Best Reels: Bloody Cuts | Zombie's "Halloween II" the Boldest Chapter in the Halloween Franchise

With the recent release of The Munsters on Netflix, Rob Zombie is back in the discourse. But this month also saw the release of David Gordon Green’s Halloween Ends, meaning it is Zombie’s own Halloween adaptations, specifically, that are in need of reassessment. I would like to address his Halloween II, a film that was derided at the time of its release, in large part because of what was perceived as Zombie’s fumbling of Michael Myers’ pathos (or, what was dismissed as an angle that never should have been explored in the first place). While I acknowledge that a good deal of this criticism is founded, I must make a case for the film as I see it, because along with John Carpenter’s franchise-birthing original, Halloween II has been the film that has, to me, proven the most unshakable, the most prone to stalking through my thoughts.

To clarify: it is the Director’s Cut of the Zombie-helmed expansion—the 118-minute version—that I find most gripping. While a good film still glimmers in what was hacked down to the theatrical, 105-minute cut, it is Zombie’s fully realized vision that feels most cohesive, most serving of its thematic core; this version that grips one as being more personally, emotionally stirring. Halloween II also sees Zombie taking more swing-for-the-fence chances with Carpenter’s creative property, and this leads him to configuring a slasher more original feeling than anything else bearing the series name (excluding, of course, the 1978 original).

From the opening frames of his 2009 film, Zombie makes clear his intentions to overturn the expected trademarks. The first holiday decorations we glimpse at are not those belonging to All Hallows’ Eve, but those belonging to Christmas. This snowy holiday, easily the more wholesome holiday, is where we find a young Michael Myers (Chase Wright Vanek) and his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) sharing a tender moment—albeit, a moment within the walls of Michael’s sanitarium. In addition to establishing the theme of mentally disturbed young people, this short scene functions to introduce the recurring symbol of the white horse (more on this later), and the dream framework.

I say dream framework because, while multiple sequences throughout the film could be described as dream sequences, the differentiating between dream world and “reality” is what defines much of main character Laurie Strode’s struggle, and it is what helps us understand her mental state. Michael himself is also motivated by his dream visions.  

In the oddly tender first scene with his mother, young, golden-haired Michael recalls a dream involving the woman sitting across from him, a white horse, and a big hallway. Potent symbols aside, what this moment functions to do is root the dream idea in your mind from the very beginning, and have you questioning the verisimilitude of Zombie’s world in what follows. Later, we will discover that the roughly 20-minute sequence following the moment in the sanitarium—a sequence that seems to pick up where the 2007 Halloween left off—is also an extended dream sequence.

Zombie “jolts” us into and out of worlds throughout Halloween II, and he also makes use of rapid editing to bleed worlds together. Because the film aligns us with Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton), the quick cutting functions to put us in her fraying mind state, to make us fear the malevolent forces that plague her. Beyond this, it works to suggest that the fabric of Zombie’s world is damaged and coming undone, and therefore not stable. What we see one moment may be a dream of a character in the next moment. And what’s more, who that character is may not be certain.

Zombie first introduced the idea of Laurie being Michael Myers’ little sister back in 2007, but it is in his 2009 film that he connects them psychically and emotionally by way of dynamic visual storytelling. The icons of a white horse and Michael’s white satin-draped mother, for example, are visions that appear to both Laurie and Michael. Zombie and his editors Glenn Garland and Joel T. Pashby use cross-cutting between the dream spectres, Laurie, and Michael to turn the narrative soupy and impressionistic, linking the characters together in the textual and subtextual sense. The subtext, interestingly enough, is spelled out via on-screen text before the film’s first scene—an excerpt from “The Subconscious Psychosis of Dreams, in which a white horse is defined as being “linked to instinct, purity and the drive of the physical body to release powerful and emotional forces, like rage with ensuing chaos and destruction.” This quote would seem to suggest that because both Laurie and Michael see the white horse, both have a goodness—or “purity”—in them, and both have the capacity to unleash terror. This is why the horse’s keeper, Michael’s mother, has an angelic form and beseeches love, but also says, “Only a river of blood can bring us back together.”

