[jb86]

I found this review that someone who saw the screening last night posted on another site and thought others may want a look. I decided to post a new thread as to not accidentally expose people to spoilers.

Here it is:

Let me start off by saying that even though I'm a horror movie fanatic its been maybe 15 years since I've seen the original HALLOWEEN 2. I remembered not liking it very much and even though I still consider the first in the series the best horror film ever made, nothing ever really drew me back to part two. So besides a few fuzzy memories of it, I went into the film last night being able to take a real unbiased look at a remake. Ill run it down and go through the film for anyone interested (All of it being spoilers, so if you don't want to know what happens in the movie stop reading HERE). Remember that I'm sure some of this will change by the time it hits theaters later this summer, especially after the focus group met and gave opinions after the film. Ill mention what we/they thought during the review, as well for those interested.

The movie opens with Laurie, bloody, walking down the street. Sheriff Brackett finds her and takes her to the hospital (I remember the hospital scene taking place towards the end of the original, correct me if I'm wrong but in any case its the beginning here.) The next 15 minutes, besides being WAY too loud, to the actual point where I had a bit of a headache afterwards are really fantastic and I had hoped would set the film up very nicely.

Zombie chooses to show us most of the gore in this one scene and for the rest of the film shows a lot of restraint in what he shows, letting our minds do most of the work which I really appreciated. Nowadays a lot of directors think blood & guts = scares which just isn't true.

We spend the next 20 minutes or so getting to know this new grunge Laurie (who now lives with her friend Annie and the Sheriff) and her friends who work at a book/record/indie type store and we learn they looove to party. The characters are really your standard issue, cookie cutter horror movie characters and you can pretty much pinpoint who will die and in what order. After this we see Loomis who has become a real media whore and a just an all around ****after the release of his book about Michael, which is doing a media tour for and just happens to be somewhere near Haddonfield, IL where they film a major late night talk show. Lucky him. Hes no longer a sympathetic character he is now just a famous diva who only cares about himself and his new career and let me say the focus group and the end was more than vocal about how much they hated this.

Interspersed through all of this are visions Michael has with his mother (the gorgeous Sherri Moon Zombie), a white horse and the younger version of himself guiding him to kill more so they can all finally be together. This might work in a different film but the problem here is that Laurie is having visions of them, too. The same visions. This is never explained or touched upon and even when she learns she's Michael's sister, if this was supposed to mean they were all connected in some way, it still doesn't make any sense. As much as I love her, Michael s mother has no business being in this movie at all. About 90% of the people in the focus group said they didn't like her scenes at all which weren?t many to begin with and I'm sure will now be sliced down pretty heavily.


As you guess right after we meet the characters, Michael starts killing again. Obviously he needs to get through people to get where hes going, but too many scenes were set up just to kill someone with no further advancement of a plot you could tell they desperately were trying to do something with - including scenes in a strip club stomping a mans face until its just meat, taking a naked stripper by the hair and smashing her into a mirror until she goes bye-bye, not to mention Michael killing a dog, gutting it and eating its insides. Let me just say that when I got the chance last night I let them know just how unnecessary that was and every single person there said that needed to be cut out immediately. I'm hoping it is because its something that I really should have walked on the film because of.

Soon after, Laurie discovers shes Michael s sister and all hell breaks loose. She does a LOT of screaming in this movie, almost to the laughable point which she does most of in the next few scenes. She tells her friends she needs to go out and PAR-TAY which we all know means Dead Friends so when Harley (the slut of the group) goes to a random man?s van, you don't have to be a genius to know what will happen. That scene is so predictable and so stupid pretty much everyone agreed afterwards it was just too much. When you can count down to when the attack will happen you know your movie has become too formulaic.

After this, Michael decides to visit the house of our dear friend Annie who until this point has had a decent amount of screen time cooped up in her house. When she opens that medicine cabinet you don?t have to be a rocket scientist to know what shell see when she closes it! Cut to a few minutes later, Laurie and her only living friend now, Maya (the beautiful Brea Grant who plays Daphne on HEROES) both completely drunk go back to Annie's house to crash but theres a big mess there so being as bright as they are they know something is wrong. Maya is the first to get hers, when she goes downstairs alone to call 911. Luckily Laurie escapes the house and runs into the woods (because when you're being chased by a killer you obviously run into the woods) where dagnabit, she gets caught by Michael and taken to an old shack. Now, she must have been in there for quite a while because we cut to Loomis in a swanky hotel (obviously in town) after he just finished his talk show appearance opposite Weird Al, where he sees the breaking news that Michael Myers (not the same Michael Myers from the Austin Powers films as Weird Al points out) is at it again. Loomis rushes to the site where poor Laurie is screaming again being held by her brother while we see Mommy and Little Michael watching her. Loomis informs her that nobody is holding her which we now see is true. Michael is on the other side of the barn and she?s just imagining she?s being held. The word ?HUH??? came to mind last night. Michael slices up ol? Loomis but I couldn't pay much attention to that because I was still trying to figure out how and WHY Michael and Laurie had been having the same visions of young Michael and the Mother the entire movie.

