Very cleverly opting to continue exactly where ‘Halloween’ ended, Rick
Rosenthal’s first sequel is just as exciting.
With Michael Myers still at large, Laurie Strode is transported to the
Haddonfield State Memorial Hospital, and it isn’t long before he’s back to
finish what was started.
Once again we have the wonderful use of P.O.V. first made prominent by
Carpenter, as Myers stalks the hallways of the Hospital and interestingly,
Rosenthal makes use of CCTV footage and radio communications technology
(more on that later) as well.
The death scenes are radically more gory and the body count is much
higher, but the basic elements remain largely unchanged which thankfully
includes the score, which is merely expanded upon.
The cast are all good again, with the nurses being the most sympathetic,
and whilst many critics felt that Jamie Lee Curtis being drugged meant she
was severly underused, I felt that after what she’d been through she would
have needed the rest or she wouldn’t have survived.
Halloween 2 helps to cement the franchise policy of less is more,
retaining it’s sense of small town atmosphere present in the first film,
ensuring that the audience are once again terrified out of their minds.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Excellently building on it’s premise, the series continues it’s reign of
terror on cinemagoers by retaining it’s core elements and then adding many
great set pieces of atmospheric terror.
