Family Is Forever
In the interest of fairness and the fact that I am going after all the Horror Icon Remakes, we'll give Rob another shot at Halloween. His first show, while very entertaining to the Halloween fanatics out there, offered very little originality after the first half of the film. It was pretty much scene for scene with the original. In this review we are going to review the "Director's Cut" of the film for one simple reason. I've seen both versions of the film, and the Director's cut is Zombie's true vision and is by far the superior version of the film, and tells a much different story. I really wish that this was the version of the film that would have been released in theaters because for the first time in a long time, the edits and cuts in the theatrical release had it telling a totally different story with many things not making much sense at all. Clearly the editors had a very different vision than Rob Zombie had, which makes little sense because they gave him the creativity to really make his own film this time around and then snipped and cut around it to make it a story totally different than what his vision was. The "Unrated" version of the film doesn't contain any more graphic violence or anything of the sort, it's simply not rated because this version of the film never saw the big screen and got rated. If you are going to watch this film I HIGHLY recommend watching the directors cut, its a far superior version of the film, and that's what we are going to look at today. Let's go ahead and watch Mr. Zombie redeem himself with his completely original story in "Halloween II: The Director's Cut"...And Here... WE... GO!
The film begins similar to the first with a quotation.
"WHITE HORSE" - Linked to instinct, purity and the drive of the physical body to release powerful and emotional forces, like rage with ensuing chaos and destruction.
-- Excerpt from
The Subconscious Psychosis of Dreams
Now while this may seem puzzling at first it will play a huge part in the film as it progresses, and the fact that Zombie is taking it from a true source again makes the film seem all the more real. The film begins somewhere in the middle of Halloween 1, when Mrs. Myers is visiting young Mickey Myers in the sanitarium. Young Micheal is played by a new actor, this is because the previous actor had aged too far to look like he did in the original film. However the replacement isn't bad, and he will have a reoccurring part as the film progresses. Young Micheal tells Mrs. Myers that he had a dream of his mother dressed in white with a white horse, something that could seem so meaningless at the time it happened but as we all know sent Micheal down a wormhole he never came out of. Immediately following this scene we get the opening title and we are exactly where we left off at the ending of the first film (Or are we...) Seemingly picking up right where the original did as well. For those of you who remember the original Halloween by Carpenter was a blockbuster hit! The original Halloween 2... was a success on name alone, but wasn't nearly as well received as Carpenter's film.
Laurie shoots Micheal in the face at the end of the first film, and is found walking down the middle of the road where she is found gun in hand covered in blood. She is found and immediately rushed to the emergency room, where we get a good look at Laurie's injuries up close and personal. Zombie always was good at unpleasant imagery as we watch Laurie get stitched up and even have a finger nail removed. We continue on at the hospital just as we did in the original Halloween 2 just far more realistic. We get some good shots of Micheal being body bagged, and Laurie during surgery, again everything is very realistic, and easy suddenly be pulled into the what is going on in the film. We move back and forth between Laurie in the hospital and Micheal headed to the Morgue. The two guys driving the van talk and bullshit back and forth till they end up hitting a...cow... in the middle of the road. They hit the fucker and it's like they hit a brick wall, this however wakes Micheal up from his bullet to the head sleep he was put into as he goes ahead and hops out of the van. The driver is dead, and the passenger seems badly wounded, he tries to call for help, but Micheal comes by and decides it would be a better idea to cut his head off by sawing through his throat with a piece of glass. That had to be unpleasant, being alive while your head is being removed... someone just had a bad day.
Micheal sees Momma standing in the moonlight with that pretty white horse and he walks towards it when we are brought back to Laurie in the hospital. This seems as though we are setting up right were we left off where we are just updating the original. Laurie is all bandaged up in her hospital bed looking like she has just been through a car wreck. She leaves her room to go check on Annie her not so slutty anymore best friend who survived Micheal's attacks from the first film. Still played by Danieal Harris, which means going all the way back to the originals she survived Micheal three times! That has to be a new record! It's about two minutes after we leave Annie's room that we find out that Micheal has found Laurie in the hospital, just like the original. This time he is more aggressive and violent than he was in the first film... If that's possible. Laurie quickly goes back into survival mode as Micheal violently kills a nurse while he growls in anger with every stab.... 11 stabs for the record. While Laurie flees Micheal stands over the nurse proud of his work, and then remembers why he came to the hospital to begin with. Oh that's right, to kill my sister who just shot me in the face not three hours ago. Getting shot in the face tends to anger serial killers.
