3rd on a list of all the Halloween films. Really? I wholeheartedly disagree. Rob Zombie’s films didn’t even feel like Halloween films. I would rather watch 5 and 6 ten times each than RZ H2 ever again.
I actually don’t think its all that bad. Its not great by any means but I try not to compare it to the “traditional” michael myers and enjoy it for what it is. And I must admit its higher on my list than h20 or resurrection
Close to perfect my a**. Whoever wrote this article clearly knows nothing about the original Halloween. There are certain things I like about RZ’s Halloween, but there are a ton of flaws. I also think his first Halloween was way better than his second. I wouldn’t have hated Halloween 2 as much as I do if Zombie didn’t bring his awful actress of a wife into the story line as a ghost/“angel”.
Time magazine sucks. Always has, always will. They don’t know politics and clearly don’t know Halloween
There are just certain things (like sequels or remakes/reboots) that can’t be helped but be compared to their originals. Rob Zombie’s style of filmmaking IMO just doesn’t work with what Michael Myers is supposed to embody and ultimately lacks the mystique which the original and the new film embody so much. I’d make the same argument for Halloween III except that wasn’t a film with Michael Myers and was only judged the way it was since it had ‘Halloween’ in its title. Other than that it is a pretty decent movie.
The sequels themselves were sub par, due to bad writing, rushed production, or a simple shameless cash grabs. Michael Myers was meant to be a force of a nature though, with no rhyme nor reason for doing what he does. Not everything in life can be explained and for some things that is the most terrifying aspect. Halloween II (1981) gave Michael a reason to kill and that started the downward spiral leading to him going after his niece since she was of his bloodline and thorn storyline trying to further explain things which only made Michael less terrifying and more of a victim in a sense. Then to H20 took it back to basics which wasn’t horrible, though the Scream undertone didn’t help, but shouldn’t have been followed with Resurrection, the cash grab movie where they ran out of good ideas so went a more comedic route and by that time Michael Myers wasn’t terrifying anymore.
I even had a little girl one Halloween hug me in my Michael costume. That’s when you know there’s a problem.
I’ll give Zombie this: he tried to make Michael scary again but he failed by giving him a backstory. Too much explanation. The new film is a direct sequel to the original, Laurie isn’t his sister anymore, and Michael is back to being a killer without motive. He doesn’t just go after Laurie in this new one. He kills randomly. Why? Who knows. We’re not supposed to and that’s the way I like it. 
I always felt like trying so hard to give Myers a backstory took away from the mystique and thus really took away a lot of the fear that his sociopathic tendencies had in the original. I will say that I recently watched the Producer’s Cut and enjoyed it more than I did when I saw it in theaters. I can see why some love it and why some hate it, but humanizing Mikey just wasn’t for me. That being said, I don’t agree with the ranking at all. I personally have the first 3 movies bring the best 3 movies even though Myers isn’t in Season of the Witch. 4 wasn’t perfect but I loved the fall atmosphere and would place that, H20 and 6 all above RZH2
I guess we’re still comparing the RZ ones to the original franchise…
Blame TIME. It’s supposed to heal all wounds but opens up old ones too lol.
Rob Zombie’s Films are fine with me, god forbid we get a different type of Halloween movie 
the only bad thing about them was yes his wife being in the second with the white horse.
I don’t hate them but their vibe (grunge, gothic, etc.) doesn’t really work well for Michael Myers 
IMO he made it more realistic, showing that Michael was actually wandering around hiding out in old barns going
Through people’s garbage to eat, not wearing his mask all the time. Seems better than having him get kidnapped by a cult or getting taken in by some hermit
He made him into a real person and not some supernatural terminator.
That’s everything that takes away the scariness and mystic from Michael Myers. We don’t need to see everything Michael does in his down time…did you want to see him going to the restroom also?
