‘Halloween II’ (1981) Movie Review: Things That Totally Piss Me Off

It physically pains me that John Carpenter and Debra Hill are attached to this studio cash grab. Halloween, in all its cinematic horror glory was created for a mere $325,000. The film’s total domestic gross was $47,000,000, a number that unfortunately demands a sequel. Carpenter and Debra Hill penned the sub-par script for Rick Rosenthal to direct, a huge mistake from the get-go. The film looks like a cheap knockoff, only capturing glimpses of the Carpenter created Haddonfield. The 1978 Halloween is my favorite horror film, and I consider this a blot on the original vision.

Halloween II picks up at the end of the first film, jumping to the moment when Loomis fires six shots into Myers’ chest. The Shape staggers backwards and falls off the second floor balcony. Myers lands hard and is temporarily incapacitated. Loomis looks down at the unconscious Myers with a frown. He takes his eyes off Michael for a second, long enough for the killer to vanish into the night. And scene!

I wish. We’re now seeing the world through Myers’ eyes as he lumbers back to his fighting weight. He plays a peeping tom until a new murder weapon is procured, and he’s once again off to find Laurie and finish her.

I hate this damn movie. H2 takes iconic characters and reduces them to complete idiots, even Myers. We spend far too much time watching The Shape’s slow gait around Haddonfield in search of Laurie. His path is painful to watch. The innocent youth from the first film transformed into a calculated monster before our eyes. In Halloween II we see Myers transform into a cliché piece of hackneyed garbage. Any lingering charm from the original film surely incinerated in the hospital explosion at the “climax” of the film. It’s a well-known fact that you have to be a complete moron to even give this story a chance. One intelligent person with a shotgun could have turned this into a different film.

More blood is shed in the first ten minutes than in all the first film. Bigger budgets demand bigger boobs and abundant blood, and we get it. Jamie Lee Curtis is back as Laurie Strode, who gets maybe a total of 30 minutes of screen time, a blessing in disguise for Curtis. The least she’s counted guilty for her work in this film, the better. I could write a 20k word review of why this sucks, but it isn’t worth the time or effort. Let’s just say it never should have existed and leave it at that. We don’t even need to continue with the other sequels because they’re even worse than this.

I agree Strode and Myers needed closure after the original ended with a strong cliffhanger, this sure as hell isn’t it. Halloween and Halloween III are the only worthy titles in the entire franchise. Rob Zombie gets major points for making me interested again with his gruesome retelling.

I urge you to watch the trailer, then go off on the youtube morons talking about how this shitfest of a film is better than the original. I did.