Halloween II (2009)

Two years removed from "Halloween" (2007) and no longer burdened by the need to pay tribute to John Carpenter (although he did offer him a cameo), Rob Zombie was able to properly unleash himself (despite a bit of studio interference, mind you) on the franchise and offer up not only the most visually unique movie of the series but also the best since Carpenter's comparatively sedate original. Needless to say, many a "Halloween" fan was miffed, but for devotees of Zombie's hellbilly style of cinema this should be a good time. Oh and forget what Jamie Lee Curtis said while promoting David Gordon Green's trilogy of Myers movies, THIS is the one all about trauma, what with its grungy and damaged Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton, doing a bunch of stuff her more celebrated predecessor couldn't do), hermitized Annie Brackett (Danielle Harris in the performance of her career), and Diva Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), to whom the concept of ethics means little after cashing in on his maniacal patient's prior killing spree. It turns out that Michael himself survived a shot to the face in the finale of "Halloween", suffering some pretty bad mask damage but living to dispatch (with the help of an errant cow) a couple of coroner employees and become Hobo Myers, wandering farms and backroads until he decides to go after his poor baby sister again, as instructed by the ghostly vision of his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) and his own younger self.

Some have said "Halloween II" is a mess, and it's hard to deny the way it hearkens back to the disjointedness of Zombie's debut movie (2003's brilliant "House of 1000 Corpses") but I'm down for that kind of stuff and the story isn't half as difficult to decipher as all that Thorn cult gibberish in "Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers." What's important is that the character work is great and the movie departs even more than its predecessor from the generic dreariness of "Halloween: H20" and "Halloween: Resurrection." This is very much a Rob Zombie take on the characters and scenario he inherited, and to me it's awesome to behold. And don't try to tell me that any scene in the rest of the series is half as harrowing as Sheriff Brackett's (Brad Dourif) discovery of his daughter's bloody body in "Halloween II", because that shit hits hard. Also, those other movies didn't have a fun Weird Al Yankovic cameo to dilute the despair. Rob Zombie contains multitudes, and they're on beautiful display throughout "Halloween II." Naysayers be damned.