Halloween II brings boring gore

Halloween, the holiday, is still more than two months away, but in theaters since Friday, Aug. 28th is Halloween II, bringing Halloween early this year.

While Rob Zombie's take on the first Halloween was largely successful, maybe he should've stopped while he was ahead. Halloween II was a disappointing montage of blood and gore with a noticeable lack of actual horror.

Zombie, director of House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, is back with Halloween II, a sequel film to Halloween (2007), which he wrote, directed and produced. Most of the actors reprise their roles from the previous film, the exception being Chase Wright Vanek in the role of young Michael Myers, in place of Daeg Faerch.

The film starts where the previous film ended, immediately after Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor Compton) repeatedly shoots Michael Myers (Tyler Mane), even after he shows her a picture of himself as a child with an infant Laurie in his arms, proving their relation.

A year later Laurie, who firmly believes Michael is dead, lives with Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif) and is still haunted by nightmares of Michael and also of her reenacting his gruesome murder scenes unto others. I was surprised that Laurie didn't connect the dots between the nightmares and the fact that they weren't able to recover the dead body of Michael Myers in order to retract her na've belief that he is dead. I guess dense female lead characters are the name of the game for the horror genre.

Throughout the movie, as Laurie leads her relatively normal life, the audience is brought along as Michael stalks his youngest sister all the way back to Haddonfield, Illinois, not a facet that has changed much over the Halloween franchise. Maybe there is a good reason for that, considering the only real suspense I felt were the moments leading up to Michael's capture of Laurie.

Along the way Michael, egged on by the ghost of his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie), her white horse and his younger self, leaves gruesomely murdered bodies in his wake, not once meeting a person he couldn't find a creative way to murder. It seemed as if every person met his or her end through various, yet excessively repetitive, patterns of knife stabbing. When paired with the juicy wet sounds of their blood and innards, the death scenes simultaneously bored me and made me want to throw up my coke and peanut M&Ms.

After a secret is revealed to the world via a book penned by Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), Laurie goes a little crazy, coincidentally on Halloween night, and ends up being abducted by Michael. The concluding situation is Laurie poised above a fallen Michael with his infamous knife ready to kill him, again. This ending just drives my point home that maybe Rob Zombie should've stopped at his first Halloween remake like he said he would, because this sequel just felt like a rehashing of the first film.

All in all, Halloween II doesn't work because there is too much gore, but not enough suspense, stealing away from its credibility as an actual horror film. The story line has potential, but the carnage, paired with the shaky camera movements, makes it difficult to watch. Zombie tries to make the film deeper than it actually is with stabs, no pun intended, of symbolism, such as visions of his mother in all white equating to his crippling psychological trauma.

If you are looking for an intensely bloody way to spend almost two hours, there is a bit of a twist in an otherwise typical Halloween ending, but you could probably do a lot better.