Halloween II

The nadir of both the Halloween series and Rob Zombie’s filmography, Halloween II picks up immediately after the events of its predecessor and follows Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) as he resumes his pursuit of Scout Taylor-Compton’s Laurie Strode. It’s clear immediately that Zombie isn’t looking to offer up a conventional slasher picture, as the writer/director has infused Halloween II with a pervasively (and persistently) avant-garde sensibility that’s nothing short of disastrous – with the film’s proliferation of head-scratching elements (eg what’s up with that white horse?) transforming it into a seriously interminable experience virtually from the word go. The movie’s unwatchable atmosphere is perpetuated by Zombie’s stunningly inept directorial choices, with, in particular, the filmmaker’s inability (or refusal) to offer up a single coherent action sequence ranking high on the movie’s list of transgressions (ie such moments have been suffused with needless instances of cinematic trickery, including shaky camerawork, rapid-fire editing, and choppy slow motion). There is, as a result, never a point at which the viewer is even partially drawn into the proceedings, and it goes without saying that Halloween II is completely and utterly devoid of the qualities that made John Carpenter’s 1978 original such a superlative piece of work. By the time the laughably misguided “twist” ending rolls around, Halloween II has definitively established itself as a thoroughly reprehensible waste of time that, one can only hope, marks the end of this once-promising horror franchise.

no stars out of ****