Editorials
[Butcher Block] Revisiting the Savage Trauma of Rob Zombie’s ‘Halloween II’
Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.
The major theme of 2018’s Halloween is trauma. Ignoring all other sequels past John Carpenter’s original film, this new sequel honed in on Laurie Strode’s inability to cope with her encounter with Michael Myers on that fateful night 40 years ago. It was something that Jamie Lee Curtis tried to explore with the character in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, as well. But in the discussion of Laurie Strode’s survivor trauma, there’s one major component that’s been left out: Rob Zombie’s brutal sequel Halloween II. While Halloween II is far from perfect, the sequel successfully resonates because of its honest portrayal of trauma and grief.
Picking up immediately after the events of the first film, Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton) is found severely injured and detached from the world around her. Rushed to the hospital, Zombie gets intimate with her injuries as she’s sewn up and put back together. He wants it clear just how physically grueling it was for Laurie to survive Michael Myers. The team of doctors remove her dangling nail from its nailbed, viscerally reset broken bones, and painfully clean out her deep slash wounds. She’s barely out of surgery when the onslaught begins again (in her mind, anyway).
Cut to two years later. Laurie is seeing a therapist, suffering night terrors, and taking prescription pills. Her parents murdered in the first film, she’s now living with Sheriff Lee Brackett (Brad Dourif) and fellow survivor Annie Brackett (Danielle Harris). It’s here where Zombie’s portrayal of the aftermath of surviving a killer gets really interesting. Laurie and Annie are both dealing with the emotional fallout from that Halloween night. They’re both two sides to the same coin of trauma.
Whereas Laurie has become far less relatable bordering on being unlikable, because her coping mechanisms (or lack thereof) are self-destructive, Annie has become obsessed with healthy eating and mothering the two closest people in her life. She’s clinging to her life harder than before. More tellingly, though, is that we never see Annie leave the house at all. It indicates that while she’s holding it together better than Laurie, it’s only on the surface as she’s become a bit of a recluse.
While we’re getting reacquainted with the new, emotionally and physically scarred final girls, Zombie is peripherally working to remind us why these girls should be so messed up in the head. Michael Myers is coming back to finish what he started, and he’s upped the ante on his violence. This iteration of Myers is downright savage, and the body count exists solely to reinforce just why Laurie is spiraling out of control. This Myers is so vicious that it’s no wonder his survivors might lose their grasp on reality.
In keeping with the gritty, gruesome approach, artist Wayne Toth served as the special effects makeup designer. Toth previously worked with Zombie on makeup effects for Halloween and House of 1000 Corpses, and has also worked on films like Wishmaster, Drag Me to Hell, and Bride of Re-Animator. With a shorter pre-production period, Toth has his hands full with the gorier kill count. Howard Boggs (Jeffrey Daniel Phillips) head stomping is ruthless, and there’s plenty of violent stabbings and eye gouges to go around. None of it is as vicious as Annie’s demise, made more primitive by the performances.
Thanks to Zombie’s fearlessness in pursuing his vision, the underrated and fantastic performances by Dourif, Harris, and Taylor-Compton, and Toth’s contributions keeping this version of Myers merciless and gritty, Halloween II succeeds in demonstrating what trauma could look like for a Final Girl. For all its flaws, it’s this aspect of the story that Zombie nailed better than most. This is what surviving looks like two years after the inciting event that destroyed lives. Trauma like this changes a person, for better or worse (usually the latter), and the fearless way that Zombie and Taylor-Compton approached that truth over an endearing lead heroine deserves more credit than it’s received thus far.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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