Anywho, long story short Laurie stabs Michael, and walks out of the barn wearing her Halloween costume (she was dressed as Magenta from ROCKY HORROR) and Michael s mask which elicited a LOT of laughter, seeing this little girl with this enormous mask on. We than cut to Laurie in a white room. Is she in a mental institution? I didn't think so, but others did. We see her look up and see Mrs. Myers walking towards her with the same white horse we've seen her with the whole movie. Laurie gives an evil little smile and the film ends.

So a good part of the discussion after was spent on that last scene. To me and a lot of other people it made no sense and was just, well, stupid. The fact that you think Laurie has turned bad for no reason at all didn't sit well with people because A) Its not who the character is and B) there is no reason for it. Shes had nothing happen to her to turn HER into a killer now.

A lot was also said afterward about the fact that we see a lot of Michaels face in this film. He has a very long beard and looks a lot like Zombie, himself which I wasn't sure if that was on purpose or not. But to me and most others there this isn't a good thing. Humanizing Michael doesn't make him more scary, it makes him completely unbelievable. If we see him as just a regular guy, how are we to believe? he can survive having his body bashed with baseball bats, bullets, etc and just get right back up again and keep killing. In the films current state, he is more like Jason, not Michael.

I'm sorry if this was a bit all over the place. I'm at work and doing a million things at the same time as trying to do this, but that's pretty much the gist of the film as it is now. I'll say again for as much as I detested the first one, this one was much much better. I'll even go to see it again to see what changes they've hopefully made to it

Link to where I got this from: http://broadwayworld.com/board/readm...dt=1&boardid=2

[MichaelJrdnMyrs]

Hmm. Some of my major fears appear realized.

Both of them having the SAME visions? Christ. Sounds like a remake of Halloween 5. And it's too bad the mom thing appears to be the utter shite it looked like in the trailer.

Hilarious that the focus group were completely disgusted by the dog eating. Which makes me not sure how I feel about this process. Seems like Rob needs someone to help reign him in, but this kind of tinkering doesn't really set my heart aflutter.

[Flash Over]

GOD DAMNIT I couldn't resist spoiling it >.<
I don't like the way the reviewer has detailed it, but it'll probably play out better once I see it on the big screen hopefully.

[Reobeem]

What you said about the ending reminds me of Halloween 4 where Jamie looked like she would be the next killer. From what you said it looks like a standard horror movie with the Halloween title tacked on. A few questions

1) was the skeleton with the Myers mask used, did it have a purpose

2) is Loomis dead, did he do anything heroic

3) was there a new Myers mask, what was it like

4) is Annie dead, did her dad do anything about it either way

[darkstanley]

focus groups are often complete morons who fuck up more movies than they help. but sadly the reviewer here seems to be of the intelligent variety, so i take him at his word that this movie needs serious reworking with only a little over a month to go before release. ugh, time to lower expectations. or as moe the bartender said" well it looks like suicide again for me" fuck.

Originally Posted by MichaelJrdnMyrs

Hmm. Some of my major fears appear realized.

Both of them having the SAME visions? Christ. Sounds like a remake of Halloween 5. And it's too bad the mom thing appears to be the utter shite it looked like in the trailer.

Hilarious that the focus group were completely disgusted by the dog eating. Which makes me not sure how I feel about this process. Seems like Rob needs someone to help reign him in, but this kind of tinkering doesn't really set my heart aflutter.

[Dead Mechanic]

Okay, I've read other reviews that's pretty similar and more detailed, so I guess this IS legit!

