Tracing Rob Zombie's Decade Spent Doing the Devil's Work: 'Halloween II'

Today we’re going to explore Rob Zombie‘s continuation of his Halloween storyline in Halloween II (2009). Surprisingly, this was a film he was initially uninterested in making, but found himself inexorably drawn to in the interests of proprietorial authorship of the characters he felt he created. In my opinion, it’s his strongest film, both visually and thematically. Diverging from the bulk of genre fare, it pointedly addresses the impact violence has in all its heart wrenching agony.

Halloween II

H2 is a visually astonishing film. It’s also unique in its genre for how it focuses on the lasting effects of violence, both on those it’s directly perpetrated against and in the community they’re a part of. How did you balance the style with the substance?

Rob Zombie (RZ): That was a tricky one, I didn’t want to make Halloween II for a long time. I actually passed on making Halloween II. I felt I had enough Michael Myers and didn’t want to deal with pre-existing properties again. I was just done with it. But then the director and writers they had fell out and it was lingering for a long time. In that downtime I rediscovered a love for the characters I felt I had created. Sure they shared the same names as the John Carpenter characters, but the reality I had created was very different. I didn’t want someone coming in and messing with them, so I wondered, “How do I pick it up the next day and make it real?”

I thought of several ways Laurie Strode could go, and I figured she’s become a fucked-up, shitty, rebellious teen as a lot of teens do who’ve had a horrible incident in their lives. It’s very common. I don’t just sit around and think of things, I usually research them.

I remember doing “Loveline” with Dr. Drew and telling him what I was going to do with her character and he said, “That’s very accurate. That’s exactly the sort of thing that happens with these types of kids.” I’m not just flippant when I do these things. I figured she’s going to go through her punk-rock, fuck everybody phase because her perfect suburban life has been destroyed. She wakes up the next day, her parents are gone, her friends are gone and she’s at the center of these murders. She’s not going to hold it together and just be a little shaky, looking at the shadows in the corner and seeing Michael Myers reflection in the windows. That would be so contrived.

As far as the Michael character, I don’t want him to just be a ghost floating around. What’s his reality? How do you take a character who doesn’t speak and make him anything other than just the boogeyman? Which is perfectly fine to do that, but it’s been done so many times I didn’t want to go down that road.

I didn’t want to make Halloween II

…I felt I had enough Michael Myers and didn’t want to deal with pre-existing properties again.

I was just done with it.

I found a balance between the psychotic imagery representing how Michael’s mind worked and the damaged girl grounded in reality. Halloween II was my favorite of the two also. I like the first Halloween, but I like the first half, because I feel like that was my world. Then when I was recreating Carpenter’s beats, I mean, it works, but it doesn’t mean anything to me because it is what it is. Halloween II felt 1,000% different.

Brad Dourif is magnificent in the film. I legitimately believe his work in it is Oscar caliber. His scene when he discovers his daughter Annie has been murdered is heart wrenching. Again we see the focus on the emotional fallout of violence, not just the titillation of the act. How important was this theme to you in H2?

RZ: Very important. I mean, all the characters are damaged. Brad Dourif’s character feels responsible in some way, Malcolm feels responsible, but he’s totally shitting it, pretending like it hasn’t happened. Laurie’s scars are internal, Annie’s scars are internal and external. Laurie is out there, running around crazy and Annie is basically agoraphobic and incapable of leaving the house.

I do think Brad Dourif’s performance is phenomenal. On the first Halloween, he didn’t do a lot and we didn’t really connect as two people. But on the second film, we really connected. He really found his groove and brought the Brad Dourif we love from Cuckoo’s Nest or Heaven’s Gate. The funny thing is, going back to what we said earlier, when I first screened Halloween II for the test crowd, everyone laughed when he came in the bathroom and found Annie. I remember that being such a confusing moment and thinking, “This is fucking ridiculous!” I feel kids have been so preprogrammed that every time there’s violence in one of the movies, their response is to laugh. It’s baffling to me.

I feel kids have been so preprogrammed that every time there’s violence in one of the movies, their response is to laugh.

It’s baffling to me.

I’m a father and when I saw that scene it affected me quite powerfully. I thought it was one of the most potent moments in the film and indeed in any horror film. It’s one of the few films in the genre that forces the audience to contemplate what it means to lose a child, usually it’s presented in such a callous way.

As someone for whom the original Halloween II was an integral building block to his genre fandom, I consider Zombie’s H2 to be a modern masterpiece. I’ve written (HERE) and spoken at length (HERE) around the web as to how brilliantly transgressive it is and how I consider it to be Zombie’s best film. But in the hearts and minds of most critics and fans, his entries into the franchise are reviled and treated with huffy disregard. They are certainly abrasive films that diverge from the template of their hallowed source material, but they are vibrantly alive and defiantly unique. As always, Zombie made films that were undeniably his, regardless of the potential fallout from critics, the general public, even his fan base.

Join me here tomorrow as we bring the Rob Zombie retro to a close. We’ll be concluding with exploring his latest effort, The Lords of Salem, a fascinating, bizarre film that continues on the same experimental bent of H2.