If Rob Zombie's first Halloween movie caused some differences of opinions within the fandom, then his sequel really divided opinions. Even Zombie himself didn't originally want to make a sequel, but when he heard that the studio was ploughing on regardless he decided to come on board as the writer and director because he didn't want anyone else to ruin his "vision". Whether or not he himself ruined that vision is probably up to the individual viewer.
Halloween II picks up immediately where the last film ended, with Laurie Strode being taken to the hospital to recover from her injuries suffered during her neverending fight with Michael Myers. Michael, of course, isn't nearly as dead as the coroners believe, breaks out of the coroner's van and heads to the hospital as well to finish Laurie off, slaughtering everyone else along the way. It all turns out to be a dream, however (and this is okay, because it's happening at the beginning and not at the end of the film where the audience has gotten invested in the character's journey and development, only to have it all wiped away). The rest of the film takes place two years later, and follows the main characters from the first film as they deal with what happened to them in their own ways. Dr Loomis has become a media monster, getting fame off his encounter with Michael Myers, Laurie is a bag of angry, barely-contained psychosis, and Michael, whose body was never found, of course, has gone to live in a shack in the middle of nowhere to heal (and build himself a corpse pit in his spare time). Eventually, of course, Michael decides the time is right to find his sister again and everyone's destinies end up intertwined in bloody and final ways...
Halloween II has a lot to do with dreams and the subconscious, making it a Jungian horror film rather than a Freudian one for a change (interestingly, this is not the first reference to Jung in the series; that happened in Halloween: Resurrection). The biggest recurring theme is that of a white horse, which both Michael and Laurie see in dreams, visions and in supposed "subconscious" imagery throughout the film (such as a Rorschack picture that the audience can clearly see the white horse image in, well before it's mentioned). Interestingly, the start of the film defines a dream of a white horse as meaning "Linked to instinct, purity, and the drive of the physical body to release powerful and emotional forces, like rage with ensuing chaos and destruction," from The Subconscious Psychosis of Dreams - yet every other dream guide I looked at on the web describes dreams of a white horse as meaning something like "favorable for prosperity and pleasurable commingling with congenial friends and fair women." Is this book real? I've not been able to find a record of it anywhere, so it looks as though it was just made up for the film to fit with the whole white horse imagery overall.
The movie also focuses a lot on the various ways in which survivors deal with the traumas they've endured, specifically Laurie of course as she's the main character. It's made abundantly clear that she's not dealing well with what happened to her one bit, and this is emphasised more by the comparison between her and Annie Brackett, who also survived Michael Myers and has dealt with it in her own way, seemingly becoming less as outgoing and rebellious as she was in the previous film. The idea of examining the characters via the traumas they've suffered in previous films is an interesting and original one, seeing how most slasher movie survivors who make it to a sequel seem to be remarkably unscathed by what they've been through (the only exception I can think of being Tommy Jarvis from the Friday the 13th series, and even he seemed to bounce back pretty quickly). Unfortunately it makes for some pretty unlikeable characters, even Laurie who we could understand being so screwed up. There's also the dream imagery, of course, which is considerably more confusing - it's one thing for Michael to be having the recurring dreams and visions of a white horse and his mother in white, but what are we meant to understand from Laurie seeing them too? Is this another psychic link between brother and sister? Are we back to the nature/nurture debate? Or is it something else entirely that's never really explained? According to Zombie the Director's Cut of the film tells a rather different story to the theatrical one, with Laurie's descent into psychosis much more pronounced and plot-important (along with Michael having really died at the end of the last film), which at least can go some way to explaining the shared visions...
As for the rest of the movie... Well, it's certainly full of the amounts of violence and nudity that you'd expect from a Rob Zombie Halloween movie. The most brutal murder is actually the one we see the least of, Annie's - it's got more impact because we know she'd already survived one encounter with Myers, and that and seeing only the blood-soaked aftermath of the second, fatal attack only makes it more poignant. But overall the movie might seem less bloody and death-filled than other Halloween movies because of its length, and that the deaths are more spaced out throughout it.
After this film, Dimension actually wanted to make a third Halloween film. Rob Zombie was not going to be involved and so they brought on another director for the film, but in 2015 they lost the rights to the franchise and so unless someone else gets them this is the end of the Halloween series. Whether that's a good or bad thing will depend on your feeling of the films overall...
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