Examining the Realistic Trauma and Surreal Fever Dream that Cohabitate in Rob Zombie’s ‘Halloween II’
The first fifteen minutes of Zombie’s Halloween II are so clever because within that timeframe, he condenses his entire, expected remake of the original Halloween II down to that time. We know all of the familiar beats. We’re picking up exactly where the original left off. Laurie is being taken to the hospital to deal with her extensive injuries. Michael has survived what appeared to be a fatal blow, and follows Laurie to the hospital. He makes his way through the minimal night staff, brutally stabbing future Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer in the back dozens of times before resuming his pursuit of Laurie.
The question that had been on everyone’s mind since 1981, “where is the hospital staff?” Is answered when Laurie uncovers a body pit filled with dozens of victims, at least, during her escape. She makes her way out of the hospital and into the pouring rain, but Michael catches up with her, swings an axe into her face — and then she wakes up. It was a dream sequence, telling us part of what happened after Laurie shot Michael that night before segueing into her nightmare.
From that point, all expectations of the sequel were satisfied, and thus all bets were off. Nobody knew what to expect from Rob Zombie’s Halloween II once the condensed “remake” of the original sequel was out of the way. It veered off in a completely different direction, far from standard slasher territory and instead portrays a stark depiction of trauma and mental illness, and what recovery from that actually looks like. One of my favorite things about Rob Zombie’s Halloween II is that it doubles down on both the realism and surrealism that had been presented in the previous movie.
In Halloween II, every character is in a wildly different place. They have all become Rob Zombie characters, even the sacred ones. That allows for completely new, and therefore freeing, interpretations. The only one who seems to be in roughly the same place as they were in 2007 is Sheriff Brackett, who has thrown himself into his work and has taken to either adopting Laurie or at least offering her a place to stay after the murder of her adoptive parents. This makes sense, too. By Brackett’s own admission, he was responsible for getting baby Laurie out of the Myers house and thus responsible for her adoption in the first place. One major change from the original, and one of the best, is the reveal that Annie survived that horrible Halloween night. This feels like a natural change, given that she had still been breathing when last we saw her in the previous movie, though she was definitely in rough shape. Annie is presented as the voice of reason, and seems like the most well-adjusted of the returning characters, until it becomes clear that she will not so much as leave the house and likely hasn’t stepped outside in the two years since her attack.
Loomis, on the other hand, has become a colossal asshole. He is so shaken by his failure with Michael — both as his doctor and in his gun-blazing attempt to stop his killing spree — that he has intentionally rebranded himself as the worst possible person he could be, because that’s what he thinks he truly is, deep down, to have failed so spectacularly. He is living fully inside of his bestselling author persona, promoting his new book, a further exploration of Michael’s past crimes, including the new confidential information that Brackett had shared with him in the previous film about Laurie being Michael’s sister.
This is the Anti-Loomis, as designed by a man who can’t forgive himself but also can’t bring himself to claim responsibility. This is a Loomis who very forcefully tells an audience that Michael Myers is dead and never coming back. Truly, nothing could be more of the antithesis of the classic character than that. There is a very telling moment, small as it is, when Loomis throws a tantrum over an event using the wrong author photo. The photo depicts him in the classic trench coat, with the goatee, just as he had looked in 2007. Loomis can’t even stand the sight of it, aggressively pointing out that that is “Old Loomis” and he only wants to present himself as “New Loomis.” But all it is actually revealing about him is that he cannot stand to look at himself.
And then there is Laurie, the focal point of the film. Laurie is barely coping, to say the least. She is fine, or at least calm, one moment, and then has a full-blown outburst the next. She has intense nightmares every night. She can barely make it through the day. Laurie at least has a steady job at a record store and has made some new friends through work, so it is not like she can’t function, but even still, she is barely hanging on. She cannot hide her mood swings and anxiety attacks from her new friends, they just happen to be a very understanding bunch.
There are moments, such as Laurie having a full-blown meltdown in the safety of her car in the parking lot, or breaking down and sobbing in therapy when she cannot get her prescription refilled, that feel brutally realistic in a way that even the best movies rarely are at portraying this kind of trauma. I think this is probably the most realistic portrayal of what life would be like for a so-called “final girl” day to day after surviving that kind of horrific event. Even putting it in realistic terms of surviving any kind of violent ordeal, this still ranks among the most realistic depictions ever shown on screen.
Realism, in this case, starkly contrasts the surrealism, which truly helps Rob Zombie’s sequel stand apart from its predecessor. In terms of both the characters and especially the style, the second film has an entirely different flavor from the first. The movie is peppered with bizarre dream sequences and hallucinations. Michael sees the first of them when he escapes from the back of an ambulance, seeing his mother standing beside a white horse. The white horse imagery, and the definition of it that opens the film, have become notorious among fans in the years since the movie’s release.
