If you've come from our parental review of this film and wish to return to it, simply click on your browser's BACK button.
Otherwise, use the following link to read our complete Parental Review of this film.
QUICK TAKE:
Horror: Mass murderer Michael Myers is still alive and plans to continue his killing spree until he is reunited with his long lost sister.
PLOT:
Mass murderer Michael Myers (TYLER MANE) did indeed survive the gunshot wounds inflicted on him by his long lost sister, Laurie (SCOUT TAYLOR-COMPTON), at the end of the first film. As the sequel opens, Myers escapes the back of a coroner's van and makes his way to the local hospital where Laurie and her friend, Annie (DANIELLE HARRIS), have been taken for treatment. Myers slaughters several hospital personnel. And just as he is about to kill Laurie, she wakes up and it is one year later.
Laurie now lives with Annie and her father (BRAD DOURIF), the town's sheriff, but has both physical and emotional scars from the previous Halloween. Myers, meanwhile, has become a recluse in the nearby woods and continues to see visions of his dead mother (SHERI MOON ZOMBIE) and his younger self (CHASE WRIGHT VANEK), nudging him to return to town, continue his killing spree, and reunite with Laurie.
Meanwhile, Myers' former psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Loomis (MALCOLM McDOWELL) has cashed in on his experiences counseling Myers and living through the murders of the previous year. He is on a whirlwind book tour and is on the verge of releasing his second volume of research into Myers' family history. When Michael Myers does indeed return to kill again, all of the principals converge to try and stop him.
OUR TAKE: 2 out of 10
Our reviewing policy for films that aren't shown in advance to critics is that we'll only provide a paragraph or two about the film's artistic merits or, more accurately, lack thereof. After all, life is too short to spend any more effort than that on a movie that even the releasing studio knows isn't any good (which is why they hid it from reviewers before its release).
Director Rob Zombie continues with his relentlessly grim take on the Michael Myers horror legend. As in his remake/re-imagining of the 1978 John Carpenter original of a couple of years ago, the man delights more in the utter viciousness of Myers' murders than in any other aspect of the filmmaking process. Also like last time, Zombie has no clue how to lay out a mythos and base his horror tale in anything resembling logic and motivation.
Most of the principals who survived the first movie are back for a second go-around here. Taylor Scout-Compton again plays the relentlessly traumatized Laurie Strode, the long lost sister of Michael Myers (Tyler Mane). Malcolm McDowell returns as Dr. Samuel Loomis, who has used the earlier tragedies to become a best-selling author and complete jerk of a human being. Others showing up like proverbial lambs to the slaughter are Danielle Harris, as Laurie's scarred friend Annie; Brad Dourif, as Annie's sheriff father; and Shari Moon Zombie, as Myers' dead mother who shows up as a motivational hallucination.
The film has little in the way of any real suspense. It's a slasher flick, through and through. And a pretty depressing one at that. It rates as a 2 out of 10. (T. Durgin)
![[Screen It]](/images/underground_header.jpg)