In Defense Of: “Halloween II” (1981)

He immediately lures the hospital’s lone security guard to a basement and toys with him before killing him with a hammer. He drains the head nurse of all her blood. He kills the doctor with a needle straight through the eye. He reveals himself to Laurie by stabbing a nurse through the back and lifting her up high off the ground. He slashes the tires of every car in the parking lot to make sure no one has an easy escape. He plays dead when Loomis shoots him late in the film, only to slit the throat of a U.S. Marshall who falls for the ploy.

And he also boils a nurse alive, repeatedly dunking her head below the surface of a scalding hydrotherapy pool, not content to just drown her or leave her under the surface, pulling her back up every few seconds to ensure she stays alive as long as possible before shoving her back under, all of which came after he allowed her to believe he was someone else, his victim even sucking on his fingers before turning to realize her mistake.

All this is to the say that Michael is much more vicious here than ever before, as though the events of the original were simply a warm up, and the movie admirably manages to milk some palpable tension surrounding his presence as he wanders the streets of Haddonfield, people passing by without a second thought, or roams the halls of the hospital undetected. With the exception of a cringe-worthy jump scare involving a cat in a dumpster, the film reserves its scares solely for Michael, and though they may not be as strong as they were the first time around, they still work because Myers and his actions are never treated as a joke, a far cry from a future that would see him going toe to toe with Busta Rhymes in a burning garage.

At one point, two nurses talk at their station, Michael watching them from the shadows of the nursery behind the glass nearby before quietly slipping away. At another, the camera reveals Michael standing in an elderly couple’s kitchen, both completely oblivious to the fact that the man the news is talking about is in their home. There’s always an air of unease about what he’s going to do and uncertainty about whom he’s going to kill, all because he feels truly unleashed now, and Halloween II takes strides to continue emphasizing that he could always be lurking in the shadows nearby, watching and waiting.

More so even than the first film, the sequel posits the notion that Michael truly may be supernatural. We see him bleeding from the wounds inflicted by Loomis’ gun at the outset of the pic, but he keeps on going. Loomis explains that he was an ideal patient, that everyone failed to see the force inside him that was patiently biding its time, and even when discussing Samhain, the Lord of the Dead whose name Michael wrote on the blackboard of an elementary school, he says, “Samhain isn’t evil spirits. It isn’t goblins, ghosts, or witches. It’s the unconscious mind. We’re all afraid of the dark inside ourselves.” It’s an idea that sums up Michael perfectly, darkness in such a pure form as to be resilient to almost anything that could stop it, the paranoia that defines Halloween II made manifest.

Michael feels unstoppable simply because evil is unstoppable. Michael seems to be anywhere and everywhere because evil is inexplicable. Michael kills whoever he wants because evil is indiscriminate. It takes Laurie and Loomis tag-teaming to bring him down by film’s end, Michael’s eyes shot out before Loomis sacrifices his own life to help destroy the killer for good. But even with Michael burnt to a crisp, and the nightmare seemingly over, we’re left with the image of a quiet, contemplative Laurie being taken away to another hospital, the ambulance disappearing into morning fog and we realize that the nightmare will never truly be over.

Michael’s shadow will loom over Laurie for the rest of her life. Evil will continue to thrive in countless forms, whether it be in the type of person who finds pleasure in putting razor blades in the candy of children or in someone who follows in Michael’s footsteps as a methodical, ruthless murderer of the innocent. And for a film that wanted to wrap up the story of The Shape, reinforcing those ideas was a great way to send him out.