Michael’s mother beckons to both Michael and Laurie because both wrestle with internal demons and traumas. Michael, though more “inherently” evil, is an adult still wrestling with his mother’s suicide, as well as his decades-long stint in isolation. Laurie’s trauma is more human—rooted in more palpable fear—but it still weaves itself into the cycle of violence that lies at the core of the film’s horror. Michael and Laurie both look to their mother, Deborah, because they are both lost, and because they need the perceived compass of “family” (Zombie’s film’s tagline is “Family is forever”), but “family” for both Michael and Laurie was never much of a family to begin with, and what’s more, it was a site of contention and violence from the beginning.

As an aside, I would like to address the criticisms this film has received for Sheri Moon Zombie’s stilted performance as Deborah. I think critics are right to point out how cardboard the performance feels, but I think it was intentionally crafted to be so on the part of the Zombies. Michael only knew his mother when he was a small child, so it would make sense that she would appear to him in his addled adult mind a one-note, doll-like presence.

But we must return to the topic of Laurie’s trauma, because Halloween II is a horror sequel that navigates the aftermath of unimaginable fear and violence like no other. There are the dream scenes, for one, but there are also the extended scenes of domestic distress, Taylor-Compton’s Laurie breaking down alone in her car, or having a screaming match with her best friend, Annie (Danielle Harris), who is only trying to help her. Taylor-Compton’s performance conveys both fragility and a white hot but desperate volatility. She behaves like a wounded animal backed into corner, trying to lash out to save itself, and it is heartbreaking to see her writhe and spiral helplessly. The 105-minute theatrical version of Zombie’s film omits many of these emotionally devastating scenes, but Zombie’s extended cut benefits from the added dimension of characterization, and gives Laurie more agency with her attempts at articulating her condition. Though Zombie’s writing doesn’t exactly shine during Laurie’s therapy scenes, the scenes are at least earnest attempts at depicting someone in the throes of PTSD, and they aid in bringing us into Laurie’s world.

Shot by Brandon Trost on 16mm, the world of Halloween II feels much like a washed-out Polaroid. Whereas the cinematography of Zombie’s 2007 Halloween offers some warmth and nostalgia, much of this is has been drained out for his sequel. It is Laurie’s world that is being depicted, and because this world is defined by pain, sorrow, confusion, and ever-encroaching darkness, it is blackness that swallows up the frame, pale blues and menacing reds that provide colour. The grain of the 16mm enhances the griminess of the gore, but this gore is never much of a spectacle. The violence of Zombie’s film is swift, punishing, and brutal; the kills over and done with before you have a chance to get your bearings. Like real violence, it leaves you feeling bewildered, hopeless, and cold.    

So, what to do with the sequences involving Malcolm McDowell’s Dr. Samuel Loomis? These sections of the film stand in stark contrast with the rest of the film, as they are lighter in tone and goofier in nature, following Loomis as he attempts to wring a modicum of notoriety and profit out of Michael’s story, and they even make use of more extravagant, choreographed camera movements. This is the kind of swing-for-the-fences decision by Zombie that people cite when describing their distaste for his film, and, to be fair, I do agree that it takes one out of the film’s prevailing atmosphere of dread. But what it also functions to do is imagine how Laurie’s trauma might be perverted in modern, media-focused America.

The modern media landscape is flooded with stories of abuse, extreme violence, and murder attempts against women, and before these women can even dream of coming to terms with what they have endured, their stories are taken from them and re-purposed for the masses, turned for shock value and profit. It is said multiple times about the Loomis of Halloween II: he is profiteering off the misery of others. He has turned Michael’s story and Laurie’s trauma into a supermarket paperback, and he is seen in Zombie’s film touring this novel and his cheap Freudian analyses across the country for his own notoriety and other selfish gains. What’s more, he is fully cognizant of the extent to which he has exploited misery and “sold out.” “Bad taste is the petrol that fuels the American dream,” he quips, thus acknowledging the exploitative news cycle and the part that he wants to play in it, even if it costs him his soul.

