Halloween II
Directed by Rob Zombie
One and One Half Stars
I can’t tell if Rob Zombie is taking this material way too seriously or not seriously at all. I think it’s probably too seriously, but with a cameo from “Weird Al” Yankovic, it’s hard to tell. Zombie’s “Halloween II” is a relentlessly absurd movie.
While he is a reasonably capable filmmaker, the problem I have with his work is that whatever’s going on in his mind, whatever it is he feels he needs to express, is of no conceivable worth whatsoever. He makes films of extreme brutality and depravity, of dystopian social and psychological universes, with no function or purpose. And he does it within an overtly pretentious framework.
And this movie is about Zombie. Don’t be fooled by the franchise history. He is a very autobiographical auteur. He wants us to witness his dissonant view of the world the same way Quentin Tarantino wants us to see how much he knows about movies — by making films that flaunt it. When Zombie shamelessly recruits the long-defunct it-was-just-a-dream cliché, it’s clear that he’s using it as an enabler to venture even further into this soulless reality he calls a psyche.
The plot, from what I can gather, is largely an attempt to apply an extra note to a one-note character. Michael Myers (Tyler Mane), believed to be dead by troubled teenager and cult rock enthusiast Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) and most other residents of Haddonfield, suffers from incessant hallucinations of his mother, himself as a child and a white horse. The mother and the child make sense. These hallucinations are motivating Michael to continue his killing spree and more importantly to bring the family together again by killing his sister (and then himself, I suppose).
The reveal of his sister is set up as a twist, which would mark one of the first times I’d seen a twist in a movie without a story (unless this counts — big man kills stuff).
This brings me to a modest proposition. Would anyone object to a brief moratorium on the use of the Oedipal complex as rationale for movie villains? Say, I don’t know, 15 years? It can only be original once and everything after “Psycho” has been an imitation. Now Zombie is venturing dangerously close to parody.
There’s also a side plot involving Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcom McDowell), a parasite campaigning for his latest book on the disturbed patient he couldn’t help. It seems most people attribute Myers’ victims to Loomis’ inability to reform him. The scenes offer no insight or development and only serve to break tone, which reminds me of Wes Craven’s “Last House on the Left” (1972), in which a pair of inept police officers disrupts scenes of grisly torture with slapstick humor.
By the time the film’s climax roles around, it cannot be effective. Zombie opens the film on its highest pitch and tries to hold for more than an hour and a half. By the end, it’s gone flat. Somewhere between the repetitive stabbing motions and the one-word dialogue, a pretty consistent rhythm develops, punctuated by Dr. Loomis’ righteous self-promotion and Mama Myers’ white-laced divinity. “Halloween II” is either really bad art or equally bad camp. If you think a distinction between the two is necessary, well, I won’t be seeing it again to make one.
Rollan Schott
September 10, 2009
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