Review of Halloween II (1981) by Skyler I — 28 Jun 2011

I like the story in this movie. They introduce more elements with a bit of an explanation of the events of the first one. But this movie spends hardly any of its time on the main character Laurie until an hour in. It spends most of the first 60 minutes following around random characters who are obviously only there to be killed off.

And in this one, they threw out the method to the death scenes that made the original one good. They spend very little of their focus on the build-up to a kill. The build-up was there, but it was half-assed. Instead they focused more on the murder itself. They just try to have interesting and creative kills like a needle in an eye or burning someone to death in a hot tub. In fact, at times, the directing itself was more funny than scary.

Aside from that, most of the movie seemed like a pretty good continuation of the first one. They finnish up the story and you get what you really need out of it. Most of the filming made it feel like we were watching the same movie. By that, I don't mean it was a repeat of the original, but that it was like watching the second half to a three hour movie. Although, if I had a complaint about the filming, it would be that it seemed to be mimicking the style of the first one without getting it quite right. They film from Michael Myers' POV too often. But it's subtle and can be overlooked.

There is much room for improvement in this movie, but it turned out to be alright. I think that had John Carpenter directed this one, it could have been much better. I think that with that, it would have still had some weak elements, but not as many.