A reader attended the HALLOWEEN 2 premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater... and....

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. HALLOWEEN 2 has begun screening and I've seen tidbits of reactions from horror fans and even cast members (Danielle Harris on Twitter said: "omfg. h2 was amazing. you guys are gonn shit"). The non-cast reaction seems to be mixed, some saying it's better than the first (god, I hope so) and others just upset at Rob Zombie. A reader attended the premiere and has some thoughts on the movie. Double Down falls on the negative side of the mixed coin, but honestly... reading his review it's pretty clear that Zombie has separated himself from the previous franchise in all but name and characters, which isn't ideal but a rather large step towards the light from the abysmal first movie. I'm curious and look forward to seeing the flick, whatever it turns out to be. Now here's Double Down! Enjoy, but be warned of some plot spoilerage!

Hi guys! I was at the Halloween 2 premiere at Grauman's Chinese last night. Here's what's left of the film's body - Oh Rob Zombie. What are we going to do with you? I’ll start with this – I like Zombie - personally. I think he comes off as a nice, humble guy in interviews and a real film buff who obviously adores his horror and genre movies. He’s a fanboy, just like the rest of us. But what I think Zombie has proven over 4 films, with Halloween 2 being that final ugly nail in the coffin, is that fanboys don’t necessarily make good directors. Zombie was quoted in an AICN interview as saying this film is a different animal and really breaks from the Halloween franchise we’ve come to know in the last 25+ years. Well he’s spot on about that. The only thing that reminded me of Halloween in his sequel was the mask and the character names like Laurie and Loomis. What this boils down to for me is a standard modern slasher film. It is brutal and ugly and obnoxious. The first ten minutes are undoubtedly the best and most promising. It begins at the sanitarium in which young Michael Myers is housed. His mother comes to visit and he tells her of a dream he had of her in a white dress standing next to a white horse. This motif plays out through the rest of the film – as you can tell from the trailers Mommy Myers and her trusty steed along with a young Michael in the clown costume visit him in dreams throughout the plot, acting as his motivation and his guide on his mass murdering rampage to find his sister. I’ll admit the appearance of Sheri Moon as the white apparition doesn’t come off nearly as corny in the film as it does in the trailer, but it does come off as a pointless exercise in an attempt to be more cerebral and artistic. It seems as though Zombie tried to balance between surreal/artful horror and slasher-esque brutality but failed in both capacities as neither attempt is fresh or impacting. After visiting mini-Michael in the nut house we cut to where we left off from the first film - Laurie, bloody and beat, limping down the street. She’s discovered by Sheriff Lee Brackett (played pitch-perfectly by Brad Dourif as the only likeable character in the film). She’s taken to the hospital along with the other victims from the house finale of Halloween. This is arguably the goriest section of the film as we see doctors operating on Laurie and her friend Annie Brackett. Rotting finger nails are removed, lacerations are prodded and dressed, and blood is everywhere. It’s uncomfortable and elicited the largest, most honest reaction from the crowd for the entirety of the film. We inter-cut to the house where investigators are cleaning up the scene where it takes 6 men to lift Michael’s body onto the stretcher, he is presumed dead (if only they knew the rules of horror!). As a pair of EMT’s drive Myers’ body down a dark country road the typical Zombie hillbilly dialogue comes roaring through (just a few minutes in, I guess I couldn’t have asked for anything less) as one of the men starts babbling about having sex with a corpse because “one of those girls looked hot” while the other scoffs at him and tells him to “shut the fuck up”. Something very sudden happens during this conversation which I won’t spoil (and may I say it’s one of the few well done scenes in the film) but it results in Michael waking up and revealing our first kill which sets the precedent for most of the kills in this sequel. It is brutal and unf orgiving and excessive; as if Michael is possessed by rage. In a small nod to the original 1981 sequel there is a bloody hospital sequence in which Michael wreaks a predictable amount of havoc. I’d say the film i s most effective and terrifying at this point. Zombie comes in guns a blazin’ in these first 10-15 minutes and as a viewer I’m wondering where he’ll go from here? How can it get more intense or gory than this opening? Well...it doesn’t. A cliché which I’ve grown to hate in my movie-going years occurs directly after the hospital scene and it continues a good handful of times afterward. Let the obnoxious begin. We’re then taken to Laurie almost one year after the incident. She’s having horrible nightmares about Michael and she’s in therapy (with a nice cameo from our favorite Lois Lane – Margot Kidder). We see the obligatory shot of her staring into her medicine cabinet mirror to tell us that she has issues - why does Hollywood always push this shot on us?