#Halloween II (2009)

[exdeputysonso]

Brad Dourif in Halloween II (2009)

[classicfilmpunk]

Halloween II (2009)

[ghostsleepyz]

I made this for a specific twitter art prompt but I wanted to post it here just because I really liked how I drew Laurie in this piece

[metaforadohomeminvisivel]

Halloween II Rob Zombie, 2009

[47shiiift]

Rob Zombie's Halloween II (2009)

[artemisia-nova]

chomps the mop

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

SUMMARY: Laurie Strode struggles to come to terms with her brother Michael's deadly return to Haddonfield, Illinois; meanwhile, Michael prepares for another reunion with his sister.

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)

This went down for me on this rewatch. I actually didn't get to this when it came out, mostly because I wasn't really going to see horror movies in theatres at that point and my horror fandom was mostly geared towards older movies (although the periodic free previews of the Scream Channel I took advantage of meant that I was getting a reasonably wide range of the genre's flavours beyond the obvious classics). And as a result I'd accepted the party line around the remake wave and Rob Zombie (neither were viewed with much warmth in the now defunct Rotten Tomatoes forums which I frequented at the time) and assumed it wasn't worth my time. So that when I did eventually watch it a few years later, once its reputation had started to build a little, I was pleasantly surprised that this had a much weirder style than one would have expected from a 2000s horror movie, had maybe something of an Italian influence in its incoherence, and that Zombie brought his own ideas to the material instead of offering warmed over slasher beats.

And I guess those things are still true, but I guess I gelled less to the combined effect this time around. On one hand, Zombie realizes his attempts to deconstruct and psychoanalyze Michael Myers in the preceding instalment were in vain (the best it came up with was that Myers grew up in a trailer park, which I assume has it's ups and downs but likely isn't justification for mass murder) and correcting by evoking Myers' mental state through narrative and visual incoherence makes some amount of sense. But on a narrative level, I find this too stop and start to really work as horror.

And on a visual level, the heavy grain and gloomy colour scheme he bathes much of this on I found pretty unpleasant to look at. I suppose he relied on a lot of grain in The Devil's Rejects as well, but there it cohered nicely with the warmer colours into a Kentucky Fried sheen that suited the grindhouse atmosphere nicely. (That's not blood and viscera, that's just ketchup and fries. This is making me hungry, time to go for some Mary Brown's.) Here, the visual texture reminds me of Slipknot, which is not a favourable comparison, and the fact that the movie does produce its share of striking images emphasizes how much worse the rest of it looks. Zombie is pulling a lot of his influences into it as he often does, but more of this plays like a straightforward take on the aesthetics he parodied with his Woolite commercial than I remembered. And the aggressive cutting takes some of the impact out of the violence.

Anyway, it sounds like I'm being really harsh on this, but I do still like this, just noticeably less than I used to. I will still go to bat for the performances, particularly Malcolm McDowell's slimy take on Loomis (his talkshow segment with Weird Al and Chris Hardwick is very funny) and Brad Dourif's warm, fatherly Sheriff Brackett. And I remember people being very hard on Scout Taylor-Compton, something I'm going to chalk up at least partially to the misogyny (there's a tendency to treat young actresses as a punching bag when people don't like a movie that was especially pronounced in those days). But I thought she was quite good in this, providing a nice, sympathetic centre to a movie that seems determined not to hold together.

[freckliedan]

i kinda want to know what do you consider new phannies? i’m not really asking for myself i got into them in 2015 so i think i qualify as not new but i personally think of like 2019ish or later as new even though that’s like 4 years now 😭

there's layers of old but i think anyone who got here from 2019 onward will forever be a new phannie to me! i'm forever delighted by the fact that people are still discovering them but you simply have to have experienced the closeted era to truly count as an old timer and there's nothing that can change that!

i do think there's levels of fandom-age, too. like, original phillies who were around before dan & people who were around before the halloween leak of the vday vid in 2012, that's true phandom olds to me. there's a difference between the aftermath/radio show era, when i showed up, & the tatinof era once they'd settled in to the closet, but having been around in any regard at any of those points makes you some level of old timer.

the endpoint/turning point towards coming out was them moving out of the first london apartment & dan rebranding, so like, spring 2017 through the gaming channel hiatus is an era where like? if you showed up then you're not a newbie, you've been around the block, but it also doesn't qualify you as fandom old bc the horrors were mostly over by then.

none of that is coming from a place of pretentiousness or judgement either! just being honest that nobody escaped the trenches of the past unscathed.

[youwantedadog]

Halloween (2007) dir. Rob Zombie // Planet of Love, Richard Siken // Halloween II (2009) dir. Rob Zombie

[exdeputysonso]

Brad Dourif as Sheriff Lee Brackett | Halloween II (2009)

[imsoglitter]

I don't go to rob zombie movies for down to earth gritty realness, but also what kind of hospital has an open pit of dead bodies just hanging out in the loading bay?

[ghostsleepyz]

My brainrot was brainrotting so here’s what I made to express that

[rye-views]

Halloween II (2009) dir. Rob Zombie. 7/10

I wouldn't recommend this movie to my friends. I wouldn't rewatch this movie.

I liked the first surgery scene.

That first neck saying off was crazy.

omg Octavia Spencer, what's up? Tragic death

I don't like this version of Loomis or Laurie. This movie is really too like focused on murdering randos and the psyche (that is more in the dream space) of Laurie and Michael. It's like too much actually for it to be entertaining for me. And just like Laurie screaming so much for a good chunk of the film.

[transmandayoung]

jesus CHRIST

[in-love-with-movies]

Halloween II (2009)