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.