But eventually, Loomis is confronted with two horrifying truths: one, the victims and the families of the victims that he writes about are far more than just words he has put on the page; and two, Michael is a beast that can never be understood. These truths bring the doctor’s world crashing down around him by the film’s finale, where Zombie proves that even the characters inserted for comedic effect can have complete character arcs.

Michael’s ineffable evil knows no bounds, but Zombie wields it with glee when he brings it down on the huckster Loomis. In this way, Halloween II is Zombie’s middle finger to American media that is so intent on creating monsters for entertainment value, but never resolving to try and fully understand them. By inserting a Michael Myers product into his own film, Zombie even manages some reflexive statements on the state of the Halloween franchise, and how it continues to churn out violent, upsetting properties for audiences to frenzy for. When new films of this variety are released amongst the modern news onslaught of crime scene reporting, how it must affect real-life victims is unimaginable. But it might look something like Laurie’s story in Halloween II. This is why Zombie shows Laurie waking up from her nightmares to meet the blue glow of her TV screen.

Halloween II is a film about trying to piece oneself back together in the fallout of brutal violence and horror, but also a film about existing in a world where horror is an enterprise. The “Rabbit in Red Lounge” gentleman’s club that Michael eventually makes his way to is touted as the “Home of the Mother of Michael Myers,” which prompts Michael to go on a killing spree against its staff. Earlier in the film, Laurie passes by a Haddonfield Halloween market and is triggered by a man dressed as Frankenstein’s monster (who, it happens, is also the proprietor of the Rabbit in Red). The events of Zombie’s first Halloween were a waking nightmare for Laurie, and so, in her every waking moment of Halloween II, there lurk those dark nightmare forces, conveyed by Zombie through confidently executed writing, cinematography, editing, as well as powerful performances.

Zombie has always dealt in nightmare matter, but in Halloween II the nightmare feels more personally upsetting, more visceral, more of-the-moment and more zeitgeist-informed than anything else he has produced. Whereas his Halloween film of 2017 saw him retreading familiar ground, doing fan service while trying to put his own spin on Carpenter’s creative property, Halloween II is Zombie crafting something truly original; working under the title of a recognizable franchise, but contorting the familiar trademarks of the franchise into something that stands out in being character driven, distinctly stylized, and emotionally harrowing.

Further to this, Halloween II is Zombie more than earning his stripes in the field of the slasher. Extended scenes throughout the film are as inventively tense and terrifying as anything to define the franchise (Michael flips a car!), and even the gore heads get plenty of splatter to marvel over. Those looking for a straightforward slasher in Halloween II may feel themselves led astray when character-building scenes begin steering the narrative, but those who prefer their horror woven in a realm that feels richer will appreciate the film’s symbolism, detail, and emotional underpinnings. Zombie accomplishes this by making his film a combination of both in-the-moment peril—the cat and mouse, Michael versus Laurie story that shapes the series’ core—and a study of the ongoing peril that might define a real-life Laurie trying to cope with a horror film’s fallout. In going for this “real,” Zombie doubles down and crafts something truly artful, impressionistic, and dreamlike—a celluloid nightmare of tangible, heart-wrenching pathos.

Zombie’s third Halloween film may never come to be, and David Gordon Green’s interpretations may be the current rulers of the discourse, but Halloween II will remain my black sheep choice for the best Halloween film since Carpenter’s original. Green’s run with the franchise has horror circles currently debating whether or not a property like Halloween can even be successful when it tries new directions, but what these circles fail to acknowledge is that Zombie has already forged that new direction successfully. He has done this with gusto, in typical Zombie fashion, but also with a sensitivity and acuity that most thought impossible of Zombie. Halloween II should be considered a crowning achievement of the 57-year-old director’s career, as well as a crown jewel in the Halloween franchise as a whole.