10 Things You Learn Rewatching Halloween II (2009)

Rob Zombie's Halloween II is nothing if not filled with burgeoning bold ideas. But by far the biggest risk Zombie takes is in depicting Michael as a savage homeless man with a big bushy beard who spends entire chunks of the film walking around in broad daylight with his mask off.

While this is definitely different, it doesn't really work. Not only does this not feel like the Michael Myers of the original films; it doesn't even feel like the Michael Myers of the previous film. He spent his entire time in the sanitarium forging masks out of paper mache to hide his face, and then once he's free he just suddenly doesn't want to wear one anymore?

It's a strange character choice that also impacts the narrative of the film as a whole. Because he's just this wanderer, Zombie's script has to practically break its own back bending over backward attempting to explain why he's coming back for Laurie this Halloween and in giving him things to do until he finds her in the third act.

The result is a messy narrative structure that just kind of violently zip-zags back and forth between Michael's random killings, Laurie's PTSD, and Loomis' book tour.

But by far the worst thing this movie does to Michael is in the finale. In the finale of the director's cut, adult Michael Myers speaks for the first time in the entirety of the series and it's such a profoundly idiotic and pointless line, it'll leave you wishing they had sewn his mouth shut instead.

It's ferociously idiotic and just puts the cherry on top of the truly terrible final few minutes of this film's runtime.