Even more maligned than Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween was his sequel Halloween II, which except for a brief visit to a hospital has nothing to do with Halloween 2 (1981) - at least in my memory. I haven't seen it since 1981 and have no plans to revisit.
Picking up, right where Halloween (2007) left off, this movie is more concerned with the psychological and physical effects that the events of the first movie had on it's survivors, with Michael Myers really taking a minor, but hugely impacting, role in this outing. The link between Myers (Tyler Mane) and Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) is heightened through a series of visions that depict something of an unholy trinity with Myers' mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) young Michael (Chase Vanek) and adult Michael.
This movie is as brutal as the first, though the physical violence takes a back seat to the emotional. Zombie displays a lot of creative choices in the story as well as the filmmaking, and in a moment that is sure to have had die hard fans of the John Carpenter Halloween and its conceit that Michael Myers may very well have been THE bogeyman, a supernatural cypher, Zombie has Myers remove his mask during an important confrontation reminding us that for all his power and violence, he's still just a man. I thought this was a wise choice since Zombie's two Halloween movies are about the people caught up in this chain of violent events (like these people, or not, and except for Brad Dourif, it's hard to like most of them), especially Michael.
The movie does run a little long, again the characters aren't the nicest group of people ever put on screen together, and unfortunately Chase Vanek taking over for Daeg Faerch as young Michael Myers doesn't have his presence. Overall though, I liked it quite a bit.
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