Not to be rude or anything, but I've never been a fan of Halloween 2. I know everyone else likes it, but it always seemed plodding and boring to me. Back when I was a kid, I snuck around and watched the first 2 Halloween movies when I wasn't supposed to, and I kinda mixed them up in my head into one big movie, but my remix was cooler than what I saw when I finally watched both movies again in college. I mean, I love the first one and think it's taut and tense and moves swiftly, but the second one just seems to drag on forever. I have it on DVD, but honestly, that's just to complete my collection. For my money, part 4 is the coolest Halloween sequel, so I wanted to follow up my viewing of the first movie with this sequel because I'm a grown up and I get to make cool decisions like that.
This sequel takes place in the same universe as parts 1 and 2 of the movie. Laurie Strode had a daughter, so she's Michael Myers' niece, and she's living with her cousin after her parents died recently in a car accident. Michael Myers is still alive after the events of the second movie, but he's in a catatonic state. During a routine patient transfer one night, the paramedics in the ambulance blab to each other, and Michael learns he has a niece living back in Haddonfield Illinois, the scene of his murderous massacres from years ago. He suddenly springs to life, kills the paramedics, and heads back to Haddonfield to find his living relative and kill her too. Donald Pleasance reprise his role as Dr. Loomis, still obsessed with stopping Michael from continuing his killing spree. Danielle Harris plays young Jamie Strode, who suffers from nightmares of her murderous uncle, because she's heard about his killings, so she gets teased by kids at school about her uncle being the boogeyman. This year on Halloween night, while Jamie is looking forward to trick-or-treating, her uncle is looking forward to killing her, and he'll kill anyone else who gets in his way.
If you've heard anything about this movie at all, it's likely you've heard horror fans complaining about how they changed Michael's look in this movie. They didn't have the original mask from the first movies, so they replaced it with probably the stupidest mask in existence, and it does look really silly. I love this movie, but that mask is bad enough to be distracting. It's probably the only thing I don't like about this movie. Seriously, it's THAT bad. But otherwise, the performances are pretty solid, and I like the characters. It's cool how Jamie shares a psychic connection with her uncle, even though they've never met. It explains why she has such bad nightmares. Sharing headspace with an evil psychopath can't be fun.
I also appreciate how when the town hrars that Michael Myers is back in town, they form an armed group and start patrolling the streets. I've lived in lots of small towns throughout my life, and this is definitely what we'd do if there were a maniac on the loose. Try killing us, asshole. There's another cool nod to the first movie when Jamie picks out her Halloween costume and it's a clown outfit similar to the one that Michael Myers wore as a kid in the opening scene to the first movie. Also Michael is able to get his (crappy) mask because the town has a lot of similar masks and costumes for sale as a way to morbidly cash in on the interest in Michael Myers. There's a cool scene where the cops think they've cornered Michael Myers, but then another pops up, and another, and it turns out it's just teenagers wearing Michael Myers costumes. You can't kill him if you can't find him!
The movie's third act takes place with our heroes holed up in a house trying to barricade themselves inside and protect themselves against Michael's killing spree, meanwhile the armed group patrolling the town starts accidentally shooting the wrong people (way to go geniuses) and Jamie is trying to sleep, but she's haunted by her visions of her uncle. It's a tense sequence, and for my money, it rivals anything the second movie tried to do. This movie isn't perfect, but I still dig it a lot.
No comments:
Post a Comment