Trick or Trailers: Halloween II (2007)

In 2009, the good times kept rolling with Rob Zombie's sequel to his successful 2007 Halloween reboot. Unhappy Childhood Michael was back and looking to bring the pain again. Everything seemed to be in place for another hit. But it turned out Rob Zombie had other plans. 

In the franchise's cursed tradition of taking one step up, two steps back, Zombie's Halloween II - or H2 - delivered the latest death blow to the series with a sadistic, psychedelic installment that served as a turn off to many who had enjoyed his first Halloween. 

The producers had clearly kept a firm hand on Zombie during the remake but when they gave him the sequel, they let him loose. 

Whether that was wise or just another example of the kind of self-sabotage that has always plagued the franchise, is up to individual viewers to decide. 

Let's take a look at the trailer and see what was supposed to hype us:

 

Watching at this trailer for the first time since the theaters, this looks to me like the clear tail end of that particular era of horror. 

Hardcore suffering was the order of the day back then, a long ugly streak that started in 2003. But by 2009, I think the appetite for that was finally starting to wane. After awhile, enough is enough. 

Zombie's first Halloween was certainly no walk in the park but H2 looked to be an even nastier, more ponderously grim affair. Is that what people wanted? Guess not. I know I wasn't excited for it. 

My main issue with H2 is tied in with why Zombie's first Halloween wasn't for me - I'm not down with the idea of Michael Myers just being a dude who was shaped by a shitty childhood to grow into a psycho. 

If there isn't a supernatural component to Halloween, I don't care. 

Jason as just some backwoods psycho who's just hard to kill? Sure. I arguably prefer that version to Zombie Jason. But Michael? Always gotta be supernatural. It doesn't have to go into Druids and Cult of Thorn territory. You can even keep the Samhain shit. But he has to be a true boogeyman. 

The promise that in this second Zombie Halloween entry "the secret behind (Michael's) madness will finally be revealed" was not enough to compel many audiences to check this out. For a guy who had the opportunity to break free of all the shit that had hindered the other sequels, Zombie sure was happy to repeat those previous mistakes. 

Making Michael and Laurie siblings? Check. Try to explain Michael's motivations? Check. Stylistic choices aside, there was not much thinking outside the box in Zombie's entries. And in the end, after just two movies, the franchise was once again looking for a re-do. 

This sequel definitely has a fanbase, though. Maybe one that's separate even from Zombie's first Halloween. There's something about the trashy trippiness of H2 that really works for some people. 

Knowing how so many like it is almost enough to make me want to give it another try but nah. I'm cool that others found something to love about it. Not every movie, not even every Halloween movie, has to be for me. 

On the upside, everyone can agree this did have a cool horse in it. 

That's something, right? 

Trick or Trailers: Halloween (2007)

Remaking Halloween is an idea that came one film too late for the series. Starting over after H20 would have made much more sense rather than trying to carry on. Still, in 2002 the idea of remaking Halloween would have likely been greeted as heresy. Remakes of movies from the olden times of the '50s or '60s, fans were cool with that. But to start remaking the iconic fright films of the '70s? No way. 

That just wasn't going to happen. 

Until it did. 

As the '00's went on, and horror exploded in the wake of films like Saw and Hostel with a renewed emphasis on the kind of hardcore, visceral thrills that defined much of  '70s horror, suddenly once unthinkable remakes of everything from Dawn of the Dead to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to The Hills Have Eyes became a reality. 

Once that dam burst, it was inevitable that the next step in reviving the Halloween franchise would be to reboot it. I forget what my reaction was to hearing that Rob Zombie would be directing the new movie. At that point, he had directed only House of 1,000 Corpses, which I absolutely hated, and The Devil's Rejects, which I thought was much better, even if it wasn't really my thing. If nothing else, Zombie was definitely a choice in perfect tune with where the genre was then. House, along with Cabin Fever and Wrong Turn, was one of the first films to start the trend towards a return to '70s style horror. 

But how would this guy handle a retelling of Halloween, a model of classic suspense? The answer is that he would just make it entirely in his own fashion and fuck it with even trying to ape Carpenter. 

 

Even though this is not that old, watching this trailer, it feels further in the past to me than Resurrection from '02 does. Maybe it's just that the style of horror from the mid to late '00s was so specific to that era that it's strange to revisit it and be reminded of that vibe.  

