Plot? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Plot!

We had a yen for gory horror last night; so, we decided to give Rob Zombie's Halloween II a try.

Mistake.

Really, they ought to have just titled this mofo Rob Zombie Needs Another Excuse To Throw a Couple Of Hours of Gore Porn up on The Screen. Although admittedly this particular attempt was better than his earlier version: The Devil’s Rejects. And really, who could blame Rob? It’s been quite a few years since he’s had license to feed us blatant scenes of boobs and stabbing without having to worry about those pesky little details like sympathetic characters and plot progression.

I’ll give it to the Zomb: he really had me with his first Halloween remake. After TDR, I was fairly sure I would never be able to watch a Rob Zombie film again. And that’s not because I have a problem with gore or violence—hell, I’ve seen every Living Dead movie George A Romero made, every Final Destination (except this newest one; that’s being saved for tonight’s cinematic enjoyment), and a great deal of the horror film parodies out there like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland. I can appreciate some good, gory FX. No, my problem with Rob Zombie and TDR was that the film was just plain stupid. Stupid, gratuitous, pointless and mind-bogglingly bizarre… and not in a good way. So when the husband brought home Zombie’s first Halloween remake, I—as both a literary analyst and a fan of the classic Halloween series (yup, every one of them… except of course H3)—was highly skeptical. But, surprisingly, Rob’s version of the film was actually pretty damn good. I mean, he took the classic elements and updated them well; he introduced a great cast to take over for the good old ensemble, and he added just enough new material—specifically regarding the childhood development of Michael Myers and his crescendo into full-blown crazy-cakes—that it didn’t feel over-explained, didn’t take away from the looming, silent predator that is our main villain, and still brought something really neat to the table. Rob had a strong cast to work with, too, with Malcolm McDowell taking over the role of Dr. Samuel Loomis (originally played by the wonderful and often underrated Donald Pleasance), and Scout Taylor Compton playing Laurie Strode (originally played by, of course, Jamie Lee Curtis). Sure, Zombie also threw his wife in there for some gratuitous stripper fun, but hey, we expect that. All in all, the film was pretty solid.

Which is why I was foolish enough to give Zombie’s Halloween II a chance… but good lord, whatever grace of cinematic talent seized Zombie during the writing and filming of the first movie, this time it was used up, thrown out a window and pissed on by his usual technique of “Boobs and Gore, Now THAT’S Entertainment!”

I think the biggest problem with Halloween II is that you don’t like or even want to like either of the two main characters, Laurie or Loomis. While in the first film you had a pretty sympathetic Laurie—sweet hometown girl, with just a tiny bit of a bad side brought out by her wilder friends—and a patient, dynamic Loomis—compassionate and yet professionally embroiled with his psychotic young patient—the second film changes both these characters to the point where you actually want them to die. Laurie is now a pill-popping hot mess with no apparent intention of dealing with the rampant emotional and mental breakdowns that have arisen as a result of her past trauma—although she will decorate her bedroom with pictures of Charles Manson, pentagrams and repetitions of the number 666. Because what better way to communicate to the audience that Laurie is now all effed in the head than by having her display icons of Satanism that are already blatantly overused and commercialized by pretentious emo teens? Loomis, on the other hand, is no longer the protective, inquisitive, concerned physician we know and love; no, he’s become a greedy celebrity-seeking glory hound out to make a fast buck, and what better way to communicate his descent into jackass-hood than by seeing him shout—ridiculously and without provocation, I might add—at his female PR agent, and threatening to beat her publicly? Because that’s realistic character interaction, uh huh.

Beyond these two complete assholes blowing any hope of caring about the characters, Zombie blows any hope of relevant plot in the first ten minutes by thrusting us right into a stabby slaughter fest. I mean, don’t get me wrong…. Halloween movies and stabby slaughter-fests are pretty much one and the same. But I usually like to see a little set-up, a little atmosphere, some sense of story involved in why we have suddenly found ourselves in a stabby slaughter-fest. How is Michael Myers back after being shot in the head? What happened to Laurie and Loomis between then and now? Who else is now in the path of violence, swept into the maelstrom by a seemingly innocent coincidence? Really, Rob, give us a little time to get invested in this film, would you?