As Laurie does her best to try to evade Micheal in her weaken state, she heads outside into the pouring rain. Micheal decides to grab a FireAx as his new play toy, he left his trusty dusty kitchen knife in the body of the nurse he was so angry at that he stabbed 11 times. Laurie manages to make it out to a old security booth, around a hundred feet or so from the hospital. The downpouring rain is a nice effect here, as "Buddy" the good natured but ignorant security guard who is doesnt listen to anything that Laurie says about the psychotic killer on the loose trying to kill her. Poor Buddy, he has no idea that he is about to bite it hard when he gets the Ax to the back. Micheal chops his way into the booth and then boom! Ax to the face Laurie is DEAD! ...Roll Credits...
Turns out that this was a reoccurring nightmare that Laurie has been having since her horrifying experience on Halloween night two years ago. In the half hour of so that we spend in this toss back to the original we accomplish in a half hour what the whole film of Halloween 2 accomplished back in 1980. This is the type of thing we look for in remakes, especially ones that tell their own story (Like Friday the 13th 2009) Zombie's throw back to the original is better and more well executed than the original and is done in a half hour. We then jump into Zombies new vision that is completely original. Laurie has taken a turn for the worst as she seems to have numerous mental and emotional trauma since her encounter with Micheal two years ago. Not unlike the problems we saw with little Micky Myers at the beginning of Halloween 1. They are brother and sister after all... This will become an ongoing theme throughout the course of the film. Her relationship with her best friend Annie (whom she now lives with) is crumbling because of Laurie's dramatic mood swings, her own sanity at this point seems to be unraveling at we are only a half hour into the film.
It's clear that she still loves Annie as her best friend, but she is a constant reminder of that night, so she is also a source of Laurie's rage. In her psychiatrists office she pays special attention to an inkblot canvas where she sees... Two White Horses... Could this mean that deep down inside, she is not all that different from Micheal? Only time will tell... Dr. Loomis is no longer the hero that we remember him as, he is written another book to accompany his first "The Devil's Eyes", this one..."The Devil Walks Among Us" is based on the Halloween murders that happened two years ago. The fact that Loomis is still alive, should make him grateful but instead he continues to try to grow his fame off the blood of others. Loomis has gone from one of our saviors from the first film to a strong antagonist in this film. The one thing I noticed having seen the directors cut and the theatrical version, is that Zombie's vision there really was no protagonist, just several different shades of gray. As the story becomes more clear we will see why there is no need for a protagonist, there really is no antagonist.
Laurie works at a book store or maybe it's a record store... It's kinda hard to tell...we meet her...WhaOh Deaders... Slutty friends. It's pretty clear Laurie is not the innocent little highschool girl that she was in the original she has plenty of miles on her now, and has clearly damaged her physically, emotionally, and mentally. We get more character development on the new less likeable Loomis, who not only is making money off the blood of others, and is completely full of himself. People are less than amused by him, and he gets pretty poor receptions pretty much everywhere he goes. After making it abundantly clear that Micheal is D..E..A..D! We seen that he is in fact not dead. Something that is 100% different from ANY other Halloween film ever made is we see Micheal many many times maskless and even get a good look at his face on several occasions. He is pretty well controlled unless provoked...and that... is when the mask comes out. And when the mask comes out, people get dead. There is a scene where Micheal is attacked by two men for "Trespassing on their land" Micheal does not lift one finger to defend himself as they look as if they beat him within an inch of his life. Once they believe they have left him for dead, Micheal pops back up and the mask comes out and suddenly shit just got real as everyone dies. If you see Micheal unmasked you'd be best not to upset him, just leave him alone and let him do his thing. If he pops up wearing the Fucking "Halloween" mask, you're about to get dead. It's just the way it is.
Micheal gets hungry and kills and eats a dog. Yup.... Somehow through some connection between Micheal and Laurie. Micheal eating this dog makes Laurie start puking... Way to go Micheal, had to go and eat a dog didnt you. Some might not know this but this is another great toss back to the original series where Loomis (Pleasence) and a policeman show up and find a dead dog, they dont show much of the dog, but Loomis responds by saying "He got hungry". Now see this is the sort of thing you look for in a remake or re-imagining of a film, original plot and story with nice little throw backs to the original series, unfortunately a lot of this was left on the cutting room floor and never made it to theaters which is why we are reviewing the directors cut. Zombie does a wonderful job of showing a silent adult Micheal next to a vocal childhood Micheal, showing that mentally he never really grew up, he stayed in his childhood psychotic state his whole life. Throughout the course of many dream sequences we see Micheal's young mind only wanting to reunite their family, of course stabbing Micheal and shooting him in the face will provoke him into getting a tad angry but who doesnt love a little brother sister fighting now that then.
