15 Awesome Horror Movies With Lower Critical Scores Than They Deserve
13. Halloween II (1981)
Rotten Tomatoes: 28% (Average Score: 4.58/10)
Metacritic: 40
Halloween II is one of the better slasher films out there and the third-best Halloween film (with the 2018 sequel being the second-best), so the negative reviews are another example of critics far too harsh on a perfectly solid horror film.
Perhaps critics were, rightly, irritated with the way in which this sequel stripped away the atmosphere and mystery of the original and dialled up the gore, but just because it somewhat misunderstands what made the original work that doesn't mean it isn't a good thriller in its own right.
It's pretty suspenseful, the directing is solid, Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis are great and although this did hint at the excessive gore and general silliness that would plague the later sequels, these issues aren't nearly as in evidence here as they were later in the series.
As slasher sequels go, this isn't bad at all and it deserved reviews which actually reflected this.