Instead, we get about five minutes of uncomfortable sex humor between two coroner’s men transporting Michael’s body, right before they crash, Michael gets up, and kills them both. Oh, and let’s not dismiss the 5 minutes of watching one of these coroner’s men gaping at the camera, blood and cuts all over his face, spitting out more blood and screaming in pain… while we have absolutely no idea what is happening to him. It isn’t Michael, not yet. Is this man trapped by twisted wreckage? Is his leg broken? Does he have a shard of glass from the windshield embedded in his shoulder? Who knows? All we do know is that he’s bleeding pretty badly and can make some pretty over-exaggerated expressions of pain with his cut up, bloodied face. And I’m not kidding… this goes on for five minutes. That’s a long damn time when you’re waiting for some form of explanation.

Cut to the hospital where Laurie is resting after the attack that formed the end sequence of the last Halloween movie. Will we see if her friend Annie is going to survive? Will we get to know any of the nursing staff taking care of our damsel in distress? Will we even get to know what the diagnosis is for Laurie herself, who appears to have at least one full leg cast and an arm-cast?

Nope, Michael Myers is already here. And he’s already killed her nurse. And as Laurie struggles to run away from him (in her aforementioned full leg cast and arm cast), we find he’s already somehow murdered and crucified another nurse and left her in the stairwell for Laurie to find. Is this getting to be too much yet? We’re only about 15 minutes into the whole movie… seems like we’re hitting the climax already. Well, we must be, because Laurie, in her mad dash for escape, has just stumbled upon a whole basement loading bin full of dead bodies.

Really? Really, Rob Zombie? You’re going to throw that many bodies at us and never explain how Michael Myers managed to kill all these people we’ve never even met? How did he get into this hospital? Where are the cops? Are you going to tell me there are no cops at the bedside of a girl who has just survived attempted murder by a serial killer? Where are the doctors and nurses? Why are there no cars in the parking lot? To quote a very admired internet critic of nostalgic film, “Explain, movie, explain!”

You see, there’s this thing called Rising Action. It’s somewhat essential to a full, developed plot. We’ve already somewhat touched on its absence in The Dark Knight… but at least that film had about an hour of setup before we hit the explosions. Here I am, 20 goddamn minutes into Rob Zombie’s film, and I’m thinking, movie over? Really?

Well, Ol’ Rob done pulled a fast one on us, because guess what? This entire 20-25 minute segment of the movie is a dream.

Yeah, on the one hand, how stupid is that? Dream sequences, especially at the beginning of a film, are best served quickly and with lots of eerie details that won’t make sense until later, not as one great big 20-minute fake out sequence. I’m left wondering, why did we even film this segment? To prove that Laurie is having nightmares? Well, big fucking DUH there.

Of course, on the other hand, Zombie saves himself from having the sequel to his surprisingly good remake ending up as a pointless, gory short film with the world’s easiest cop-out explanation. Just kidding, guys! It was all just a dream!

To top that off, now we have to sit through an hour and a half more of Laurie screaming obscenities at her therapist because she’s just too darn effed up to be helped, and screaming obscenities at her former best friend because she’s just too darn effed up to be helped, and going out to Halloween raves to get wasted and drunk and shout more obscenities because—say it with me—she’s just too darned effed up to be helped.

Gee, Rob Zombie… I think you made your point. Chick’s pretty messed up. Too bad I don’t care about her enough to, well, you know… care.

And, by the way, on another note… clever attempt to use the F-Bomb in place of any other possible adjective you might use, in order to distract us from the lack of plot development. Really made for a stellar script. I also applaud the directorial decision to have actors scream the damn word every time they say it: it really communicated their deep emotional turmoil in such a subtle and eloquent manner.

Is there anything good about this movie? Well, Danielle Harris, who played young Jamie Lloyd in the original Halloween films, does an excellent job with her character, Annie Brackett, another survivor of the first film struggling to come to terms with her trauma and succeeding far more brilliantly than her friend Laurie. Brad Dourif, playing Sherriff Brackett, also put in a great performance, proving that somewhere within all this needless porn, gore and swearing there can be sympathetic characters that we actually feel for and want to see. Of course, you know by the end of the movie, likeable Annie is killed and her father is left with nothing… too bad, so sad. I swear this whole thing should have been about them and Annie should have survived using the old Scream trick, “knife-went-in-to-some-old-scar-tissue”. In fact, that is what I choose to believe. Annie Brackett survived because Laurie Strode is too pathetic for me to care about.

I am left with nothing but a foul taste in my mouth and a sad, deflated feeling of disappointment. Rob Zombie actually had me believing he could do something good with the Halloween movies, but alas, he cannot. Fool me once and all that, I suppose… I definitely won’t be giving RZ another chance, anytime soon.