by The Film Blogger

Created on: October 11, 2009   Last Updated: October 12, 2009

Some critics have been quick to dismiss Rob Zombie as a man with no talent as a filmmaker, and although Halloween 2 joins an increasingly disappointing resume for the White Zombie rocker, he is better approached as a frustrating filmmaker rather than one without talent. House of 1000 Corpses was dreadful, Halloween was so-so, and Halloween 2 is pretty poor itself, but these films are all problematic in the same area each film has a lacklustre script that undermines Zombie's considerable visual flair for sordidness and grime. His films are the sort that through sheer visual composition alone make you want to shower, and I mean that as a compliment. Consequently, it's one of the few things to praise about the sort-of-but-not-really remake Halloween 2.

Continuing a year after the first film, H2 grants masked villain Michael Myers yet another ludicrous means of escape, this time as the dumb lug driving his ambulance crashes into a cow. Led by a vision of his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) and a white horse, Michael embarks on another murderous rampage through Haddonfield, once again on the hunt for his sister, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton). Even for the murky standards of the latter entries into the original series, the setup is bad, but it's the sort of bad that you can (and inevitably will) laugh at, so in the right mindset this isn't so much an aggressively unwatchable film as much as it is a daft and unintentionally amusing one.

Meanwhile, the supporting characters are given slightly more sensible things to do, as Michael's former psychologist Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) tours a book he wrote about the Myers murders, and deals with accusations of encouraging not only the mythopoeia surrounding Myers, but the murders themselves. On the downside, it means you'll have to sit through a very strange Weird Al Yankovic cameo, and Loomis' story is largely too isolated for most of the film to coalesce well with the mayhem in Haddonfield. More interesting is Sherriff Brackett (Brad Dourif), who spends most of his screen time trying to protect Laurie and his daughter Annie (Danielle Harris, returning from the previous film, as well as several entries in the previous series as a child), who survived an attack from Myers in the last film. Thanks to another reliable performance from Dourif, Brackett is the most believable and sympathetic character in the whole mess.

Rob Zombie falls foul chiefly on two counts with Halloween 2 through indulgence and through rudiment.

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