This is where things get really interesting, and yet another scene that was left on the cutting room floor. Laurie, while she is awake this time, psychotic episode, and it basically scene for scene with the beginning of Halloween where little Micky slices and dices up Ronny after duct taping him to the chair. Only in this incarnation it's Laurie who does the exact same act to her best Frenemy Annie... She then jolts awake as she seemingly slips closer and closer into psychosis. This is a similar decline in sanity that we saw in Micheal and it appears that this problem runs in the family. Again another great scene that ended up on the cutting room floor, because not only is it an important plot device for the story Rob is trying to tell... but it is a toss back to the original ending of "Halloween 4: The Return of Micheal Myers" when we find out that little Jamie (also played by Danieal Harris) had the same murderous impulses as Micheal did at her age. This idea was later thrown out, when "Halloween 5" was released, but this is yet another great scene from many different angles that needed to be in the theatrical version of the film but was cut out.
Micheal, who is taking a thousand mile journey walking back to Haddonfield from God knows where. Normally, I would say that this might be a small problem wondering where he has been, but I dont think that's the important part here. It's not where he has been, it's the fact that he is coming back, during one of these scenes, Loomis uses the line "Evil always finds its way home" And I believe that is the point of Micheal's thousand mile hike back to Haddonfield.
At this point the only thing keeping Laurie tied to reality and not into a complete psychotic break down, is Annie who she is barely clinging onto Zombie does a masterful job at showing the crumbling relationship between the two and how it coincides with Laurie's tumble down the rabbit hole. Speaking of Rabbit's we find ourselves at the "Rabbit In Red" strip club. The only reason I bring this up is because this yet ANOTHER great toss back to the originals, when Loomis (Pleasence) finds a match box wit the "Rabbit in Red" logo on it in Carpenter's Halloween. This is the stuff we are looking for in remakes. This however DID make it into the movie, it's just too bad that so much else didn't. Micheal is now in Haddonfield and has found his way to the Rabbit in Red, and like I said before if you don't provoke the maskless Myers he probably will leave you alone, but this doofus decides to take on the much larger Myers so Micheal stomps his brains in. He doesn't get his mask out for this one, but his ghost momma and his little Mikey spirit who are with him do. Little Mikey pulls down his clown mask as we head inside the Rabbit in Red... where White Faced (or at this point torn up gray faced) Micheal will show up now pretty pissed off all because some guy decided he needed to get in Micheal's face. Just leave him alone... He's just a little boy in a giant man's body...
Inside the Rabbit in Red... who if we remember back to Halloween 1 our bully (Micheal's first kill) had a news paper clipping of Mikey's mother, and we all remember how that went, so Micheal is no fan of the Rabbit in Red, so he walks in mask on ready to kick some serious ass as he goes in and kills the owner of the place and the naked woman he was just about to play dirty games with. Micheal was none to amused... So he did away with them. During this scene Micheal has a portion of his mask torn away, this is important later on. And just for chuckles Micheal turns the "Open" sign to "Closed" That'll teach em to make money off his mommy's naked body! Now... we are an hour into the movie and this is already the most original Halloween film ever made. Now if we were watching the theatrical version it would be far less original and creative, and far more inferior film. So again, if you are going to watch this movie watch the Director's Cut and see the film the way it was intended to be seen.
As Micheal makes his way through Haddonfield he comes across a billboard advertising "The Devil Walks Among us" by Dr. Loomis, this is yet another scene cut from the film, here we see how his child psyche and his ghost mother see how the only father figure he ever knew, Dr. Loomis is making money off his family's misery. This of course makes Micheal none to happy, and we all know what happens to people when Micheal is not happy. We move along to Loomis's book signing where he is seen first with a crazy fan who wants him to sign the book "The bringer of death" and then a second who was the father of one of the victims who blames Loomis for his daughter's death, saying "Your monster killed my little girl" This again is a throw back to the originals, where Loomis was seen as somewhat of a Dr. Frankenstein to Myers Frankenstein's Monster. But Zombie's version of Loomis is nice to see, it's fresh and not just retelling the same story that has been told eight other times in the original series.
Laurie reads Loomis' book and finds out that her true identity is "Angel Myers" the sister of Micheal Myers, and looses her FREAKIN mind! Do you see where this is going? Laurie is not some heroine who is attempting to outrun the unstoppable Micheal Myers like in every other Halloween film, the picture he is painting is an entirely different portrait. There is no true protagonist because there really is no real antagonist, this film is about Micheal trying to bring his family back together, in the bloodiest way possible in typical Myers fashion. We are watching Laurie fall apart right before our very eyes, right down the same wormhole that Micheal fell down, and that is what this story is really about. The subtitle "Family is Forever" This movie is about the blood soaked road that brought the Myers Family back together. Micheal is neither a protagonist nor an antagonist, and the same can be said for Dr. Loomis, and Laurie as well. Lost in all of this is Zombie's true original vision that was left on the cutting room floor because what he had here was something very special.