From the trailer, seeing Malcolm McDowell in action as Loomis, it's clear - as if anyone could doubt it - that casting him in that role was a killer move. You can't better Pleasance, no, but if you've got to go with a second choice, McDowell is perfect. Even in '78 he would have been great. 

As for Tyler Mane as Michael, well, I say it's a very on brand choice. Of course Zombie would cast Michael as a hulking monster. Nothing about Michael has ever been about his size. Here, though, it looks like he could stride through a cement wall without missing a step. 

When you see him holding a knife, it's laughable. It looks like a toy in his giant mitt. If you ever saw this guy coming at you, the knife would be the last thing you'd worry about.   

From the trailer there is also the reveal that even in this rebooted reality, Michael and Laurie are siblings. Why you wouldn't get away from that, given the opportunity, I don't know. Zombie has claimed that he came up with this idea independently, not remembering or knowing it had been introduced in Halloween II but I call bullshit. 

It's like Zombie wanted everyone to know that he was too cool to have the slightest awareness of what happened in any of the other lame Halloweens and yet here he was repeating the hackiest mistake of the sequels. Completely under his own inspiration, apparently. But whatever. 

Also, I had forgotten the Halloweens were still summer releases at this point. Of all the dumb moves that Dimension Films made with Halloween, putting them out in the summer might be the dumbest. 

Call me crazy but when Halloween is in your title and your movie takes place on Halloween, just put the movie out in October. Not September, not November, and certainly not in fucking August.  

For what it's worth, I believe the case can be made that this is the best Halloween to come from the franchise's Dimension Films years. 

As that's a group that also includes Curse and Resurrection, that might not be high praise but I do think this is a solid movie in its own right, even if it feels more like a curious snapshot of its particular era rather than a film that has endured beyond it. If Texas Chain Saw were to go trick or treating dressed as Halloween, this would be it. 

New Decade. New Rules.

A lot of the talk surrounding Scream 4 has centered on how scripters Kevin Williamson, Ehren Kruger and director Wes Craven managed to cope with the challenge of adapting to a world that's changed so much since 2000's Scream 3. Some have complained that, despite its creator's efforts to incorporate such modern staples as the internet, webcams, smart phones and reality TV, that Scream 4 is still mired in the '90s.

What I haven't seen anyone remark on, though, is that Scream 4 lags almost a decade behind another slasher franchise that already made strides to change with the millennium.

In 2002, Halloween: Resurrection was the first slasher film to embrace the internet culture, reality TV, and the advances in video technology. Producer Moustapha Akkad was surely spurred by the then-recent phenomenon of The Blair Witch Project (1999) to make the latest Michael Myers outing into something that spoke to the current vogue for the found footage genre as well as the burgeoning appetite for reality TV. Clearly, just a simple stalk and slash picture wouldn't cut it with young audiences anymore. And just for good measure, rapper Busta Rhymes was brought in to lend the movie some street cred.

The Resurrection screenplay by Larry Brand and Sean Hood follows six college students who have been chosen to participate in an Internet reality show called Dangertainment masterminded by entrepreneur Freddie Harris (Rhymes) and his assistant Nora Winston (Tyra Banks). The students are sent into the long-shuttered boyhood home of Michael Myers, each equipped with a personal mini-cam that broadcasts their every move to the web. Their task as they spend Halloween night in the Myers' house is to look for clues for why Michael decided to go with "stabbing" as a career choice.

Sara Moyer (Bianca Kajlich) is the film's resident good girl (following slasher movie protocol, she has an irrepressible, smart-talking BFF - Battlestar Galactica's Katee Scakhoff as Jen Danzing) and it's her internet friendship with high school student Myles Barton (Ryan Merriman) that will prove to be a lifeline when the real Michael Myers returns home to put the danger in Dangertainment. Smitten with Sara, even though they've only communicated through e-mails, Myles ducks out of a bustling Halloween party to find a private room in which to follow Dangertainment's broadcast. Before long, the rest of the party decides to join him.

When it becomes clear that the mayhem they're watching is not staged and that Sara and her "co-stars" are lined up for a slaughter, Myles uses the advantage of the cameras set up throughout the Myers' home to feed Sara via her phone the information that she needs to survive.