Michael Myers himself occupies a place between the real and the unreal in Halloween II. Following his escape, he lives in an abandoned barn, a homeless person, eating livestock, dressed in old hoodies and rags, having grown a great big bushy beard. It’s probably the most realistic portrayal of how a man like Michael could possibly hide out after the massacre he had committed. Yet at the same time, there’s really no explainable way he could have survived a gunshot to the head, and he continues to appear impervious to pain and not even slowed down after taking great damage. Even more than that, Michael is haunted by visions of his mother, as well as his younger self.
Halloween II is not beholden to any established franchise rules, and breaks perhaps the most cardinal one of all: in this movie, Michael Myers speaks. He speaks through a hallucination of his younger self, but he speaks all the same. And he truly breaks that rule at the end, when he looks Loomis in the eyes and growls, “Die!” That’s about as clear cut as speaking gets. This vision of Deborah Myers is with Michael throughout almost every single scene he appears in. She tells him what to do, where to go, everything he needs to do, in her words, to make their family whole again. As Laurie’s mental state deteriorates, she begins to have the same identical hallucinations, sees the same visions of her birth mother that Michael sees, without even knowing he sees them.
This is perhaps the greatest weakness of Zombie’s Halloween II, though it is not so much a weakness on the part of the viewer as much as it is on the perspective of the filmmaker. On the DVD commentary, Zombie explained that Laurie’s visions are the result of her having the same madness that her brother had, and that “madness,” results in her seeing the same visions, even interacting with them at the same time as Michael. There are times when Laurie and Michael are both seeing the “ghost” of Deborah Myers and she is speaking to both of them, and they both listen and respond to her. That is not how shared delusions work, that is not how any form of hereditary mental illness works, nor any form of mental illness in general. The only way to buy into really any part of the plot is to believe something supernatural is happening, which seems easy to do and without a doubt seems like the filmmaker’s intent if you don’t listen to the commentary.
It appears that one of two things are happening. This could be the actual ghost of Deborah Myers, returned to force a reunion between her children, which feels unlikely given that she was so distraught over Michael’s murderous nature that she took her own life. The much more likely possibility is that there is a psychic link between Laurie and Michael. As different as this movie is and as much as it stands on its own, it would not be the first in the franchise to establish a psychic link between Michael and the film’s protagonist, as that had also been the backbone of Halloween 5. One of the best things about Halloween II, and perhaps the area in which it most wears its European influence on its sleeve, is that there are no concrete answers to these questions.
Even though the movie needs that supernatural element, the psychological factors are no less interesting. In fact, they’re the movie’s greatest strength. In addition to Laurie’s PTSD, there are some insights into Michael as well. Laurie’s breakdowns are covered in every single scene, but when it comes to Michael, we are wisely given just a small taste. In one of the movie’s most interesting moments, Michael is assaulted by a group of local rednecks who want to keep him out of their field. They beat the holy Hell out of him and, very untrue to form, Michael just sits there and takes it, barely even moving a muscle. Crucially, he is unmasked for all of this. He digs out his mask and puts it on once they are done. Then and only then does he strike back, brutally killing each and every one of them. He won’t lift a finger to harm someone unless he’s wearing his mask. Given that this version of Michael has been obsessed with masks since childhood, that makes perfect sense.
As a fan of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, it is also hard not to love the fact that Laurie goes with her friends to a Halloween party and even after leaving because it proves too much for her — only for her to return home to find Annie dead — she spends the entire last third of the movie dressed as Magenta.
The theatrical cut and director’s cut of Halloween II have drastically different endings, with the director’s cut being the one that is far more readily available on home video. That version offers a concrete conclusion to Rob Zombie’s overall Halloween story. Loomis seeks a last minute redemption that gets him killed. Michael dies moments later. Laurie puts on his mask and is gunned down by the police, who open fire before Brackett can scream for them to stop.
As Laurie dies, she sees Michael’s vision of the white horse, walking toward her down a long white hallway, and smiles as she accepts her fate. In the theatrical version, Laurie is not shot. Her dying vision is recut to make it look as though she has been taken to Smith’s Grove, her smile suggesting she has finally succumbed to her brother’s madness. It is a far cry from the clear-cut finality of Zombie’s original ending, and makes it clear that the studio was, as always, thinking of the franchise’s future and where to take the story next.
Halloween II opened on August 28th, 2009, against The Final Destination, fourth in its respective franchise. Even though that film is seen by many as the weakest of its series, it absolutely trumped Halloween II at the box office. From a financial standpoint, the sequel was a far cry from the previous Labor Day record breaker. Dimension had practically begged Rob Zombie to return after the success of his remake, but lost all faith in his follow up as soon as he had actually begun to make it. Zombie adamantly did not want to make a third and they didn’t want him to, either.
The film fared no better critically, although Fangoria did offer notable praise for Zombie’s vision unburdened by the trappings of larger franchise lore. For most people, however, it would take years to come around, if they ever did. Only now has it truly begun to build a reputation as a daring, brave, and wholly original take on the mythology.
