Horror/Thriller
1 hour and 32 minutes
Rated R
Written by: John Carpenter & Debra Hill
Directed by: Rick Rosenthal
Produced by: John Carpenter & Debra Hill
Cast:
Jamie Lee Curtis
Donald Pleasence
More Of The Night He Came Home
The first in a slew of sequels to John Carpenter's 1978 slasher film, Halloween II is probably the best out of the seven followups. That being said, it is not without its problems.
Right off the bat, the film opens with a retcon, and a pretty obvious one. Intending to begin the film with the end of the original, Halloween II starts out with Dr. Loomis (Pleasence) saving Laurie Strode (Curtis) from Michael Myers by shooting him out the window of the second floor of the Doyle's house. In the original, Michael falls out of a window on the side of the house - in Halloween II he falls off the balcony on the front of the house. Also, in the original, Loomis looks down from the second story to see Michael has disappeared. In Halloween II, he physically goes downstairs to find Michael is gone.
Once you've moved past that, Halloween II appears to be moving in the right direction. Everything feels correct for it to work as a continuation of the first film. From the mood to the lighting to the pacing, Halloween II should've been retitled Halloween part II. Alas, here-in lies the problem. Rick Rosenthal wanted the film to be identical in as many ways as possible to Carpenter's film. He even stressed that most, if not all, the kills shouldn't really be seen and that there really shouldn't be any blood. Rosenthal recognized that the reason why Halloween worked as a low-budget film was because it played on the audience's fear of the unknown. Show them just enough for them to understand somebody is being killed, but not enough to give them all the details.
Carpenter, forever the auteur that he is, didn't want to make the same film twice. In direct contradiction to Rosenthal's direction, Carpenter felt the film needed kill-sequences with intense violence. By this time, other horror films were considerably more violent than Halloween was, and Carpenter felt that in order to become a successful horror flick, Halloween II needed the violence that horror fans had come to expect by this time.
So the film feels conflicted. At times you get these beautiful sequences that you really do believe could be placed into the original film, and then you immediately are hit with a shot of a violent, bloody death. Adding to the conflict, is the film's budget. Halloween was a low-budget motion-picture. Halloween II was most definitely not. Rosenthal's ultimate problem is that he set out to make a low-budget film with a large amount of money. Not a dime is wasted either - and it's apparent from the start.
The plot itself is subpar, with most of the action taking place in the most understaffed hospital in America (seriously, what hospital has 2 paramedics, 4 nurses, 1 security guard and 1 doctor?). The supporting characters are all cookie-cutter slasher stand-ins, and even Jamie Lee Curtis isn't much in the way of impressive. The real scene stealer is without a doubt Donald Pleasence, one of the most underrated actors of all time. But what's unfortunate is that it almost feels like his scenes were written just for filling in more time.
The ending is predictable (the whole Samhain-kill-it-with-fire speech Pleasence gives doesn't help with the surprise) and is where the film takes a fast and hard nosedive into the ludicrous.
I would say, it's worth the time of any film buff - but probably doesn't merit more than one screening.
4.5/10
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