings, plagued with the irrational fear that the deceased Meyers will return to small-town Haddonfield to finish her off. Well, low-and-behold, Meyers is alive, and he makes it his mission to track down Laurie and finish what he started.

The general plot outline is as generic as can be, but it's hard to fathom or comprehend the insanity that occurs. Michael Meyers, the original mask-wearing soulless psychopath, the "pure evil" murderer, the "Big Cheese" of all horror movie villains, has now been transformed into a homeless vagrant who randomly eats dogs. Yep, that's right, he's a hobo that eats dogs now. When a film is remade, one expects some alterations, but this is akin to remaking Indiana Jones and turning him an extraterrestrial who molests children. There is practically no semblance of the original character...and the new ones just messed. As well, Meyer's is followed by his deceased mother, himself in child-form and a gigantic white horse, seemingly all figments of his imagination. Except they interact with Laurie as well...making them ghosts? Except Meyers isn't deceased, so it makes absolutely no sense for there to be a ghost version of him. Maybe Laurie is inexplicably psychic and seeing into Meyer's mind? Or maybe Zombie just ate a few too many shrooms. Either way, this mom-boy-horse trio follows Meyer's around as he kills various victims, instructing him on what to do next. It's as stupid as it sounds.

Dr. Loomis has also been changed significantly. The remake hinted at Loomis profiteering slightly off the Meyers incident, but here it has been taken to ridiculous proportions. He's now a prima donna celebrity who travels around in a jet black limo with his publicist, throws hissy fits at reporters and threatens to beat on woman. One sequence has Dr. Loomis appearing on a talk show alongside Weird Al Yankovic, with the famed disc-joker lampooning the doctor and Michael Meyers (making puns about whether this is the same guy who starred in Austin Powers) until Loomis finally explodes with anger on air at the hosts assertion that Meyers is a shark. If it sounds like this has nothing to do with the film, it's because it doesn't. This irrelevance not only pertains to the Weird Al scene, but all of Dr. Loomis's scenes. His entire role is a completely separate, unrelated tangent in which he gallivants around the country promoting his book. For that matter, even Laurie and Michael have about ten minutes in the way of plot. Laurie, up until the last fifteen minutes, never encounters Michael. The near entirety of Halloween II is Michael fighting random people – farmers, strippers, tough-guy scumbags – while Laurie lives her life as per usual.

The rest of the film is a compilation of pumpkin people, vans running into cows, "golden showers", discussions about fornicating with corpses, and sex with a guy in a wolf costume who sounded suspiciously like Michael Cera. It's weird, undoubtedly convoluted, but in the end it's pretty entertaining. It's punctuated with displays of head smashings, throat slittings, and other displays of excessively graphic violence. Nudity is slightly down from the first one, but there are still several scenes involving bared breasts. In the end, between all the nonsense, gore and nudity, Halloween II is a big-budgeted, toned-down Hollywood stab at a Troma movie. In other words, a pretty fun movie.

I'm one of the few who actually enjoyed Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween – a lot. For reasons I won't get into here I enjoyed it immensely, but at the same time I could completely understand why so many disliked it. It took some of the things that made the original Halloween so great in many people's eyes and switched them around completely. Those who despised the first Halloween for that reason will likely loathe this second installment with a passion. However, if one can go into Halloween II not expecting a Halloween movie – or even a reasonably scary horror – they might just have a good time. It's not "bad" per say – although it's hard to say what Zombie intended it to be – but it's enjoyable in its bizarreness. Worth checking out if you don't mind Carpenter's story being completely bastardized.

• Dylan, allhorrorfilms.com

For a person who took a strong disliking to Rob Zombie's Halloween remake, I must say the follow-up, HALLOWEEN II was a breath of fresh air for an avid fan of the Halloween series. It might not be a return to the "Gone of the Wind" of horror movies, but an overall improvement in story, suspense, as well as a pacing that clearly shows Zombie was not in clutches and struggle of trying to rehash John Carpenter's original film while trying to put a spin on it. There were story elements to pick a bone with and the constraints of the 2007 film are obvious. Luckily, Zombie has his white-trash-reality pieces to a minimum in this movie. Though there are accidental homages to the Rick Rosenthal's Halloween II, don't be mistaken. This entry is very different and something completely of Rob Zombie's sole vision. THIS IS NOT A REMAKE, THIS IS A PURE SEQUEL.

The direction was much more focal and clear and Zombie actually delivers some scares, which the first round lacked very much. I also liked the element of Michael Myers having a serious sense of overkill on his victims. And it was also enlightening to see emotional points as well as examinations of the crazed mind, as Michael sees apparitions of his mother as well as him as a child, and as Laurie learns more about herself, begins to have visions and dreams of her own, leading us to question her mental state as events unfold. The characters were way better and the rhythm of the film was refreshing.

Not that it didn't have its moments with necessity to nitpick a bit. Though the "death rides a pale horse" theme of the movie was an awesome story element, it also seemed at times corny as hell. People who aren't big fans of Sheri Moon being in his movies might find it somewhat hard to stomach, but overall the concept had legs. The "ogre" hobo look made Michael Myers seem less threatening at times, but there's also some cool shots as he wanders on his journey. My biggest stake with this film is how much the Dr. Loomis character has strayed into a complete slimeball, instead of the crazed doctor out to get Michael. That left a disheartening taste in my mouth. The score lacked the Halloween themes until the ending, but thankfully what was there throughout wasn't a pretentious modern horror score, playing as more of an ambiance than a shrieking powerful score, which intensified the film a bit to my surprise.

Where all the movies have entertained to a small or large extent, the Halloween series in general has had its extreme highs and unbearable lows. And though there are story elements in this movie that some might dislike (including the "un-reality" sequences), it sure beats Michael's Curse of Thorn or the Man in Black from Halloween 5 & 6, where the filmmakers strayed away from continuity. Only to get busy in series reboots like H20 and Resurrection (the latter being the worst of all the sequels and the first being a weak recharge). What I recommend for next time is a straight ahead sequel to tie up all the loose ends left by sequels that failed to take things in different directions, seeing as tho this is Rob's last venture into Halloweenland. But as his closing film in the Halloween saga, this movie was a serious improvement and I give kudos to this as opposed to a remake that half loved and half could barely fathom.

7/10

This film represents an underrated project within the iconic Halloween franchise. Over the years, the series had been the target of criticism due to the decline in the quality of its films, notably "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers" (1995) and "Halloween Resurrection" (2002), which left the saga with endings. Discouraging and scripts lacking attention.

The ultra-violent Halloween duology directed by Rob Zombie comes to a conclusion with this title, and, anticipating a little, it's notable that this timeline stands out as one of the most cohesive released to date. The film is marked by exceptional photography, symbolism and a more realistic approach to the events involving the iconic Michael Myers.

The work ends this phase of the villain in an intriguing way, presenting a different plot in relation to the original timeline and its "soft reboots". With a greedy Doctor Loomis and a Laurie Strode psychologically shaken by past traumas, it offers a new perspective to the saga. It may not be the best film in the franchise, but it is a work that pays homage to the previous films and revitalizes the series with a creative approach.