11/05/10 - Halloween II

Halloween II (1981, 92 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082495/

Yeah I'm really late in finally seeing Halloween II but I still wanted to see it while the theme of Halloween was fresh in my mind. I was only five days late. Anyway, I'd seen Halloween a long time back this year so it was still remembered enough. I'd read that Halloween and Halloween II served as a great double feature on Halloween night so I was going to see about that with this watch.

The movie immediately picks up where Halloween left off (actually even recapping some of it). We again get Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode and Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis. In typical slasher fashion there's a ton of people that die that really aren't that important. Michael Myers (again listed in the credits only as The Shape) is played by Dick Warlock.

I really liked Halloween. I gave it a 7/10 which is up there as one of my best ever scores to a slasher film. I knew that Halloween III: Season of the Witch didn't actually feature Michael Myers and that Halloween and Halloween II served as good story themselves (like how the first two Terminator movies work so well as a double feature). What I'm getting at here is that I had high hopes for this movie. And with all this talk you can probably guess where I'm going with these comments to start out my post.

The thing that hurts Halloween II the most for me is that it's just not scary. One of the fundamental things about a slasher is that the viewer is conflicted between rooting for the "anti-hero" villain or if they should root for the main character all while having everyone but the villain have zero background and almost be unlikable. Halloween II falters because it can't decide if these people should have story or what. There's the standard "rules" for surviving a slasher that are somewhat followed here but when there's excellent characters like Strode and Loomis hunting after Myers, there doesn't need to be all these hospital people that are half-focused on to the detriment of the building tension. What I think would have worked better here is if most of these people were in one or two scenes. Instead, we have some of these nurses that play almost prominent roles for a significant portion of the movie. Halloween II isn't about character development so this really isn't necessary in my opinion. While it might be cliché to have this be the way to approach the subject, it's kind of been proven to work (more or less) and with Carpenter handling it, I think it would have worked just fine again after working pretty well in Halloween. I'm not saying there should be zero character development as there should be in the case of Strode (and Loomis to a lesser extent) and as necessary in the case of Myers. It's just that all these minor characters shouldn't be focused on as much as they are.

Another thing that hurts Halloween II is the hospital setting. Maybe this is personal preference but it's just lacking compared to a lonely camp near a lake or even a house on whatever street it is that Halloween takes place on. A hospital offers the same generic scares that an office building or pretty much any other large building does while each house is somewhat unique with its own nooks and crannies that can be used for maximum scare. This might just be me complaining about something minor though.

One thing I again liked in Halloween II was the music. The iconic theme is used expertly again and again to signify a scare and it's very chilling. The other music is good but nowhere near as good as the main tune. Another good thing is Myers himself. I've somewhat got to know Jason through eleven movies now so he'll always have a special place in my horror film heart but Myers is great again. He's slow and methodical and it doesn't look like he does much thinking but that's not to say he's a pathetic bad guy. He simply doesn't die no matter what happens to him (I guess we're supposed to believe he's gone at the end of this film but it's obvious he comes "back" to life since there's quite a few sequels) and this is terrifying in and of itself. The kills aren't cheesy or cool like the Friday the 13th series but they're still pretty brutal. Myers does get creative with one girl in the sauna but it's only one time.

Overall, I gave this film a 4/10. Halloween II plods along like a typical slasher and nothing like the genre establishing film that Halloween was. It falls victim to doing not much with the story when it could have done a lot. The setting might be a personal thing but that didn't help either. Eventually I'll finish this franchise and then I'll see how it stands up to Friday the 13th, but keep in mind that a 4/10 for a Friday the 13th film was actually pretty high up in the series.