Halloween II

(2009) **1/2

I actually gave this a half-star bump over its irksome predecessor. For one thing, I don't revere the original Halloween II like I do the first one, so Zombie's clumsy bootprints aren't tracking mud on one of my personal classics. And he does one or two things to which I must give a grudging respect.

As with the original, we start just after the events of the first movie, but Zombie decided to take the entire hospital experience and condense it into a brief dream sequence, cutting to Laurie Strode waking up in terror one year later. I wonder if there was an outcry at this, but for me it's one decision I kind of like. I mean, why not? Maybe the first thing you need to make a good remake is to have the courage to make it your own. I also thought (at first) that characterizing Laurie as an emotional wreck of a person a year after last Halloween was a bold move, too. Much better than the vapid, horny caricature of a teenager she was. There's even a nice touch of realism. Her family all dead, Laurie now lives with her friend Annie Brackett and her dad the sherriff. The scene I liked is when, despite how generous Annie has been, Laurie is a bitch to her. It makes sense.

There was another scene I liked in which some farmers discover Michael Myers out in their wheat field at night, realizing he's the guy who's been poaching their livestock (apparently for the bulk of a year). They go to beat him up and get dead for their trouble -- but Michael also mercilessly kills the woman in the group who had urged the men not to hurt the giant, scraggly homeless person who eats raw sheep. As with the killing of Danny Trejo's character in the last flick, Zombie does a good job showing that Michael's murderous tendencies just don't give a fuck.

That is the last nice thing I will say about this movie.

Unfortunately Rob Zombie's hillbilly lust that I griped about before has not been replaced in this movie but only slightly broadened. Laurie's descent into despair ultimately plays out in a glorified and lurid fashion, like watching an episode of the Jerry Springer show. Dr. Loomis, famous because of his connection to Michael Myers and the book he wrote about him, is ludicrously famous, constantly shown trying to get into his limo while crowded by reporters and assistants who he isn't listening to because he's on his cell phone. And while he's turning Michael's origins into pop psychology describing the "perfect storm" of external and internal conditions to create his form of insanity (yawwwn), the real cheese bomb is what's going on in Michael's head.

The plot element that Laurie and Michael are siblings was a creation of the original Halloween II and not the first movie, in which Michael zeroes in on Laurie for no other reason than he sees her drop something off at his old house. I know their being family is considered canon, but I've personally never liked it. Not only is remake Michael compelled to find and kill his sister, but he's also being egged on to do so by a haunted, angelic apparition of his mother. Sometimes she's with young Michael in his clown suit and sometimes she's with a big white horse, the equine symbolism having been crammed into Michael's backstory. Not only is this 1) silly as hell, 2) a rather obvious move on Zombie's part to get some more work for his wife Sheri Moon, it's also 3) guilty of casting Michael's murderous rampage in a sympathetic light.

While I do think it's possible to make a good movie full of unlikeable characters, when you have such a cast and then throw in something like the noble glowing horse lady, any notion of caring about these characters is evaporated. So he kills Laurie, so what? She's a bitchy lightning rod for murder and then the family will all be together again, apparently on a very clean ranch in the afterlife. No prob.

A couple more sins for the scorecard: The setting for this movie is no longer a town but a vast collection of dark fields punctuated by the occasional house or barn. And if you're a serial killer you can move through the fields like wormholes. Michael shows up at some barn rave and whacks one of Laurie's friends in the parking lot, which is a senseless move even by his standards because Laurie leaves the party right afterwards. But then somehow when she gets home he's already hiding by a nearby tree. Later on enough of Michael's mask falls away so you can see what he looks like (just like Tyler Mane, the very tall dude who plays him), and unbelievably he even speaks (!). It's just one word, but still. Grownup Michael Myers doesn't talk.

Laurie's final fate will elicit and eyeroll and shrug: she's in the booby hatch herself, hanging out with her luminous dead mom just like Michael was. Is it a ghost or is she crazy? I really don't care, and I do not officially recognize the gravitas Rob Zombie thinks he's operating with here. As I've said before, I'm not automatically anti-remake, but the Halloween examples are the worst of their kind.