H2: Halloween II isn’t just another remake of a Halloween movie. It’s Rob Zombie’s sequel to his own remake of Halloween.  Critics and fans hailed Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake as a great piece of filmmaking and a great revamp of a classic film.  Michael Myers has always been a favorite Halloween costume, but Rob Zombie made horror fans take a new look at the Michael Myers character and showed the world an even darker Halloween story. In H2: Halloween II Rob Zombie continues the story of Michael Myers after he stalked Laurie Strode and her friends throughout Halloween night and killed her friends.  This Halloween film focuses on Laurie Strode and her reactions to the events of that night. After that Halloween night she is a mental wreck and is having trouble putting the pieces of her life back together.  Through the course of the film director Rob Zombie draws parallels between her mental illness and Michael Myers’ mental illness.  In the beginning of H2: Halloween II Laurie Strode doesn’t know yet that she Michael Myers’ sister and later on in the film she finds out that they are related. This causes her mental illness to become worse and the audience sees flashes of Laurie descending into her own madness the way Michael Myers has descended into his. Instead of focusing on Michael Myers the way that past Halloween films have Rob Zombie’s H2: Halloween II focuses on Laurie and her struggles to deal with her family history and mental illness along with the loss of her friends and family in the first film.

Most horror fans were quite pleased with Rob Zombie’s re-imagining of the first film and were excited to hear that he was going to direct a sequel.  Just after his remake of Halloween came out he declared that he had no interest in doing a sequel because of the mental effort involved in directing a remake of such a classic horror film and exploring the darkness that existed in a killer like Michael Myers. But after a few years Rob Zombie again expressed interest in directing a sequel and with film began to take shape with Zombie’s unique vision focused on Laurie Strode.

Halloween is such an iconic horror film in American culture that all it takes to bring the film to mind is to see a white mask, like the one worn by Michael Myers in the first film that would become one of the most well known killer signatures in the world or to hear the piano melody associated with the original film. But Rob Zombie has created a totally new image for both Michael Myers and Laurie Strode.  Zombie’s Laurie Strode manifests her growing insanity outwardly in her appearance, so if you want a comfortable yet scary Halloween costume the grungy outfits of Laurie Strode combined with other signature accessories she uses in the movie would be perfect.  While Michael Myers still has his white mask, which was originally a painted $2 mask of William Shatner, Michael’s outfit and general demeanor begin to give viewers more clues about his insanity and mental state too.

Halloween 2 will be released August 28, 2o09

Halloween costumes and Halloween Props can be found at Spirit Halloween