Review by Peter Syslo
Two years later and we have another HALLOWEEN film from director Rob Zombie. Everyone had strong feelings about H 2007 and the bottom line is that most people either liked it or hated it. I actually fell somewhere in the middle of that spectrum because I didn't quite like it, but I didn't totally dislike it. In retrospect, H 2007 kind of grew on me and I can now say that I do like the Director's Cut of the film. I still think that the Theatrical Cut is kind of a mess, but the Director's Cut was much more coherent and I grew to respect what Zombie had done with the material. In the case of H2 2009, it seems that Zombie had much more creative freedom with the piece and overall, it seems to be more “relaxed” than H 2007. I'm not referring to “relaxed” in the sense of content (at times, the film is a visceral attack on the senses), rather, I am referring to “relaxed” in the sense that Zombie didn't have all of the pressure on him, as he did with H 2007. Let's face it, remaking, re-imagining, re-whatever H 1978 was like re-doing something like JAWS – whatever the outcome, the new version would never be a substitute for the original film. But, despite the ballsy attitude of Zombie (yep, he's got major balls), he did try to make HALLOWEEN his own and I have to respect him for that. Both H 2007 and H2 2009 do display his filmmaking skills and I honestly like the guy's work. My point being is that you need to view his HALLOWEEN films as separate entities from the franchise, in order to fully digest and enjoy them. If you watch these films and you constantly evaluate them, according to the originals, then you may be disappointed and you may miss the good qualities of them. With H2 2009, I feel that Zombie has created a pretty good homage to the original HALLOWEEN franchise (parts II, IV, V, and VI) and he gives the fans what they really want to see – more of Michael Myers.
H2 2009 is written and directed by Rob Zombie. The film stars Sheri Moon Zombie, Chase Wright Vanek, Scout Taylor-Compton, Brad Dourif, Malcom McDowell, Danielle Harris, and Tyler Mane as Michael Myers.
Here's a brief summary of the picture. We pick up right where H 2007 left off. A bloodied and broken Laurie Strode (who just shot Michael Myers) is wandering through the streets of Haddonfield and she is picked up by Sheriff Brackett and taken to the hospital. Both her and Annie are sewn back together and the hellish night continues. The meat wagon hauls away our fallen anti-hero, Michael, and I won't specifically say it but you can speculate as to what may or may not happen. After Laurie has an intense hospital experience, we jump forward to a year later where Laurie, Annie, Sheriff Brackett, Dr. Loomis, and Haddonfield have pieced their lives back together and have accepted the fact that Michael Myers is dead. The rest of the film deals with the aftermath of that fateful night where Myers unleashed his fury upon the town. Laurie, Annie, and the Sheriff come face to face with their fears, Dr. Loomis continues to act like a complete douche-bag, and Michael may or may not succeed in his original mission to kill his sister.
As I mentioned above, this HALLOWEEN outing seemed to be more relaxed – for Zombie, for the actors, for myself, and for fans in general. In a way, I feel that people didn't care as much about H2 2009 because there didn't seem to be nearly as much hype and fanfare as there was with H 2007. I feel that this may have worked in Zombie's favor, this time, because I think that H2 2009 was a pretty good film. The overall franchise is interesting because it has always seemed like it was divided into groups of two or three films. First off, H 1978 and H II 1981 are paired up. Then H III is a separate film which cleansed the palate of the series. Next, you have H IV, H V, and H VI as a trilogy. Then you have the slightly annoying H VII and the not-so-bad H VIII as two individual Michael Myers stories. Finally, you have Rob Zombie's H 2007 and H2 2009 as a modernized pair, which is a nice companion to the original pair of films. In short, the franchise – more so than any other franchise – jumps around, but that also leaves a lot of freedom and allows the series to continue to grow and allows it to “stem off” into different directions.
