Rob Zombie messed around with horror movie royalty and seemed to pull it off. The 07 hit remake of the original Halloween franchise surely irked some die hard Halloween movie fanatics, but it was largely successful by horror movie standards. The movie was so successful that Zombie is now releasing the sequel to his Halloween movie. The movie, Halloween II, is set to start in theaters on August 28th.
Zombie, who is known for pushing the envelope was actually rather restrained in his creative vision for the first Halloween. Though the movie certainly strayed from the original John Carpenter classic, Halloween still kept pretty close to the original. The story in the original focused largely on the return of Michael Myers to Haddonfield, rather than the back story of Myers. Zombie’s movie actually spent a large majority of the film giving the back story of how Myers became the mindless killing machine that he became.
Halloween II looks to be fairly similar in that the movie is put into two parts. The first part seems to be about the continuation of part 1, and the chase at the hospital. In the original part II of Halloween, Laurie Strode is taken to the hospital. The entire movie is Myers chasing her through the hospital. Many horror enthusiasts find Part II to be the crown jewel of the series due to the chase scenes.
It is hard to tell from the synopsis and trailers, but it appears that Zombie is only spending time in the hospital as a nod to the first flick. It appears that he brings back Myer’s mother, played by his wife. Maybe it is done in dream sequence, or maybe Zombie is finally pushing that envelope that he was expected to push in the first movie. Whatever the case, it appears that Halloween II will be vastly different from the original Halloween II.
While Zombie did a good job of keeping the tone in the first movie, the trailers look to be taking the franchise in a very different direction. That may just be the trailers, and it might end up that Zombie is remaking the entire story line. It will be interesting to see how move fanatics respond to this newest Zombie offering.
Halloween II has some mighty large shoes to fill, and it will have to really maintain the spook factor for it to work. Halloween has always been about the spookiness of Myers, and the franchise was built on that premise. Look for Romow.com to review the movie after the release date to see how it comes out.
