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John Carpenter's 1978 'Halloween' is wholly deserving of its status as a horror classic. To this day it's still one of the freakiest films personally seen and introduced the world to one of horror's most iconic villainous characters Michael Myers.
Which is why it is such a shame that not only are all of the sequels nowhere near as good but that the decline in quality is so drastic. Ok, the original 'Halloween' is very difficult to follow on from, but most of the sequels could at least looked like effort was made into them. 'Halloween II' is not the worst of them, or one of the worst of them. It is not really a good film, not by a long shot, but oddly enough it still manages to be one of the better 'Halloween' sequels and one of the few semi-watchable ones despite its glaring faults.
'Halloween II' has strengths. It is one of the better-looking and more polished sequels and has a suitably eerie look. The music has a spine-chilling atmosphere, if not as much as the first 'Halloween' and not as big a character of its own that the music in the original was.
Didn't care much for the acting generally, but both Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance make successfully game efforts and Michael Myers does evoke some creepiness.
There are also unfortunately some significant drawbacks. The biggest fault is that the atmosphere and tone are just wrong. The film just feels like a stale retread minus the chilling scares, nail-biting suspense and the feeling of being unsettled. There is nothing creative or shocking about the scares or deaths, it's all by-the-numbers, over-familiar and indifferent. Everything is just too predictable and dull in pace to be remotely suspenseful.
Stupidity is also all over the film. So many moments are intelligence-insultingly ridiculous and almost illogical, and the hospital setting would have been more effective if it wasn't so under-populated and drab (it actually didn't feel like a hospital at all). Didn't care for the direction either, there is no flair and very little engagement with the material, at times there is too much of an imitation of the direction of the first 'Halloween' but with no success.
Curtis and Pleasance aside, the acting is ropey and everybody has to work with a clunky script, with a stilted flow and a lot of unintentional laughs, and annoying characters (with the old characters being so dumbed down that they are no better).
Overall, mediocre but one of the semi-watchable sequels of the series. 4/10 Bethany Cox
4/10
