Very few movies have the ability to improve upon their story; most sequels feel like they lost a step or two, perhaps at the price of forcing a second chapter when there was no need for one. Some exceptions do, however, rise to the occasion and every now and then go above and beyond expectations. Mostly when people think of those films, movies like The Empire Strikes Back, Terminator 2 and perhaps Aliens all come to mind but one film that is often overlooked is Halloween 2.
I thought that Halloween 2 might be a good choice for 31 Nights of Terror because not only does it break the expectancy to do the original Halloween, a logical choice for the season, but also because it is a great horror movie.
The original Halloween works its way up slowly to a memorable grand finale but also leaves room intentionally for additional storytelling, which John Carpenter and director Rick Rosenthal pick up on in what is supposed to be the same night as the first film. In fact, the film starts with the last five minutes or so of the original. From there, we follow Laurie Strode to the hospital where she will stay will stay for the rest of the film and where Michael Myers will meet up with her but not before going on another killing spree in his ultimate ambiguous goal of killing his long lost sister.
Now I know that this story relies a great deal on the Idiot Plot and I am not saying that the film should win any awards for narrative or screenwriting, but in my opinion, the film did a commendable job on making sense of a sequel, especially one which was originally written to conclude the Michael Myers story. The Idiot Plot accusation is also somewhat excessive here, perhaps because in 1981 people were simply smarter than now- which is quite possible- but there aren’t that many poor decisions made by the soon-to-be-fertilizer, especially when compared with films like Final Destination. Using a hospital as a location and thus its staff as a new batch of victims might seem amazingly coincidental, but I find it to in fact be quite ingenious, at least by horror standards, because more conventional sequels would have a fresh batch of unrelated teenagers appear in a wash-rinse-repeat formula which can be performed as needs be. The hospital idea works, but works once and in that much the film succeeds in being original.
And I know that the film was harshly criticized for abandoning the suspense and atmosphere of the first Halloween for more of a slasher-like tale, but I simply don’t understand this argument. There is plenty of suspense and the kills are just right: not too gory but also not insignificantly absent à la Zombieland. I think that what people failed to recognize was the pace the movie chose, and arguably was forced to set: the first film needed to establish all of the characters and the plot: of course, as a result of this, it moved at a slower pace splitting up the suspense and using a lot more ambiguity to create mood. But in Halloween 2, doing the same thing would have most likely been disastrous: the most important characters that needed development had already been developed in Halloween and the less significant characters were of no real importance and furthermore were going to be dead soon anyway. Thus, Halloween 2 opted to jump right into the action which aesthetically may have caused it to suffer but as an overall product probably saved it.
As for the atmosphere, I remember seeing Halloween 2 for the first time and how genuinely freaked out I was because of the overall aura of fear it blanketed me with: dark, shadowy and in a hospital at night. Perhaps that is insignificant to most people but the idea of almost the entire movie taking place in a hospital conveniently lost out in the middle of nowhere was, to me, the perfect setting for a sequel. And if there is one thing I like, it is a story which unravels over one night; I don’t know what it is about the basic concept, but it fascinates me: that so much as an entire narrative could happen in the darkness over the few hours between dusk and dawn while the rest of the world sleeps complacently.
I also very much enjoyed the few additions to the main plot, following from the first movie: they do a good job at adding on little mysterious pieces of information which might explain Michael’s evil, without ever giving away too much and leaving the most of it to the imagination, making only hints at possible explanations such as Halloween lore. As always, the music of the Halloween series is legendary, as is the performance of Donald Pleasence: just watch the trailer and tell me that isn’t gripping.
Halloween 2 goes on my ‘see it really late at night in a house in the woods’ list- especially because that is exactly when this film is supposed to take place and there is an additional fright involved in the common ground you will share with Laurie Strode: you are both stuck out in the middle of nowhere without a single beam of light coming from the window and a silence so profound that you can almost hear it and all the time knowing Michael Myers is near you- you’re just not quite sure where.
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