Brand and Hood's screenplay pulls more than a few boneheaded moves that director Rick Rosenthal (encoring from 1981's Halloween II) was apparently ok with. Killing off Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode in film's pre-title sequence set in a psychiatric hospital was likely exactly what Curtis wanted in order to end her obligation to the series but it's not ok that her plan to destroy Michael should involve setting up a rooftop booby trap that's so goofy it'd be laughed out of a Scooby-Doo episode. I mean, Laurie has Michael step into a rope noose which, when Laurie springs her trap, has him dangling in the air - upside down, no less! Ooooo!!

I don't know...maybe it's because Laurie's been kicking back in a mental hospital for a few years that this half-assed scheme seems like an effective way to dispose of Michael once and for all. I mean, hanging upside down does make the blood rush to a person's head and, as anyone will tell you, that's not pleasant. Assumedly, once Michael was at her mercy, Laurie planned to cut the rope or whatever and send Michael plummeting several stories to the ground. Would that hurt more than getting shot multiple times? Or more than being set on fire from head to toe? Because neither of those things were able to quite stop Michael previously, as Laurie ought to know. I mean, Michael fell off a second story balcony after Dr. Loomis emptied a full round of ammo in his chest and after that he just got up and walked away. Did Laurie forget that? Maybe her reasoning was that Michael isn't as young as he used to be so being dropped on his head from thirty, forty feet might do more damage than it would've before.

Honestly, though, even if Brand, Hood, and Rosenthal were all dumb enough to think this is how Laurie Strode should exit the series, you'd think that Curtis would've argued for something better - something that didn't make Laurie look completely moronic. Or maybe, God help us, this was the improved version. If this is what ended up being shot, I can only imagine what ideas were rejected along the way.

Besides having its most honored cast member go out like a fool, Rosenthal and co. allow the clownish Rhymes, while dressed to impersonate Michael, to verbally berate the real Michael (as Freddie believes it to be his cameraman in disguise). Did no one involved think that Halloween fans might be insulted by this? The error of having a C-list rapper get away with treating Michael like a punk is compounded when Freddie later unleashes a flurry of kung-fu moves on Michael and, again, survives to tell the tale. Is it any wonder that Resurrection is regarded as the worst in the Halloween series?

On the plus side, the notion of a group of viewers able to look on as Michael stalks his victims and being able to instantly advise Michael's prey on the best avenues for escape is a fitting high-tech analogy for the way that horror audiences have been shouting advice to the screen for decades. Unfortunately, constantly cutting back and forth from the Myers house to the group of kids at the party disrupts any chance for building suspense.

The one thing I do dig about Resurrection is Brad Loree as Michael Myers. Slasher fans tend to talk a lot about the different actors who have played Jason over the years but for some reason the different Michaels aren't discussed so much but I think that Loree was the best of the bunch since Nick Castle. He had the right body language and they designed one of the best masks for him. It's a shame that Rob Zombie cast Tyler Mane as Michael for his reboot as Loree was terrific.

As terrible as Resurrection is, though, as it was the last "official" Halloween sequel I can't help but have some affection for it. For all its missteps, I thought it left the series in an interesting place. Laurie was gone and the Myers house had been burned to the ground. How the next film would've continued without those familiar elements to lean on had me intrigued but Rob Zombie's 2007 remake put a quick end to that.

Some would say that's just as well. I say that while the later-day Halloween sequels were mostly awful and not looking to improve, Zombie's remake and sequel replaced them with something just as bad, if not worse. Moustapha Akkad's son Malek, who had been producing the Halloween sequels with his dad since 1995's The Curse of Michael Myers, took on the responsibility of shepherding the series after Moustapha was tragically killed (along with his daughter) in a 2005 terrorist bombing in Amman Jordan but while Zombie's name was able to gave the series a commercial shot in the arm, I have to imagine that Moustapha would never have signed off on it.

The one thing Moustapha understood about the series and Michael Myers was that you couldn't lose the boogeyman element. Once you turned Michael into just a psycho, you didn't have much. Rhymes' describes Michael as a "killer shark in baggy ass overalls" and I prefer that succinct take on the character to Zombie's efforts to portray him as the product of a crappy upbringing.

Unfortunately, what Moustapha didn't understand was that the series didn't need to jump on the latest technology or trends. Incorporating webcams and high tech in such a clumsy, pandering way only made Resurrection appear more out of touch. That's the same boat that Scream 4 finds itself in now. Thankfully, Scream 4 isn't anywhere near the unholy debacle that Resurrection was. And for those who think Scream 4 needed to embrace cutting edge tech more than it did, Resurrection proved almost ten years ago that the only cutting edge that should ever matter in a slasher film is a sharp blade.

