THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Rob Zombie’s Halloween was the franchise’s most financially successful before the Blumhouse requel topped it. Because of said success at the time, it was enough of an excuse to keep the ball rolling. Was it worth it? Not really.
PLOT
2009’s Halloween II takes place a year after the events of the previous film. Laurie Strode has survived the attack of her biological brother Michael Myers due to shooting him and believes him to be dead despite his body going missing after a car crash involving two paramedics, but still is unaware of being related to him. She expresses acceptance towards her therapist, but also admits to having nightmares and misses her parents. She now lives with Sheriff Leigh Brackett and his daughter Annie, who also survived the boogeyman's attack, but the former has still chosen to not tell her the relation between them. Laurie also works at a record store with her new friends Mya Rockwell (Brea Grant) & Harley David (Angela Trimbur). As for Samuel Loomis, he's chosen to publish a book about the incident, intentionally exploiting the second Myers tragedy, where even he believes the Shape to be dead. Michael is in fact still alive as he escaped after the crash and has been living in a drifter. Ever since the crash though, he's been instructed by the ghost of his mother Deborah to reunite with her sister. His murder spree continues when killing a group of family farmers who confront him for trespassing. When he eats the family dog Ivan, Laurie simultaneously gets subconsciously sick while having dinner with the Bracketts, confirming to have a spiritual connection with her brother for the first time and later sharing the same dream as him. Michael would then kill the modern owner of the strip club his mom used to work at, as well as a bouncer and a stripper. During the book tour on the titular holiday, things go south when Loomis gets confronted by the public who blame him for what happened. Not only does it happen at a bookstore autograph signing, where Lynda Van Der Klok's father tries to shoot him, but even talk show host David Newman (Chris Hardwick) calls him out as well. Just as Leigh worried, Laurie finds it at a bookstore and finds out her relation to Michael, confirming her birth name to be Angel. Upset that the sheriff never told her, she leaves his home and confides with Mya & Harley. Rather than having a mellow night, she goes to a public party to escape how she's feeling. It doesn't go to her liking because not only does Michael kill Harley unbeknownst to the remaining Strode, but she starts having stressful images of Deborah's ghost and the spirit of young Michael (Chase Wright Vanek). When Mya decides to take her to the Bracketts, they find carnage as Annie is clinging to her last breath after an attack from the boogeyman who also killed a deputy watching over her at her dad's order. Michael then kills Mya before taking his sister once again. Once Leigh responds to a 911 call made by Mya before she died, he would be devastated to find his daughter dead and the Myers siblings gone. Laurie briefly separates from her brother to flag down a car, but the boogeyman would kill the driver and continue to take her to an abandoned shed where she sees Deborah's ghost again and acknowledges her as her mom. Leigh finds the shed thanks to a call from an anonymous witness and Loomis joins him when seeing the news report of the situation. Since there is no clear shot for a sniper to shoot Michael, Sam enters the shed to lure him out, claiming he owes it to the sheriff. Once inside, he focuses more on resuscitate Laurie from the hallucination that the young Michael is holding her down. Distracted, the real Michael stabs him to death but this gives Leigh the chance to shoot him, causing the boogeyman to fall into a rake that impales him. Laurie takes advantage of the situation to finish her brother off by fatally stabbing him as well, but would confirm to have a mental breakdown when leaving the shed wearing his mask. The film ends showing her in a psychiatric ward, grinning when seeing Deborah's ghost again as well as the same white horse she and her brother have dreamed about.
THOUGHTS
Normally, I would identify Resurrection as the franchise’s worst entry but this and the fifth film are runner-ups because was this was a big ass mess. I do respect Rob wanting to put an emphasis on his hellbilly style experience, but this is the one time it doesn’t work in his filmography because it ruins the pacing. Actor Tyler Mane tops himself in being brutal as hell playing Michael with & without his decaying mask, but the violence doesn’t save the movie no matter how much it is topped. I mean I’m still rattled of the nightmare sequence that was an intense 25 minutes. The problem is they don’t really pick up the pace after that. The continuing journey that the other characters go through is supposed to represent how contagious evil can be, but the execution is poor. I can complain how much I dislike Malcolm McDowell making Loomis a douchebag that has forced redemption by the end of it. I don’t care if this is the point, it goes against everything he’s been about. What I’ve been 50/50 about is the depiction of Laurie. Whether you’ve seen both the theatric & unrated cut, you can believe how far gone Scout Taylor Compton presents her to be since the encounter with the Shape was so traumatizing. And the drift she has with Danielle Harris’ Annie is believable because both don’t know how to express how to feel especially when the truth gets out. Like again, Loomis is a dick to spill such beans because it wasn’t his place which is worse than blaming Leigh and the police. So when the sheriff punches him before he dies, I don’t deny he had it coming. That alone sets things up for Angel to go downhill. She was in the right to finish off her brother since there was no way he’d stop being a killing machine if he were to recover from the rake, but it’s her putting on the mask after that represented she’ll never recover from her actions. The big disastrous left turn this movie takes is showing Sheri Moon be Deborah’s ghost, as if we needed the supernatural to be a factor again in this franchise. We were becoming fine with Michael being pure evil from being in a broken home, which makes it a forced element to say the least. Another thing, I don’t like how this and the mental link with Laurie happens now so suddenly rather than be foreshadowed in the predecessor. With again such a bad pacing, it can get hard to truly appreciate Brad Dourif as Leigh because there’s no doubt he’s doing his best in taking care of Laurie. He for sure saved her when adopting her and I’m sure he could’ve delayed the truth being told if she had a phone, but it wasn’t enough to protect her from another inevitable family reunion at the cost of his daughter. Losing Annie sucked on both parties because of how they lost so much time and couldn’t get it back mentally. This is only the beginning of issues I had because there were so much that baffled me. Like why would Laurie have a Charles Manson mural in her bedroom? It’s one thing to get into heavy metal, but a serial killer mural is bad taste after what happened to her. And honestly, the farmer family was in the right to attack Michael because he was trespassing their property. The fact he chose not to speak set the deal they were defending their home. Had they run him over a bunch of times, they and their dog would’ve lived longer. I don’t even understand why doesn’t Leigh have a search party on Laurie after she bailed. Keeping a deputy watching Annie doesn’t really do a thing when you think about it expect add another victim to the body count. What was dumber than the bookstore not having guards do pat downs for Loomis’ controversial book signing, is the fact Loomis himself didn’t do a background check on what the Newman Hour was gonna be like besides the fact he’d be cornered about how he approached the book. Him not doing that confuses me more than how he got to the shed in time. And lastly, did Michael had to flip the car after killing the driver? I mean that was just overkill if he didn’t want to harm his sister that time. These flaws are so visible that it’s impossible to ignore. To get this over with, 2009’s Halloween II is another weak link for the franchise due to being the most illogical and lacking a better pace like other entries. However you feel with the preceding film, skip this and go straight to the Blumhouse trilogy because that is a masterpiece in comparison.
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