So the big surprise ending is Laurie stabbing Michael in the heart and wearing his mask out then smiling inside an asylum? Woah, sooo surprised!!! lol

[jb86]

Originally Posted by Reobeem

What you said about the ending reminds me of Halloween 4 where Jamie looked like she would be the next killer. From what you said it looks like a standard horror movie with the Halloween title tacked on. A few questions

1) was the skeleton with the Myers mask used, did it have a purpose

2) is Loomis dead, did he do anything heroic

3) was there a new Myers mask, what was it like

4) is Annie dead, did her dad do anything about it either way

Hi, I actually didn't see the movie I was just forwarding on someone else's review. So I can't answer your questions, but good news, if you click this link:

http://broadwayworld.com/board/readm...dt=1&boardid=2

The guy who did see the movie is answering questions so he may be able to help. You will probably need to register but that should take like 10 seconds.

[Masked Madman]

Well one we don't know this is real. Two I don't know what to think of the review because in his own words he "detested" the remake so he probably didn't go in there with an open mind. Saying a slasher movie is predictable is like saying an action movie will have guns in it. Everything is predictable in horror movies when you've seen enough of them, but that doesn't mean they can't be good.

[MichaelJrdnMyrs]

Originally Posted by ManeH2Myers

Okay, I've read other reviews that's pretty similar and more detailed, so I guess this IS legit!

So the big surprise ending is Laurie stabbing Michael in the heart and wearing his mask out then smiling inside an asylum? Woah, sooo surprised!!! lol

Where are you finding these other reviews?

Yeah, not so surprising. Heh, but I'm not surprised at that either. Unlike most people here, outside of the schizophrenia this outing has come across to me like a mishmash of parts of all the other sequels. Fresh enough, but not crazy original.

[Dead Mechanic]

Supposedly, there's a conversation from Deb & Young Mike that goes like this...

Quoted Text

Mom - I brought you something.
*puts a white plastic horse on the table*
Young Michael - It reminds me of a dream I had.
Mom - What was the dream?
Young Michael - You were with a white horse, walking away from me.
Mom - I'm not going anywhere, sweetie.
Young Michael - I wanna go home.
Mom - You will, soon and we'll be a family again.
Young Michael - *cries*
Mom - Hey, are you ticklish?
Young Michael - No.
Mom - I bet you are.
*tickles Michael*
Young Michael - *laughs*
Mom - There's the face I wanna see.

[MichaelJrdnMyrs]

Originally Posted by ManeH2Myers

Supposedly, there's a conversation from Deb & Young Mike that goes like this...

Looks very legit as well.

Glad there's at least an explanation for that deal. The dialogue is sweet as always. Here's hoping that the actual lines are a little better [and not worse, ha].

[onegoodma$$]

sounds like about what I expected - given how bad RZH was, i have very low hopes

[GrimOctober]

I didn't read all of it! Go me.

[Flash Over]

My friend has given me details on the first 15 minutes (Excuse the typos xD)

Quoted Text

It starts with a flash back of Michael's Mother visiting young MM at the hospital. She gives him a toy horse which MM says reminds him of a dream he had that she rode up on a white horse to take him away. She says she wish she could take him away from here. ......than it cuts to the title 15 years later Halloween night and you see Laurie walking the streets with a gun. Very cool and spooky. Sheriff Barrack finds her (u see this in preview) and takes her to the hospital. It goes back to the crime scene and you see them carry out bodies - they load MM into a van and take him away. Cuts back to the hospital and the Doctors are working on Laurie - very gross and graphic here!!!!! Than back to the van which crashes into a cow. (In preview as well). MM comes to - gets free and kills one of the drivers cuts his head off. He than sees his mother's ghost with the white horse far down the road and he walks off. Than u are back at the Hospital and Laurie wakes up and leaves her room - finds Annie all cut up and swen together. She cries and begs her to stay alive and don't leave her. A nurse finds laurie and starts to take her back to her room - a 911 comes in and the nurse has to leave Laurie. Nurse runs off. Hospital seens very empty Laurie tries to find another nurse to get pain meds that's when the nurse comes back in face cut up - screams and falls to the floor. Laurie knows MM is there and runs. MM steps into the frame stabs the nurse A LOT of times and heads after Laurie. Chases her into the stare well into a basement and then outside. This is the only time the movie is like the original Halloween 2. He chances her to a little outpost guard station. U see all this in preview. Her kills the guard "Buddy" and starts to trash the station where Laurie is hinding under a desk. He gets in lefts the axe to kill her and Laurie wakes up.........it jumps to 2 years later and four days before Halloween.

[lopli]

What a load of shit. This is gonna suck. I have no interest in seeing this. After the first few paragraphs it sounds worse than Resurrection. Laurie becoming the killer? Come on, really? This is so predicatable, not surprising at all.