This Ain’t Halloween
Chris Zasada September 8, 2009

I caught a screening of the Halloween 2 remake over the weekend at the local Sundance Kid Drive-In. I was a supporter of Rob Zombie’s remake of the first one. It became obvious from the beginning that Cummings (real name Rob Cummings, which I’ll refer to him as from now on because I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of using his stage name because he thinks it makes him really bad-ass) intended to bring back the series with his own vision, giving a disturbing back story of the childhood of Michael Meyers and how he came to be the maniacal killer we all know and fear today.

I’ve defended this back story from harsh critics (my co-worker Nick), who protested Michael Meyers didn’t need a detailed back story, that he was scary because we didn’t know who he was. In retrospect, the back story might have been a little drawn out and paid a little too much lip service to audience expectations that he was obviously a product of child abuse and wasn’t really just an evil entity who decided to kill his sister on a whim.

I’m also not a big fan of the giant-sized, long-haired Michael. While I understand what Cummings was going for, something about the unkempt hulk look betrayed the silent intimidation of the John Carpenter Michael Meyers. The fact that he grunts when he attacks also cuts back the mystique, as a completely silent Meyers makes seem even less human and was to a much greater effect. Yes, I’m critiquing man grunts.

Overall, though, I felt Cummings did a good job with the remake, nodding to the original and keeping fan expectations in mind. I also like how the high school girls looked like high school girls. I could never accept high school students from the classic slasher films as high school students because they always looked older, probably because they were. I was able to suspend my disbelief with a movie about a seven-foot mental patient who wears a mask and kills people a lot more easily without the age discrepancy.

However, Cummings completely pissed all over the groundwork Carpenter laid down in the second Halloween. If you hated the elaborated childhood scenes of the first remake, this one forces them into the primary movie in the most idiotic way imaginable: with white horses.

I can’t even pretend to make that one up. At the beginning of the film, Cummings once again shows us a young Michael Meyers locked up in the sanitarium. His mother just brought him a white horse figurine, the perfect gift for a psychotic child who kills animals. He comments that he saw a white horse just like this in a dream, and his mother was also there, dressed in white, calling for him to come home with her. At first I thought this made-up tack-on was just some pointless bit of exposition Cummings decided to inflict on the audience. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the last I would see of the white horse.

Flash forward to adult Michael Meyers, and we see he occasionally starts seeing visions of his mother with (surprise!) the white horse, beckoning Michael to go kill Laurie and bring the family back together. Somehow I can’t take a guy with an Oedipus complex who fanaticizes about white ponies all that seriously, at least not when we’re separated by the fourth wall.

To make matters worse, Michael Meyers speaks. Not his adult form, mind you, that would just be silly. Instead, during his visions, his child self appears in front of his adult form and does the talking for him. Nice little work around Cummings came up with there, but it’s still impossible to take this Michael Meyers seriously.

And just to bring the audience further into the whimsical world of Michael Meyer’s mind, Laurie has a mental link with him and can see the child Michael and her biological mother, and can be physically restrained by them (so she thinks). And you thought it was frightening enough to be chased around by a psycho with a knife. Feh, amateur.

Fortunately, Doctor Loomis is back to save the day… oh wait, he’s a slimy book peddler who’s capitalizing on the Michael Meyers incident for personal fame and fortunate, and doesn’t care who it affects. Cummings transformed the remorse-ridden Loomis into a sleazy ass who brushes people off when they accuse him of being responsible for the people Meyers killed, only to receive a half-hearted revelation at the end of the film that prompts him to confront Michael Meyers and get stabbed. Fortunately, he gets stabbed so much there’s no way he’ll be back again, and I have a feeling Cummings might be done with the series, because Michael was also stabbed so much that the very-mortal version Cummings gives us could not possibility survive.

But wait, didn’t Laurie blast him in the head with a pistol at point blank range at the end of the last movie? When I saw that, I thought the story was through, because Meyers wouldn’t be bouncing back from that one. Except he somehow does, so either she missed and hit him in the shoulder or he has an incredibly thick skull. I’m going to call slasher bullshit on this one.

Pretty much the entire movie makes about as much sense as this. It was impossible to tell what was going on at times due to some of the scenes being too dark to make out anything and what the darkness doesn't obscure of the move, the poor editing finishes the job. Then the white horse shows up, and I’m really left scratching my head.

I have to state the movie starts off solidly before Cummings pulls the rug out from under you, giving Michael Meyers enough opportunity to hack you to bits. It starts out in a hospital just like the original sequel did. As the bodies and the scares start to pile up and Michael Meyers has Laurie in a tight spot, she suddenly wakes up screaming at her friend’s house. Turns out that extremely involved, vivid, and awesome starting scene was nothing but a dream, and the rest of the movie never touches the excitement of the dream sequence. While the first remake followed the original pretty well and included a number of homages, the second one teases the audience before delving into its vast cavern of mediocrity, which is about a million times more insulting than just starting things out from the point Laurie starts screaming.

Besides these deep faults that make a mockery of a classic, the rest of the movie is nothing but clichés and even less likeable characters that you can’t wait to be killed so you don’t have to deal with them. You also get a general sense of “bad ass- ness” that pastes together far too many horror movies these days. I’m a bit shocked there weren’t more generic heavy metal riffs throughout the movie and “xtreme” CG animations for credits.

Speaking of music, perhaps this film’s greatest sin is the nearly complete absence of John Carpenter’s classic Halloween theme. This theme is a mastery of modern music, a tune that sends chills down the spine of listeners no matter how many times they’ve heard it. Instead of showcasing this glorious theme, Cummings tacks it on during then end credits, and it’s a crappy cover that isn’t nearly as haunting as the original.

Overall, Rob Cummings Halloween 2 is a bad horror movie, and a complete and utter failure as a Halloween movie. I recommend you avoid paying a bloody red cent to see this movie. Wait for it to hit your local library (should be there by Christmas), borrow it from one of your idiotic friends who buys whatever hits the highlight displays at Wal-Mart, just don’t encourage Rob Cummings by giving him money, because next time we might have Michael Meyers sticking pumpkin masks on children’s heads that cause their insides to turn into bugs as he battles robots while riding that damn white horse. Do not think this isn’t possible.