Halloween 2

It was a damp and cool day on Saturday with an overcast all day long. It felt like an October day, so I journeyed off to the theater to see Halloween 2 finally.

I definitely recommend it but I didn’t like it as much as Rob Zombie’s initial Halloween reimaging. It was good. Here’s the thing about Rob Zombie movies. If I never saw any of his movies and I had the time and money to pull off making a horror flick myself, I’d like to think I’d come up with a lot of same idea’s that Zombie does. Why? I think because I’m a horror fan and Rob Zombie is a horror fan. He has had the same influences in growing up as a horror fan in the 70’s and 80’s and it shines through in his creativity. I would love to be able to cast some of the horror veterans who I grew up idolizing. Zombie actually has the ability to do just that, and he does. In H2, once again, Danielle Harris returns to the franchise this time playing Annie Brackett. This makes a total of four Halloween movies for Danielle, and that’s simply amazing. She’s really become a name synonymous with the Halloween franchise. She has become the “bridge” between two generations of sequels. In Halloween 4 she plays the young female lead, Jamie Lloyd, who inevitably is driven the brink of insanity by her Uncle Michael Myers. The Jamie Lloyd character is then rekindled in Halloween 5. Danielle owned Halloween in the late 80’s and now 20 years later, it’s so cool to see her in a substantial role in Zombie’s versions. I love the fact that Zombie was able to use Danielle to link the original continued storyline and his re-imagined storyline. Danielle is just one example of Zombie enlisting someone with a horror genre history into one of his movies. As “Night in White Satin” plays in the hospital scene in the beginning of the movie, it’s the calm before the storm with Annie Bracket and Laurie Strode in there respective hospital rooms. You can always look forward to a great soundtrack when Zombie is at the helm. The hospital scene served as a good continuation of the anarchy from Halloween 1 but I think it was a little too much. I’m a fan of a movie starting out slow and building. Maybe that’s harder to do with a sequel, but I found myself just waiting for them to get away from the hospital stuff and fast forward to the bulk of the movie which is one year later. At that point, that’s when things start to build again and characters are established again. I’m just not a fan of all that horror craziness in your face at the beginning of a movie. It’s just a matter of preference. Technically, I guess it’s just really the first 15 minutes or so that is really a remake of the 1981 version of Halloween 2 that rest of the film follows the similar path of Halloween 4 ( and that’s fine by me ). However, the differences with Dr. Loomis character in this movie are really cool. It’s a more modern look at Dr. Loomis and what someone in his position might do. I don’t want to be the spoiler but I think everyone already knows that Laurie Strode is Michael Myers’s sister. What’s cool here is the twist on how they reveal it. I’m always going to love Donald Pleasant as Dr. Loomis, because let’s face it Donald Pleasant is Dr. Loomis. Now that being said, Malcolm McDowell takes the character someplace new and it’s a treat to see him go there. Dr. Loomis enters the real world of greed and exploiting people to make money and he’s plays it like a son-of-a-bitch. Kudos sir! The skinny of it is Laurie Strode finds out about her Myer’s background while reading McDowell’s new book, “The Devil Walks Among Us”. Here journey in finding herself is the real story here. Scout Taylor-Compton plays it wonderfully as she trying to come to terms with her true identity. The destiny of Laurie Strode here is linked to the destiny of Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 4. That’s all I’m going to say about that. I assume that Rob Zombie is done with the Halloween franchise and is moving on to The Blog and other other horrors. It just makes me wonder now about what’s next for Michael Myers?