As usual, I post no movie spoilers.
Well I finally got up the desire to post this review, been in a slump lately about wanting to post anything on here really. At any rate have Rob Zombies sequel to his remake of a old franchise, Halloween. His first Halloween remake was met with basically "this kinda sucks" tone from the horror peanut gallery which I believe is mostly due to #1 you can never please hardly anyone anymore, #2 you can please fans of something with a remake because they set way to high of standards and expect the remakes to be exactly the same as the original. But afterall it was titled "Rob Zombies Halloween" not "Rob zombies identical shot by shot remake of John Carpentars Halloween". Basically if Rob Zombie makes a movie I can more or less know exactly what Im getting into because all of his movies have the exact same style and tone to them, this one being more of what youd expect from Rob more so than the first Halloween he did.
Direction: Its a Rob Zombie movie so you know what to expect. It has that music video feel to it like all of his stuff, fast paced camera work, alot of boring camera shaking going on, alot of focus in/focus out shots, off center posistioning and a fuck ton of color filtering with mostly underlit scenes. This is pretty par for the course kind of directing where nothing is unique, different, stylish or really polished, its just a guy pointing a camera around. Only movie he did where I thought the direction was good was in Devils Rejects, other than that he hasnt ever really impressed me or gone above anyother standard, generic horror movie director and this isnt an exception.
Acting: Well, it sucks and not a good kind of suck, the kind of suck where its suckage is due to overly developed characters that are just obnoxiously pretentious in how they are presented. Scenes like a bunch of girls in ripped jeans and alice cooper shirts standing on a bar in a hippie coffee shop head banging to rock music that was made long before they were even born and doing their version of "air guitar on a tennis racket" while hooting made me roll my eyes in bordem. All the main girls in the movie were generic, slacked, hippie, rocker wannabe, rebel, depressed, repressed types that were so cliched and generic I didnt paticullary care about whether they lived or died. Even characters I liked were still right from the book of broken cliches, like the sheriff was the dad who loved his daughter and was the old time mans man that loved meat and teased his daughter about it because she was a vegetarian. Just all in all the acting was quite sterile as were the characters, they had no personality or persona about them, they just felt like stapled characters. The only actor I did like in this was sheriff Brackett, then again Ive always liked Brad Douriff. I wish I could say the same for Dr Loomis as I also love Malcom Mcdowell but his character was changed so much and had no important moments on screen that I didnt give a toss.
Storyline: It was fucking jumbled, confusing and ridiculous. I think everyone hated how Rob tried to explain Michael in the first movie and put a face on everything so in this one he did the opposite and just made everything a convoluted mess. I had no idea what the horse meant, the bits with his mother, or anything else really aside from Michael kills a bunch of people, sometimes for no reason at all. Even with some time for after thought I couldnt really figure out exactly why or how things were happening. It seemed more like some rash, last minute throwing together of a story than anything that had some thought put into it. I hope next time Rob realizes that you cant shoe horn in symbolism or artistic sentiment into a movie and not have a end result more than muddled puke pile.
Effects: Sadly till the end I didnt hear anything musically wise reminding me of Halloween, the rest as per Robs usual is classic rock hits shoved into the movie as a soundtrack. You know Im sorry, just because you cram in Knights in White Satin doesnt make anything anymore scary or moody. Tarantino has mastered the art of putting real music into movies and making it work, everyone else can fuck off because its distracting and detracts from the movie unless you can get it perfect. Sound effects were your standard big boots trodding painfully slow as Michael walks, crunchy and wet sounding stabs and screams that sounded like the person who trying to watch their favorite tv show while recording them. Visual effects were fine and dandy like sour candy, nothing really looked out of place and I did love the lighting and set pieces (except the girls horriblly staged bathroom). The overall look and feel of the movie comforted me in some flashback to 80's horror in some way.
Overall: At the end of the credits I felt like he just take all the negative comments fans made about the first one and tried to do a 180 on them. The only parts I was excited about were seeing actors pop up I hadnt seen in forever. Luckily I was alone in the theater because I got to yell "Haha its Johnny Fever!" when I saw Howard Hessman get his whole 9 seconds of screen time or I said "Fucking sweet its Stretch!" when I saw Caroline Williams come on screen for like 17 seconds. So really if you have nothing else you want to see and go to a movie thats the very definition of popcorn cinema then by all means have at it, me personally, I was dissapointed and was hoping Rob would really make this a comeback film. While I actually enjoyed the first one this one is just a cluster fuck of a movie I wont be buying on dvd or even care if I ever see it again. Maybe Im just sick of Halloween on the whole because the entire franchise has been run into the ground with god awfull teeny bopper sequels with shitty stories and stars that are hot at the moment with the kids like fucking busta rhymes. And the news of Halloween being reboot again in 3D just pisses on the coffin they put the last nail in 3 sequels ago. Halloween 3 season of the witch was the last good Halloween movie and the kicker is, its not even a Halloween movie really and doesnt have Michael but its still a really great, unique and mean spirited movie. Hopefully this 3D remake will tank and they will just go onto something else and kill the Halloween franchise.
I give it 4 out of 10 stars.
Trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/h2/
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