Halloween II [2009] – Blu-ray Disc Review

January 24, 2010 – 11:58 PM - Posted by: James Segars

Tags: BD-Live, Brad Dourif, Caroline Williams, Malcolm McDowell, Margot Kidder, movieIQ, Rob Zombie, Scout Taylor-Compton, Sheri Moon Zombie, Sony, Tyler Mane

has an average rating of 5.0 on IMDb
1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a 50gb disc
DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio
are mediocre in all honesty.
–
– 2009
– 119 minutes
– Sony
–
This uses 27.8GB for the movie out of 39.6GB total.

Overall Verdict – One Screwed Up Movie

Buy it for $25.49 @ Amazon.com

— Review written by: James Segars —

Trailer:

The Movie Itself is directed by Rob Zombie (House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, Halloween [2007]).

Rob Zombie is a fucked up individual, and on top of that, I find him to be a tasteless, talentless director. This remake-sequel is an abomination, and should have been aborted long before production commenced. If you thought the first remake from Rob Zombie couldn’t possibly get any worse, you’re in for a real treat… it does!

This is the third film of Zombie’s that I’ve seen, and quite honestly I’m amazed that I keep wasting my time on his piss-poor films when there are so many other quality films out there to see. I suppose it all stems from my deep love of the Halloween franchise. I’m a complete sucker for anything Halloween, even if it doesn’t look promising — Halloween: Resurrection, anyone? — and I can safely say that this is the absolute worst entry in the series; even worse than the druid-infused Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.

So where does Zombie go wrong? How can he possibly screw up the sequel that badly? Allow me to explain. For starters, a bit of a primer. The original sequel was shot by Rick Rosenthal, and it was a direct continuation (in fact, overlapping slightly) to the first film. In it, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is transported to a local hospital for the treatment of her injuries sustained in the first film. Meanwhile, Michael Myers is still at large and en route to the hospital to pay Laurie one last visit, despite the best efforts of the Haddonfield Police Department. And so, the stage is set for one of the most intense, claustrophobic and thrilling installments in the series.

Only… that’s not what Zombie had in mind. No, he wanted to put his own spin on things. Shake things up a bit. Oh, and he really wanted to jam some half-baked “white horse” imagery down our throats too. Sound awesome? Didn’t think so.

In case you were wondering how the film starts and progresses, here’s what you need to know:

1) The hospital setting is reduced to a nightmare, and because of the way it’s shot and positioned in the film, we’re not sure if any of it really happened (did Laurie get attacked in the hospital, or just treated and released?).

2) After the “Hospital Nightmare” we’re told that two years have passed since the first film, and Michael Myers has been roaming fields for two years, cultivating a ZZ Top beard, sporting a hoodie (no mask) and having visions (are they supposed to be dreams?) of his mother and a white horse.

3) Laurie Strode is going crazy (not a bad touch, but a little heavy-handed thanks to Zombie’s blunt writing/direction).

4) Dr. Loomis has transformed into a soulless, money-hungry prima donna that is exploiting his experiences in the first film to sell a new book.

To Zombie’s credit, I found the first remake passable, if only slightly but that’s simply because he stuck fairly close to Carpenter’s formula. Here, Zombie goes off the reservation entirely. Instead of adhering to the mythology set out in front of him, he took it upon himself to blaze a trail all his own, and while I somewhat respect that decision — in principle, anyway — the results are abysmal. Every single character in this film is reduced to a caricature of their former selves, including Michael Myers. As for the reason, it all comes down to Zombie’s efforts to add depth and motivation to Michael Myers — who really should have remained as a soulless killing machine — and Laurie’s painful descent into insanity, and of course, let’s not forget the sophomoric imagery that Zombie employs throughout the film (see the screenshots below for some examples). All of these failures — and more — compound upon one another making this a film that is ultra-violent and entirely off-base. How Zombie missed the mark this badly, I’ll never know, nor do I care to. Skip this one if you’re a fan of the series. It’s not worth the time or the money.

Video Quality on this release is in full 1080p using the AVC MPEG-4 codec on a BD-50 (50 gigabyte Blu-ray Disc).

