Classic Movie Review: Halloween 2 As Boring as the Original

Halloween 2 (1981)

Directed by Rick Rosenthal

Written by John Carpenter, Debra Hill

Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Dick Warlock

Release Date October 30th, 1981

Published October 13th, 2022

So, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Michael Myers (Dick Warlock) are siblings. So now what? Apparently, the answer to so now what was let's do what we did the first time to ever diminishing returns. Halloween 2 is set on the same night as the original, October 31st, 1978. Michael Myers has been shot by Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance), but has managed to escape. Laurie is hurt and deeply traumatized. She's taken to a hospital where they plan to treat her cuts and bruises and give her a good night's sleep with some good drugs.

Unfortunately for everyone at the hospital, Michael Myers is not one to give up. Even with several bullet wounds, he plans on finding his heretofore unknown sister and killing her for some nebulous reason. But, before he can get to her, he needs to mess about killing randos. This means finding a couple having sex in the hospital therapy tub, ewwwwwww, and nearly melting their skin off before knifing them but good. Yes, sure, death to those who have sex in therapy pools, but this seems like an unnecessary detour for Michael Myers.

If the end goal is killing Laurie Strode then why is Michael constantly achieving side quests like he's playing GTA? When he gets to the hospital Michael takes the time to sabotage every vehicle in the parking lot. And, in case someone tries to call the authorities whose bullets can't stop him, Michael rips out the phone line. Then he wastes time searching for Laurie Strode by murdering random hospital employees and posing them for best horror effect. This is a Michael Myers trope that always boggles my mind, why does Myers feel the need to pose his victims?

When you think about it, for a guy whose aesthetic is stoic, stalking, methodical maniac, Michael is rather flamboyant in how he poses his kills. For instance, he murders a nurse by having all of her blood drain out of her in a perfect pool while she sleeps the sleep of death. He stabs another doctor in the eye with a needle and leaves him perfectly posed with the needle in his eye for best horror effect. If you want to have fun, just imagine the effort and time it must take Michael to take and crumple the bodies of victims he doesn't pose into the various hiding places he pushes them into.

There is a very funny Halloween parody to be made that is just Halloween cut scenes of Michael Myers flamboyantly posing his victims in artsy poses or stuffing them into places where bodies shouldn't be stuffed. I would rather watch that parody movie in my mind than spend any more time watching the actual movies made for Michael's adventures in killing. Halloween 2 goes to the lengths of giving Michael a motivation for his killing only to have him now look silly because he can't simply accomplish his goal of killing one teenage girl, he's got to stop for elaborate killings of random people.

People tend to forget that John Carpenter did not direct Halloween 2. Rather, he and partner Debra Hill begrudgingly provided a script and little known hack director Rick Rosenthal actually directed the film. Much like Carpenter in the original, Rosenthal wants us to ignore the inconsistencies of character and motivation for Michael and just enjoy the ever more bizarre ways Michael commits bloody murder. They aren't all as much fun as the jolly prankster Michael Myers from the original, but they are vaguely impressive uses of practical effects for the purpose of mimicking horrific murder.

It's just hard to care about the skillful practical effects when the story being told is so bludgeoning and repetitive. Michael faffs about in the hospital, the only person searching for Laurie Strode who can't seem to find her, and then when we've reached a point where the story can't repeat again, the movie ends. You can sense in the execution of this ending that Carpenter, Debra Hill and even Rick Rosenthal were ready to move on from Michael Myers. The explosive conflagration that takes out Dr. Loomis and Michael should have been definitive but, of course, it wasn't. There were still dollars to be made and that's really what the Halloween franchise has always been about, dolla dolla bills y'all.

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