The things that I liked about H2 2009 are as follows: it was a nice homage to and encapsulation of H II 1981, H IV, H V, and H VI; it wrapped up what began in H 2007; and it brought Michael back to his ways of stalking, hiding, and killing. Regarding the homage to the series, I liked the fact that H2 2009 included a bit of the hospital content of H II 1981 (the first 20 minutes of H2 2009 are awesome) and I also liked that it picked right up and continued the events of the night that began in H 2007. These two films will not replace the original two, for me, but I do like that they mirrored the functions of the original two. H2 2009 also includes a smidgen of H IV material (the meat wagon) and surprisingly, it seemed to include a lot of H V content (the barn party, Michael's hiding place, etc.). One of my favorite things was that there is a tiny bit of H VI content which hinted at the supernatural influence on Myers, with the fantasy-like visions of his mother and his younger self (these scenes were beautifully-dark visions which made the film better than a run-of-the-mill slasher). Overall, H2 2009 was an interesting combination of content from the various HALLOWEEN sequels and I thought that Zombie pulled it off, well. The biggie is that he seemed to return Myers to the killing style of the original films. It is not as fulfilling as in the originals but, he included some more stalking, more of Myers being a silent presence (except for the angry grunting – I haven't accepted that yet), and more of the supernatural connection which explains the driven nature of Myers as a killing entity.
Here's what I didn't like: it is fairly predictable and the epilogue is pretty obvious; some of the kills just seemed random and didn't seem to bring Myers closer to his true target, Laurie; and I wished that Loomis had more interaction with Myers. I did think that Zombie did well with the material and the mythology, but everything was pretty much spelled-out for the viewer. It's not completely a bad thing, but the power of some of the “jump” scares was taken away by semi-obvious scenarios. Plus, I just want to add that the trailers for this movie “blew” some of the surprises – that was a little annoying and I remember that the trailers did the same kind of injustice to H 2007. As for the ending, I did see it coming and I do wonder if anyone will tackle a sequel which goes in that direction. As with the grunting, I don't know what my feelings are towards the ending, yet. Speaking more about the kill scenes, I enjoyed them (a lot of vicious knife kills and a lot of slamming people around) but a few seemed utterly random, which is not really in the character of Myers. One could argue that he is extremely pissed-off (he really is in this film) and he is killing everyone in his path, but it goes against his methodical, animalistic style of killing. Myers likes to hunt his prey, he likes to scare his prey, and he usually just kills people who are close to his prey (Laurie). Killing the two teens in the van and killing the trio at the strip joint didn't make a lot of sense, as far as the “rules” of the Myers character go. Lastly, I wanted to see more of a grand showdown between Myers and Loomis (though, the talk show scene with Chris Hardwick, Weird Al, and McDowell was one hell of a showdown – and pretty funny). Oddly, Sheriff Brackett became Michael's true opponent, rather than Loomis. The fact is that I missed the whole “god-versus-the-devil” interaction between Myers and Loomis and it would have been nice to see that happen.
Gnawing through the flesh: H2 2009 was a pretty good film. I liked how Zombie incorporated various elements of the HALLOWEEN franchise and the film went back to the good old slasher roots of the masked killer stalking the defenseless girl. I felt that Zombie displayed more of his individual style, in this one, and I thought that the surreal scenes of Myers' mother were one of the best parts of the film. Mostly everything was laid out for the viewer, but those “delusional”, surreal scenes added a bit of “occult-ish” ambiguity which hearkened back to some of the 1970s, European horror films. Very nice. Aside from the content itself, I felt that the acting was better in this one, with Brad Dourif (Sheriff Brackett) being my favorite. He played an aging cop who was trying to hold together the pieces of a family torn apart by Michael's wrath. He was great in the role and I always do like the quirkiness that he adds to his parts. Taylor-Compton (Laurie) became better and more likeable as the film progressed and Danielle Harris (poor Annie, just let her die already!) was good as Michael's hapless punching-bag. In a nutshell, Zombie did well with this sequel/re-imagining and I was pleased with it. The original two films are still my favorites of the franchise, but these two are solid updates of the HALLOWEEN saga and, in many ways, they incorporate the whole franchise into one two-part package. Not bad at all. Just go with it, enjoy what Zombie did with it, and keep an open mind about it. I liked H2 2009 and I give it a 7 out of 10.