Dimension's Dark Decline

Being completely outside the world of film, when it comes to the business of Hollywood, I only know what I read in the entertainment press. However, while I'm no inside authority, the news that Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Dimension Films - along with the entirety of The Weinstein Company - is facing grim times (as reported by Deadline Hollywood) has me thinking of the often-exasperating history of what began as a genre label of Miramax Films. In the early '90s, when I first started noticing the Dimension logo on films like Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice and Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (both 1992), even though the movies themselves weren't stellar, it was still encouraging to see a dedicated new provider of horror movies at a time when studios were reluctant to embrace the genre. At the time I thought, hey, give 'em a chance - these guys are bound to start putting out better films.

And from time to time, those better films did come along. Thanks to Dimension, I got to see at least one Stuart Gordon movie in the theaters (Fortress, 1993). And in 1994, they released The Crow which was pretty sweet. In the mid-'90s, they were on kind of a roll with The Prophecy (1995), Scream (1996), and From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and in recent years, there's been favorites bearing their imprint like The Others (2001), Grindhouse (2007) and The Mist (2008). However, over the course of all these years, the ratio of quality to shit in Dimension's catalog has been impossible to ignore. And their handling of franchises like Children of the Corn, The Crow, Highlander, Hellraiser, and (in particular) Halloween has often been infuriating.

But history may show that the Weinstein's all-time fuck-up move was to roll the dice on Rob Zombie a second time with Halloween II. While the Weinsteins had some success with Zombie's 2007 reboot of Halloween, that film had the novelty of being the restart of the franchise - an event that was going to bring in a flock of curious fans regardless. And by telling the origin of Michael Myers, Halloween '07 also had the semblance of a story to it. But Halloween II is a disaster on nearly every level and the Weinsteins have only themselves to blame for letting it happen. Was the negative reaction to Zombie's first Halloween (not a universally negative reaction but more than enough to be a cause for concern) something they thought they could completely discount? I can't blame Rob Zombie for making Halloween II his way but I can't believe that this project ever looked to the Weinsteins like anything but a death-knell.

Maybe the debacle of Halloween II just at the moment when their company needed a big success is karma for the Weinstein's long-running abuse of the Halloween franchise (1998's Halloween: H20 being the rare Halloween under their stewardship to respect the series' history and gild its legacy rather than trash it) but regardless, making a Halloween that was only appealing to the Rob Zombie faithful looks a lot like suicide. And to put Halloween II in a game of box office chicken with The Final Destination when they could've easily moved to a more advantageous release date was just begging to lose and to lose hard.

While Zombie's sequel has found some admirers, I think most paying customers feel that Zombie fucked them in the ass and to quote The Big Lebowski (1997), "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!" What's galling about both of Zombie's Halloween movies - but II especially - is the contempt that it shows for anyone who is so conventional-minded as to actually come to the theater hoping to see a Halloween film that is suspenseful and scary. I mean, there hasn't been much luck on that front in awhile but for Zombie to at least have tried would've been sporting of him. And personally, I don't see anything in Halloween II that makes me think he did. It's not a bad film because it's not Carpenter's vision of these characters, it's bad because Zombie is a capable visual stylist who has a poor aptitude for writing.

Zombie has said that he wanted to make Laurie and Annie come off as traumatized by their previous run-in with Michael Myers but apparently the entire population of Haddonfield was also attacked by a serial killer as there's nothing to differentiate Laurie and Annie from the rest of the town. Everyone looks and talks exactly the same (and I defy anyone to tell me how the squalid living quarters of Sheriff Brackett's house looks any different from the squalid apartment of Laurie's friends, the dishevelled record store that she works at, or the trashy interior of the Rabbit In Red Lounge). If Zombie really wanted to show how Laurie and Annie have been drastically altered by their ordeal, he needed to show how their lives now contrast against the 'straight' world. To have Laurie and Annie attending college classes or working jobs side-by-side with peers who are optimistic about their lives and their futures, oblivious to the darkness that Laurie and Annie carry with them could've set up a poignant portrayal of both girls (as would the introduction of new romantic relationships, hampered by the girl's emotional baggage). But if anything, it looks as though Laurie and Annie (particularly Laurie) have finally found their niche in the world thanks to their lives taking a dark turn. It makes one wonder how these girls ever fit into the Haddonfield social scene before.

