10 Things You Learn Rewatching Halloween II (2009)

After a lackluster debut in Zombie's previous Halloween film, Scout Taylor-Compton returns to the role of Laurie Strode in this film. To her credit, it is a slight improvement.

Part of this comes is thanks to the fact that Taylor-Compton is allowed to take the character in a completely different direction than Jamie Lee Curtis ever did, so she is finally able to escape her shadow and any unwanted comparisons. The other huge factor that plays into the improvement is the fact that she simply gets more screentime here to develop her character. Where Zombie's remake didn't even introduce her until just before the third act, Laurie is the protagonist of this film from the get-go.

Having said all of that, Zombie still doesn't seem to really know what to do with Laurie. The 'good girl' aspects of the character clearly never appealed to Zombie, so here he turns into a deeply troubled character who also happens to bear a striking resemblance to Rob Zombie himself, dreds and all. But this doesn't make her character any more compelling. In fact, it just generalizes her and makes her even less interesting because now she fits squarely into Zombie's aesthetic wheelhouse, alongside everything else in the film.

Where Laurie's arc really falls apart is anytime Taylor-Compton is tasked with responding to the heavier material. Rather than giving her anything of substance to actually work with, Zombie's script just has her say "f*ck" over and over again, sometimes for full minutes of screentime at a time. Notably, this results in laughable responses to key moments of narrative heft, like when Laurie finds out she's actually Angel Myers.

The result of all of this is a performance and protagonist that is severely undercooked and desperately underserved.