Metacritic reviews

There's some variety to the crimes, as there is to the characters, and an audience is likely to do more screaming at suspenseful moments than at scary ones. The gore, while very explicit and gruesome, won't make you feel as if you're watching major surgery. The direction and camera work are quite competent, and the actors don't look like amateurs.

Could be the work of any journeyman, give or take a few hundred gratuitous pop-culture references. Let no one accuse Zombie of stinting on the gore, however.

As slasher movies go, Halloween II is far from the bottom of the barrel, but, given its pedigree, one has a right to expect a higher degree of quality that what is delivered.

When it's good, it's because it's imitating its predecessor (but it suffers from tired spilled blood) and when it's bad, it's because it's imitating its own imitators. [31 Oct 1981]

For the most part, Halloween II is a retread of “Halloween” without that movie's craft, exquisite timing, and thorough understanding of horror.

The visual style--the orange-and-blue color scheme, the elegant 'Scope compositions, the graceful tracking shots, and the shrewd use of shallow focus--has been reproduced almost perfectly from John Carpenter's original, yet the wit and intelligence are gone.

A totally unnecessary and extremely poor sequel to the original "Halloween". Although Dean Cundey's photography goes a long way toward recapturing the look of the first film, director Rick Rosenthal is no Carpenter, and the emphasis here is on graphic blood and gore rather than the skillful manipulation of the audience.

A bad sequel to a good movie...The main concentration is on gross-out effects and lame chase scenes.

Trash or treat? Halloween II is as dumb as its prequel. The Great Pumpkin isn't going to be pleased with this one. [30 Oct 1981, p.17]

There are incredibly almost never any really terrific scares in 92 minutes - just multiple shots of violence and gore that are more gruesome than anything else.