The Halloween Project: Halloween II

Yesterday, I shared my 90-second recap of John Carpenter’s Halloween. It’s part of our Halloween project this October. We’re reviewing all the films in the Halloween franchise. Ready for the sequel? Dun, dun, dun.*

*SPOILER WARNING

Photo credit

This movie picks up about 45 seconds after the first Halloween ended. The doctor runs out into the street to the sheriff’s car, shouting, “I shot him six times! And now he’s gone!” And this right here is basically the entire premise of the film. If you think Michael Myers is dead, you are wrong. So they take Jamie Lee Curtis, who is so traumatized that she spends the majority of this movie shivering and moaning and not doing a whole lot of talking, to what has to be the worst hospital in the entire United States. Haddonfield Memorial Hospital apparently shuts down at like 8 PM on Halloween and just leaves like one nurse in charge of all the babies while two paramedics and a drunk doctor run the emergency room. This means that Jamie Lee Curtis gets plenty of attention, especially from Jimmy, the sensitive “college boy” paramedic. He’s super different than his macho partner who likes to get cozy with nurses in the therapy steam in the hospital basement (this is apparently a really good way to get murdered, in case you were wondering, so…no sexy time in hospital basements unless you want Michael Myers to kill you). Speaking of M.M., everyone else in town, including the sheriff and the doctor, spend the majority of the movie freaking out about him maybe being not dead. They drive around a lot, looking for Michael. They find a word written in blood, “SAMHAIN” and then the doctor explains how the Irish invented Halloween and how evil doesn’t exist in goblins and ghosts but in our darkest selves. Meanwhile, Jamie Lee Curtis is having sedative-induced flashback dreams about this boy named Michael and then OMG WE FIND OUT THAT JAMIE LEE CURTIS IS TOTALLY MICHAEL’S OTHER SISTER AND THAT SHE WAS ADOPTED AFTER HER PARENTS WERE MURDERED!! The last third of the movie is mostly Michael calmly stalking Jamie Lee Curtis around the hospital. He keeps getting stabbed and shot and burned alive until right at the end when he’s totally dead and Jamie Lee Curtis is like, why is this hospital so dark and empty and why is the law enforcement so completely incompetent and how on earth did I get the only hospital gown in history that is NOT backless and embarrassing? Credits.

I feel like these movies are just going to get better and better. Halloween III coming tomorrow…

love, elizabeth