Zombie's done with Halloween now (well, at least it looks that way - remember that he swore up and down after the release of Halloween that he wouldn't do a second film) but rather than hiring Zombie and letting the chips fall where they may, I think Dimension should've shown more concern from the start towards rebooting the Halloween franchise the right way. I know some believe that Zombie should be commended for doing something different but I think his revisionist approach only put the series into a worse corner than it already was (and it didn't result in very good films, either - even if assessed strictly on their own terms). There's no reason why a venerable horror series like Halloween couldn't be relaunched with the same quality control that James Bond and Batman were shown with Casino Royale and Batman Begins (I can imagine directors like The Stepfather's Joseph Ruben or The Strangers' Bryan Bertino doing well with Halloween) but as long as companies like Dimension don't care enough to match the right talent with the right franchise, it won't happen.

And to me, that just seems like bad business.

Halloween II (2009)

After having some time to mull over Rob Zombie's Halloween II, in which the masked Michael Myers sports a look that my wife describes as being like a baked potato, I'm still of the mind that it was terrible. Which, in itself, isn't such a big deal. I mean, sitting through lousy movies is par for the course for any dedicated horror fan. But in regards to Halloween II, I can't help feeling annoyed with Rob Zombie. I mean, I believe the guy could make much better films if he wasn't so apparently in love with his own shit. On the one hand, you can't fault someone for being pleased with their own work but on the other hand, from reading his comments in interviews - in which he frequently describes his movies as "awesome" - I think a healthier regard for his own shortcomings wouldn't hurt.

Directing from someone else's script might be a good step - or at least to work with a co-writer who could shape his ideas, spot for obvious gaffes, and work on consistent characterizations. Take Zombie's handling of Annie (Danielle Harris) in Halloween II, for instance. Here's a character that survived an attack by a homicidal behemoth - a homicidal behemoth who is believed to be dead but technically is still at large. Given this, does her father take preventive action and move out of town? No, he and Annie stay put. Ok, that's fine. Dumb, but fine. But to have Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) feel as though Annie might be in some kind of danger again - Michael Myers-type danger - and just send one dipshit cop to watch over her? That's ridiculous. Why wouldn't this character err on the side of caution and send half the force to his house? Or why not go himself? Better yet, why not bring Annie to the station and keep her under real protection? Zombie could still have Michael get to Annie eventually, but just not make it so easy in a way that makes these characters seem foolish and unbelievable.

If nothing else, you would think that as a lawman, Brackett would keep a firearm or two in his house and that he'd make sure that Annie and Laurie knew how to use them in case any kind of attack - either by Michael Myers or from anyone else - were to go down again. Annie is short of five feet - you'd think that Brackett would make damn sure this tiny girl would have a chance to defend herself against a bigger, stronger adversary. If Michael came after Annie alone again, why not have her be ready to fight back and not just whimper, scream, and run? It does a disservice to the character and it defies all logic as well. Zombie has a habit, though, of portraying his villains (or more likely what he sees as his film's heroes) as all-powerful and their victims to be incapable of scoring any kind of win against them and his treatment of Annie is indicative of that.

I suspect that Zombie doesn't want to give any credence to any characters in his films other than to his monsters and anti-social deviants for fear of appearing as though he might have some allegiance to the everyday, normal world. Throughout his filmography, Zombie has seemed almost pathologically afraid of showing any kind of empathy or understanding of everyday life. A lot of what good horror is about, however, is showing the invasion of chaos into order. But as Zombie has no patience for order, when chaos enters his character's universe it's hard to notice or care. Halloween II is the most extreme example of this so far, in that every character is damaged goods - or at least Zombie wants them to look that way. The two residences that we see in the film - Brackett's house and the apartment of Laurie's work buddies - are art-directed to look as inviting as a serial killer's lair (Laurie even has a poster of Charles Manson over her bed).