&nbs p; I don’t do this when I’m depressed. It bugs me almost as much as people pep-talking themselves up in front of a bathroom mirror. No one does that! The bathroom is decorated like the grungy bathroom of a rock n roll club. Oh and Laurie looks like a Hot Topic employee now. Why does everything in Zombie’s films always have to look dirty and unappealing? It’s either filthy bathrooms or cluttered bedrooms to public places looking like a sideshow act. In a strip club segment the club is lit like a funhouse, red and green lights illuminating the grimy walls. In a later Halloween party scene everything looks like a gothic rave. It’s an aesthetic which equals his sense of violence, it’s off-putting. I’m not sure what Zombie’s bathrooms at home look like, but if they look like these Whiskey-a-Go-Go replicas he seems to put in his films remind me never to accept an invitation to his dinner parties. That takes us to the equally ugly camera work. Zombie uses a slew of modern kill-me-now cam tricks such as shaky cam, out of focus shots, rain on the lens, or filters and grain at the moments in which most of us would like to see clearly like, you know….the kills. They all suffer from the same problem. Aside from a lack of creativity, they are shot close up on faces while the stabbings are out of frame and, as is custom with modern horror directors, shaking the camera and half-second edits equals intensity instead of just capturing that mood on camera. There was one decent kill for me in the whole film, and Myers ranks up a body count of at least 10. The rest are stabbings with a knife or axe. He also seems quite fond of throwing people around and knocking them against things until they’re faces are unrecognizable, which gets old fast. I like Tyler Mane as Myers. He’s a gigantic statue with a pulse and homicidal tendencies. He’s definitely foreboding but he hasn’t been given anything great to work with in these new chapters. There’s no nuance or creativity there for him to play with. We learn that Michael has been hiding out in the forest for a year, living in a shack and growing his mountain man beard out. Yes, when we meet Michael again they show his face, and he looks EXACTLY like Rob Zombie with long hair and a big beard. It’s distracting and silly. Once he kills he puts the mask back on as to remind us that we’re watching a Halloween movie and not a roided-out Rob Zombie look-a-like slasher flick. Well you may say, ok, doesn’t Malcom McDowell save this production?! He brings credibility to the fold right? Normally speaking, yes, yes he would. Here I really see no reason why he’s in the sequel. For me he has no impact on the plot and for 90% of his role he’s off on a tangential story. Of course his story is a comment on those who make profit from tragedies, but do we care? It’s an amusing break from the deadly serious main plot yet that’s all Loomis’ story offers this time around. Poor, poor Malcom. Hey at least you’re utilized on Entourage buddy! Loomis comes off as an asshole in this chapter and frankly, so does most of the cast. The three main girls especially come off as the most annoying, loud, obnoxious college “alternative” girls and I honestly couldn’t wait for Michael to slash them to bits. Again, it’s poor horror film tradition when you’re rooting for your main character to get killed if only to stop her from incessantly whining, crying and screaming, which is all Laurie, played by Scott Taylor-Compton, does in H2. If you’re wondering about John Carpenter’s original score then just show up for the end credits, because that’s the only time you’ll hear it. Tyler Bates’ score for H2 is the same droning drivel we’ve been served with every other horror movie of the week. Predictable orchestra hits are turned up to 11 upon knifings and trembling strings cue the audience that something scary is about to occur and it is indeed your turn to scream or jump. With all the horror flicks Zombie has consumed over the years you’d think he would learn about atmosphere, suspense, and making the most out of a kill. This sequel and Carpenter’s vision of Halloween are opposite in everything from tone, to acting, to cinematography. In other words, everything I loved about the franchise, the tone Carpenter set, is absent in Zombie’s world. If he does make another sequel I implore him to stop using the Halloween name and ditch the mask altogether. Just make your own brand of throwaway slasher flicks. In fact, please just stop making horror movies. This is your 4th try and you still can’t give us anything memorable or of impact. Isn’t it time for a White Zombie reunion? Please check out more at soundwavescinema.com Thanks! Double Down