Thankfully, the video presentation on this film is pretty damn good, otherwise I might have bailed on the film entirely. Interestingly, Zombie has switched to a 1.85:1 ratio, leaving behind the 2.35:1 ratio the previous remake featured. As a result, we get a taller image overall, but be warned that this film is exceedingly dark. If you thought the first film was erring on the side of uber-dim lit interiors, just wait until you see how dark and obscure detail becomes in this film. The good news however is that the black level is not crushed in an effort to punch up the blacks, on the flip-side though, the bad news is that the black levels throughout are awfully grayish and dim. This is not the fault of the studio or the mastering, it is the fault of the production, and something that is actually faithful to the original films — relying almost predominantly on natural lighting sources and/or very limited lighting equipment. In other words, this presentation doesn’t have a lot of punch, nor is it anywhere close to as vibrant as the best looking Blu-rays out there, but I can’t help but feel like it’s entirely faithful to the original source material, and that, as always is one of primary concerns. The grain structure throughout is upheld, and not suppressed by DNR. Minimal edge-enhancement is used, as there were only a few instances where I noticed some faint halos, and there were even fewer cases where I noticed some Mosquito Noise flitting around some edges. Fine object detail isn’t stunning in the slightest, but it isn’t bad either. All in all, I think that Halloween II is deserving of a “4 Star Rating” for overall video quality. It’s not going to blow you away, but it is faithful to the source.

Audio Quality on this release is presented in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio.

Faring even better than the video presentation, the unsettling audio presentation on this film is without question the best aspect of this film. Compared to the previous film — which sounded great — this one sounds equal to, or better than it. The sound effects, LFE and the mixing in general sound much improved. The horror “stingers” (sound cues when a killer pops out) in this film are even more unsettling and jarring. Shattering glass, and blood-curdling screams are unnerving and realistic, as is the sound of a head being sawed off with a shard of glass. Put simply, the sound mix handles the gruesome nature of the film with ease, and it does wonders with the material, in fact, I think the sound design is much scarier than what we see on screen. It all sounds so frighteningly real. Truly scary stuff. As such, this mix easily secures a “4.5 Star Rating” for overall audio quality.

Bonus Materials are almost entirely presented in High Definition (except where noted otherwise).

• “BD-Live” – is included on this release which requires the user to be on a “Profile 2.0” capable Blu-ray Disc Player to access online content from the studio, in this case Sony. Once on Sony’s BD-Live portal you can access trailers for upcoming films, Blu-ray Disc titles as well as current films available.
• “Movie IQ” (powered by gracenote) is a new feature that uses BD-Live to retrieve live in-movie information about the film, the cast, the crew, music and production. This was my first experience using the Movie IQ feature, and I gotta say, I really enjoyed it a lot. It’s essentially an interactive, and dynamic IMDb-like interface that allows the user to find out what song is playing on screen, what actors are in the scene, and perhaps over time, any number of facts or trivia could be presented here. And all of this is possible due to BD-live connectivity, ensuring that the information is always up-to-date and pertinent. As such, this makes Movie IQ my new favorite Blu-ray feature, and I hope to see this on all discs across the board in the future.
• Commentary with Writer/Director Rob Zombie I’ll be honest, I skipped over this entirely. Usually I’ll give the commentary a listen even if I didn’t like the film that much, but here, I couldn’t care less, and there was no way in hell I would waste any more time on this abomination, let alone here Rob Zombie try and justify his “artistic choices”. No thanks.
• Deleted Scenes & Alternate Scenes (25:14) A decent smattering of deleted/alternate material, though there was nothing here that could have possibly redeemed the film.
• Blooper Reel (4:26) Not one of the funniest blooper reels I’ve seen, but I’m glad to see the cast/crew had fun making the film, and that it wasn’t as torturous for them as it was for me watching it.
• Audition Footage (SD – 9:37) Here you get your standard audition tape footage. Might be worth a look for die-hard fans.
• Make-up Test Footage (3:35) In-camera testing to see if the make-up for the film looked good on-screen.
• Uncle Seymour Coffin’s Stand-Up Routines (8:40) I didn’t appreciate this guy’s stand-up in the film, and here as a standalone feature, I feel the same. Skip this unless you find him utterly hilarious.
• Captain Clegg and the Night Creatures Music Videos (HD/SD – 19:11) Awful music, and awful music videos, in my opinion anyway. If you enjoy the band, I’m sure you’ll appreciate this collection of music videos, I on the other hand…
• Previews

Overall bonus materials here are the standard fare. The inclusion of the MovieIQ is a nice touch, and as always the presence of BD-Live is welcome, but the rest of the features didn’t entertain or inform — not that I cared one way or the other, either. I’m not sure what fans will think of these features, but I will say that the extras package is far slimmer than Rob Zombie’s Halloween (no 4 hour-long documentary here, folks).

Blu-ray Disc packaging:

Screenshots:

NOTE: The full-sized 1920×1080 files are in a .PNG file format and uncompressed. Bare with the slow loading times, keep in mind these files are at least 1MB (1 megabyte) in size each.

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