I know that Zombie wants us to see that Laurie, Annie, and Brackett have been changed by the experience of the last Halloween but if you look at the actual survivors of violent crimes, often times you see people who became stronger by their traumatic experience, not weaker. It's a cliche to say that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger but it is often true. There's the famous case of the Central Park Jogger, who was beaten, raped, and left for dead in an 1989 attack. This woman struggled with her recovery - both physically and emotionally - but has gone on to became a motivational speaker for victims of violent crime. In Zombie's case, I think in revisiting his Halloween characters, it was easier for him to take the route of saying "Great, now I have an excuse to make my characters fucked-up! I can do 'fucked-up' in my sleep!" And in doing that, I think Zombie reveals his insecurities and limitations as an artist.

If Zombie were ever to remake The Exorcist, I imagine that he'd make Regan into a tattooed, pierced goth chick before she ever got possessed because otherwise he wouldn't be able to 'relate' to her. Or that he'd begrudgingly make her normal but be happy when he could finally get to the possession because only then would she become 'interesting.' Zombie's films aren't the work of someone exorcising their inner demons, they're the work of someone not wanting to suffer any damage to their street cred - and that to me is the sign of someone who's transparently afraid of showing weakness in front of his crowd. These movies are not the work of an outlaw, but rather the work of someone who doesn't want to get caught shopping at JC Penny. Zombie's brand of bad-ass is a cosmetic affectation more than a deeply felt personal statement and that's why his movies don't have any real bite to them.

It's like a college chick who works at Target with a dyed-black mohawk, eybrow ring and tattoo sleeve. She's making a statement but that statement is "I need everyone to know I'm different. Really different. And edgy, too." And what I'm saying is "That may be true but you'd better off trying to surprise people instead. And by the way, don't put the kitty litter on top of my powered donuts."

Click over to Shock Till You Drop for my Halloween II review.

At Least He's Done With Halloween

After watching Rob Zombie's Halloween II, and reading comments online from people who found it to be 'bad-ass,' I have to wonder if Zombie could rape and kill the entire families of these fans before they'd have to say - begrudgingly! - that maybe everything RZ does isn't above reproach. I mean, I would think that Halloween II would give them ample cause to question the man's genius - and in some cases, hopefully this will come to pass - but in general, I expect that RZ's fanbase will have his back once again.

In the meantime, though, the rest of us have to discuss the fact that Zombie has no idea how to make a movie. Apparently The Devil's Rejects (2005) was a total fluke, because Zombie is one for four so far. I'll even give his first Halloween a half point because it had its moments. But come on, the man's track record is getting more sorry with each movie.

Zombie is clearly shrewd as hell on a business level - how he rallies his fans is genius (he could even give Sarah Palin pointers). But as a filmmaker? He's got a good handle on visuals, yes - even if they're employed to scattershot effect. But the rest of what goes into making a movie - like an understanding of storytelling, for one? Zombie hasn't mastered that skill at all - and really, he doesn't seem motivated to try. He seems to go from scene to scene on pure instinct with no regard for what came before or what's coming after.

And while he describes himself as a horror fan in interviews, he hasn't shown any talent yet for creating tension or suspense. If anything, based on his films to date, he seems to regard horror fans as easily pleased idiots who can't discern quality from shit. And boy, I think he may have called that one!

It's a crime that someone with so much leverage to make genre movies is so incapable making good ones. It's also a crime that someone who is so ingratiating in interviews and so enthusiastic about his work can't translate that personal vibe onto the screen. Zombie is an apparently nice guy who happens to make movies that are - at best - contemptuous of their audience. With all the profanity spoken by his characters, the biggest 'fuck you' of all are the films themselves.

Come Back, Rick Rosenthal!

After checking out the teaser trailer for H2, Rob Zombie's latest attempt to force his self-consciously 'edgy' aesthetic onto the world of Michael Myers, I could only wish that this was coming to theaters this August instead:



Sure, Halloween II director Rick Rosenthal was no John Carpenter but I'd take him any day over a bogus 'visionary' like Rob Zombie. Even Rosenthal's much-derided return to Haddonfield with 2002's Halloween: Resurrection is starting to look a lot better now next to Zombie's efforts. Zombie is apparently impervious to the suggestion that perhaps he, well, sucks and H2 looks to reflect that.

When Carpenter wrote the famous line, "You can't kill the boogeyman", he clearly never imagined the kind of damage a blockhead like Rob Zombie could do. I know the idea of the 'boogeyman' must seem hopelessly corny to someone striving for 'reality' like Zombie, but if your embodiment of evil is nothing more than a hulking street person, it means you can't have bad-ass moments like this:

And if you can't have a Michael Myers invincible enough to reenact the full-body burn from The Thing from Another World (1951), then what good he is to anyone?