As we progress, we see Laurie slowly unravel as we see her become more and more like Micheal as we move along. It's now Halloween night, a young boy comes face to face with Myers, but because he wanted to be friends Micheal didn't pull out the mask and go Myers all over the little kid... you see how easy that was? So Laurie goes to a Halloween party and gets smashed, the only reason I mention this scene is because this is where she suddenly accepts who she is, however this is probably the most pointless scene in the film, and seems to be here more as filler than anything else. Which is sad because it was really rollin for a 5 outa 5 before a pointless filler scene. This will drop it just a tad but it's still by FAR the most original Halloween story ever told. Micheal shows up and jumps his body count a little but other than that the scene is totally pointless. HOWEVER... The way he kills one of Laurie's friends is ANOTHER great throw back to the original as he chokes her to death from behind, just as he did in the original Halloween. Not so fast though... the throwback isn't enough to save the pointless scene.
Once Loomis discovers his realizes his attempt at fame and fortune off the blood of the dead is not going to work out, we see him revert back to the Loomis of old, but makes no real difference till the final scene of the film. Micheal...Micheal... and the Ghost of Mrs.Myers show up at Laurie's house where Danieal Harris will come face to face with Micheal Myers for the final time, this time she does not survive. Annie being Laurie's last lifeline to reality, regardless of how little she really tried to hold onto it. As Annie dies in Laurie's arms it's a metaphor Laurie slowly losing he connection with reality. Annie all that she has left, as she dies so does what little sanity Laurie has left. With Annie dead, Laurie goes full on psycho...and then Zombie kicks this shit into high gear, as we speed towards the ending. Again we find Laurie running from Micheal, but just as in the first film, it's to reunite his family. He's forgiven her for stabbing him, and then shooting him in the face, and now just wants the family to be together for the holidays! Myers Style! Leaving a trail of blood behind them.
This all ends up in a stand off in a barn, where Laurie has a full on psychotic episode connected directly to Micheal's psychosis. This connection between the two of them shows the mutual mental illness that seems to run in their family. Laurie is held down by young Micheal, who doesn't exist, and she can see just as Micheal can the Ghost of their mother. Loomis shows up to do the only decent thing he has done the entire movie and tries to go face to face with Micheal one last time to talk some sense into him, after all he was the only one who ever could. All this proves all for nothing as he can not see or hear everything going on between the Myers family. Mamma Myers tells Micheal to take the all home, and everything goes silent... which... in a movie such as this, is never a good thing. Myers and Loomis crash through side of the barn, Myers RIPS off his mask and says his first adult words as an adult... "DIE"... and stabs Loomis! The police then open fire on Micheal completely blowing him away. With the story that Zombie has set with Micheal as a normal (although incredibly large mammoth of a man) flesh and blood killer, there is no way Micheal can survive this. So from the looks of things, Micheal is down for the count.
Just as Micheal appears to die, Laurie comes waltzing out of the barn with the same blank expressionless look on her face that we would expect to see from Micheal. She walks up to the fallen and presumably dead Micheal Myers and grabs his knife and appears to look as if she is going to finish the job on Loomis that Micheal started, when the police open fire on Laurie, now while Laurie's wounds appear to be non fatal, she is fallen next to Micheal, the Myers family finally whole once again... I guess... But this was the story that Zombie was trying to tell. Completely and totally different than anything ever been done in the Halloween franchise ever before. The film ends as we find Laurie in a mental institution but with only walls surrounding her, this is of course for those of us who paid attention Laurie following the same footsteps that Micheal did where he learned to "Live inside his head, because there are no walls that can stop you there". As the movie comes to a close Laurie see's the ghostly Mrs. Myers and the white horse yet again with an evil grin on her face, indicating that there may be a third installment with Laurie as the next Halloween killer...
Micheal's Body Count: 15
Final Thoughts
This was by far the superior Film to the first. While the first was a fun trip down memory lane, this was a completely original story from top to bottom... Had the editors not completely butchered the story. The story was intended to be the connection that Micheal and Laurie shared and Laurie's similar decent into madness. This was not the run from the killer Horror flick that most are accustom to, while it did leave a trail of blood throughout it was a story unlike any other. I have to applaud Rob Zombie for his unique vision on Halloween and to take it places it had never been before. We were introduced to character development of Micheal himself something that no other Halloween films had ever done in the past. He started this in the first half of his Halloween and finished his vision in Halloween II. This had everything you really want in a remake, similar to the remade "Friday" which is still the best off all the remakes. Aside from one scene about fifteen minutes long that did absolutely nothing but fill time this film was wonderful. It's not without it's small flaws here and there but it's FAR better than it's theatrical release of the film, and improves upon what they did in the first Halloween.
Final Rating: 4 outa 5
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