Halloween II (2009)
Rob Zombie's sequel to his 2007 re-imagining of John Carpenter's classic Halloween is like all other Zombie pictures: maddening. Not because of the content, but because of Zombie's lack of consistent style. Here's a horror film that feels fresh and scary and ruthless and brutal for all the right reasons one moment, and then the next moment it feels gratuitously ruthless and brutal with laughable acting. Halloween II picks up right after Laurie has shot bogeyman Michael Myers on Halloween night…you know, the night he came home. What's interesting about what Zombie tries to do with the sequel is take it away from the usual hack and slash sequels – where the viewer is treated to a relentless onslaught of violence and terror by the killer all in the name of revenge – and takes it to a more psychological place. That's impressive for a horror film I thought was going to be nothing more than highly stylized violence filtered through Zombie's demented lens. The film doesn't hold up to Zombie's lofty narrative aspirations, though, and Zombie is the only one to blame for this because of his inconsistent aesthetic and reluctance to truly move the genre into new realms. But I'd be lying if I said it was all bad as it contains some of the more impressive horror sequences I've seen in years.