Halloween 2: The Revenge of Big Joe Grizzly

Despite his once-adamant stance that 2007's Halloween would be writer/director Rob Zombie's one and only trip to Haddonfield, the news just broke that Zombie will be filming Halloween 2 (aka H2) next year. My immediate thought to that is "Thank God another horror film can finally give fucking Saw a run for its money next Halloween!". Of course, that's kind of like having a mice problem in your home and letting snakes loose to take care of it but that's fine.

At the very least, Zombie doing his own follow-up means that the truly promising directors that were attached to this project - most recently, Inside helmers Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury - can move on to something more deserving of their talents. For another, this is the first time to my knowledge that a director has gone on to sequelize their own remake and that's an intriguing situation.

Word from Variety that Halloween 2 will chronicle "the aftermath of Michael Myers' murderous rampage through the eyes of the sister he hunted" doesn't really say much, however, and what it does say worries me. I just hope Zombie doesn't try to justify returning to the Halloween universe by going experimental and having the new film be some kind of psychoanalysis of Laurie Strode's traumatized mind. That's a waste of everyone's time. Now that the origin story is out of the way, just put Michael Myers on a full-out rampage. There's still room to do things differently than in the original saga but at the end of the day Halloween 2 has to be about Michael suited up in his overalls and mask, knife in hand, doing what we like seeing him do. If it isn't, it shouldn't be called Halloween 2.

To that end, here's my suggestions: first, kill Loomis off right away. Bring Malcolm McDowell back for an Adrienne King-like opening cameo. Have him living alone, bat-shit crazy and blinded after Michael gouged his eyes out in the last movie. Michael, of course, pays him a final visit and the opening credits roll. Once that's done, bring back Ken Foree's character of trucker Big Joe Grizzly as the new antagonist for Michael - a character who'd be more akin to Robert Shaw in Jaws than the traditional Loomis type. Sure it looked like Michael put a permanent end to Big Joe during their last encounter but this is a horror movie so who's to say this character couldn't have survived his injuries and emerged with a vendetta to carry out against Michael Myers? Michael caught him off-guard the first time but now Big Joe's ready for Round Two. For the last two years he's been watching, waiting, training his ass off. Now it's on.

If this sounds ridiculous to you, listen: we've already seen six Halloween movies where Michael is pursued by Loomis - someone who could never pose any kind of physical threat to Michael and who's only purpose is to spread the word on Michael's evil nature. That's beyond tired. Now I want to see a Halloween movie where a total bad-ass is gunning for Michael, not some frail old dude but a guy who can really take it to Michael on his own terms. I also think it'd be cool to see this tough bastard who doesn't believe in shit like the Boogeyman slowly forced to consider that there's more than just a whole lot of crazy to Michael.

Of course, in Zombie's Halloween universe, I'm sure that Michael is still just supposed to be some burly psycho and not a supernatural force and that bringing Big Joe Grizzly back to grapple with Michael - taking their death-feud through the streets of Haddonfield - would be regarded as a cheesy move. Well, yeah. It would. But I also believe it'd be fun and that slasher movies - especially sequels to remakes of slasher movies - ought to be fun and not so full of themselves. I want to see a Halloween movie where Michael is in some suburban house, bearing down on his latest victim when suddenly a semi truck crashes through, horn blaring, taking off the back of the house and Big Joe Grizzly jumps out of his giant rig in a suit of homemade armour, ready to stomp the shit out of Michael. Goddammit, that's the Halloween 2 I want to see - the Night HE Got Rocked. And I'd also like to see Keith David cast as Big Joe's brother - someone even more bad-ass than Big Joe himself, some real John Carpenter-esque character like Napoleon Wilson who just broke out of jail. Shit, if Zombie doesn't want to bring back Foree because feels like it'd be cheesy to have him survive his Halloween injuries, just have David as Foree's brother, busting himself out of maximum security to avenge Big Joe's death. If that's what it comes to, I'd be cool with that.

I'm sure what Zombie has in mind for Halloween 2 is nothing like what I have in mind for Halloween 2 but until I hear for sure, I'll keep hoping that Big Joe Grizzly will be on the comeback trail next October.