10 Things You Learn Rewatching Halloween II (2009)

The film's first frame is a title card stating the definition of a white horse and its role in psychology. It reads;

"(They're) linked to instinct, purity, and the drive of the physical body to release powerful and emotional forces, like rage with ensuing chaos and destruction."

The fact that this is all made-up gibberish aside, this leads to Zombie linking Michael's desires to kill with him seeing visions of his mother and a white horse, asking him to create a "river of blood" for them so they can be reunited.

These visions grow increasingly strange throughout the film, especially once Laurie begins to have them as well. While there is something to be said for Zombie having the sheer chutzpah to try something this out-of-the-box as having a black-and-white dinner sequence with several pumpkin-headed demons eating Laurie alive as a crucified Michael Myers skeleton watches from above, it never quite works.

Zombie is swinging for something more avant-garde in these sequences, with some visuals clearly cribbed from the likes of Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the work of German Expressionism filmmakers like Robert Wiene, but he never commits to it enough to make a lasting impression. These gonzo visions only take up a few sparse minutes of the film's runtime. They are rushed through and edited to cut to ribbons, making it feel less like a bold statement and more like a surface-level aesthetic choice with cues taken from Zombie's music videos.

A film that devoted more time and consideration to these gonzo moments could have wound up being an arthouse horror film for the ages. Instead, Zombie just kind of brushes them aside, making it all feel less like an artistic excursion and more like a cheap excuse to keep his wife, Sheri Moon Zombie as Mother Myers, in the film.