I saw this too, and OP, I wholeheartedly agree, couldn’t have said it better myself. Rob Zombie’s H2 is easily my least favorite in the series. In fact, I don’t even consider it a “Halloween” movie. Call it “he was just trying something new” all you want, but that wasn’t Michael Myers, that wasn’t Dr. Loomis, and that wasn’t Laurie Strode.
Zombie actually made a better movie, but purists disagree as always…
Let’s watch him try and fail to kill a little girl for some
More movies that will add some mystique
I wouldn’t call them better than the first two but they are so much better than the very mediocre sequels like 4 5 6 and on
Sure I agree with you, my favorite is still H1 78 for many reasons, but not because it’s a better movie, let’s face it, not even Carpenter expected H1 to be a succesful movie and didn’t put much effort on it, at the end of the road it was a cheap low budget indie movie with lack of plot and logic, it worked very well back in 78 cause it gave birth to a new horror genre, and created one of the most iconic killer in the pop colture, horror movies in the past didn’t really need much to entertain, just show some random blood and gore and killings to shock people new to the genre, but honestly I find the movie boring if you watch it now, I still like it cause I love the actors, the mask is my favorite, Nick Castle had the perfect look for the Shape, and I love how the 70s were, but the movie nowdays is a little meh, and aged pretty badly.
Nowdays horror movies don’t scare so much anymore, so in order to make horror movies entertaining they definitely need a solid plot that makes sense, and Zombie succeded in this, he took the character, gave him a solid background and a plot that finally makes sense, so to that extent he enhanced our hero, and also gave him a much more threatening look with Tyler Mane (I still prefer the look of Castle but in a modern revisitation an over 2 meters Myers makes sense to me, more intimitating and harder to stop).
So Zombie generally and technically speaking made a fresher version of Myers with the background he deserved, c’mon let’s not say again that the Shape was scary cause little is known about him, The Shape is not scary anymore, even with little or no background, he’s become a sort of cool antihero that any of us would symphathise with, he’s too popular now to be scary anymore, and in order to make Myers interesting again a good background was the right way to go, and sure Zombie gave him a much better detailed story than what we see in 4,5 and 6, also the RZ mask is way way better than what we see in the sequels (including H2 mask but that’s just my opinion).
So IMO Zombie really nailed it, he managed to reinvent the character with a much more entertaining story plot making MM threatening again and well adapted to the present days/tastes without going too far from the basic storyline (at least for the Beginning part), I consider Tyler Mane’s mask the best since H1, and I also liked that he pitched in plenty of his own, he’s a Metalhead so to me it was normal to see references to certain bands, songs and long haired guys.
One of the most underappreciated horror films ever. A lot of Halloween fans suffer from a complex where 2 things happen:
-
They fail to acknowledge that this was a reboot and it went in a different direction which was a very creative, well done and artistic one. They refuse to acknowledge its accomplishments because for some reason they wanted a reboot to be just like the movies they are modeled after, and I never understood that logic. Why would you want a carbon copy?
-
They make this ABSURD notion that RZH2 “ruined the franchise.” To watch H5 and especially H6 and Resurrection and think it was THIS film that ruined the franchise? It’s beyond absurd. The franchise has very few good films in it. People are just so stuck to traditions (even bad ones) that stubbornness and anger blind them from seeing something different.
Does the film have faults? Sure. But at the very least the filmmaking was very well done. To rank it 3rd in a franchise full of bad films is very fair.
And as the poster above me said, it also reinvented the character and tried going the other route (backstory rather than mystery) this time to an effective degree. It doesn’t have to be one way or the other. At least RZ made the reboot its own franchise and did something different with it. If there had been no Halloween films before it I feel confident it would have been much more well-received.
The movie was actually haunting, disturbing and legitimately scary much throughout. How many other Halloween movies actually accompished that? Sorry, but “rednecks” alone don’t negate that.
The stubborn purist mentality always amuses me.
And BTW, attacking Time over “politics” (pointing out common sense, really) is laughable and has nothing to do with the subject. But people love their logical fallacies. This topic usually brings out the cavemen on this site.