HALLOWEEN 2 – Over the years I’ve noticed a general eye-rolling tendency at the mention of Rob Zombie’s ‘Halloween 2’, a film which left me feeling slightly enthralled when I saw it around the time of its release. Whenever anyone dissed it, I’d hear myself start to mutter… “Philistines – you just can’t imagine that Michael Myers can exist in a film with a ghostly horse.”… grrr. I never bothered to watch it again because I’m smug like that. OK, 13 years later and I’m coming clean – I had myself a rewatch the other day and, well, I didn’t like it. The movie I’d been carrying around in my head since 2009 was like an MTV video-esque dream of dry ice, slow motion and ghostly horses, full of carnivalesque slaying and nightmare surrealism. That movie, the one in my head, turns out to be a much better remake than RZ’s… what had I been taking all those years ago? The truth is, ‘Halloween 2’ de facto is basically just a fairly run-of-the-mill 2000s slasher flick with a few thrown-in weird bits, some of which involve a ghostly horse. The climbdown sucks, but now I know. Taken as it is it’s not that bad, but then neither was the first RZ 'Halloween' remake from 2007, a film I often profess to hate. In its favour are a few obvious pros, such as a bit of gore, a generally overcast and gloomy atmosphere, and, although it’s not around all that often, a ghostly horse. But when I put it on the other day, even little things rankled – baggy pacing, annoying Malcolm McDowell, characters who sounded like they should be hanging out in an indie record store in 1993 as opposed to gearing up to getting slashed in 2009. I can see the seeds that got me worked up and fascinated all those years ago, but they’d grown something in my mind that wasn’t there on the screen. This is always a bit of a worry for me, incidentally – how many films, living inside us as cherished memories, would survive the purge of a re-viewing? That’s one reason why I rarely watch films more than once. My loss either way, ultimately. Anyway – ‘Halloween 2’ by Rob Zombie – should’ve had more ghostly horse in it (but I reckon it’s still better than ‘The Munsters’, a film I’m very unlikely to ever watch).
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