Some critics have been quick to dismiss Rob Zombie as a man with no talent as a filmmaker, and although Halloween 2 joins an increasingly disappointing résumé for the White Zombie rocker, he is better approached as a frustrating filmmaker rather than one without talent. House of 1000 Corpses was dreadful, Halloween was so-so, and Halloween 2 is pretty poor itself, but these films are all problematic in the same area – each film has a lacklustre script that undermines Zombie’s considerable visual flair for sordidness and grime. His films are the sort that through sheer visual composition alone make you want to shower, and I mean that as a compliment. Consequently, it’s one of the few things to praise about the sort-of-but-not-really remake Halloween 2.

Continuing a year after the first film, H2 grants masked villain Michael Myers yet another ludicrous means of escape, this time as the dumb lug driving his ambulance crashes into a cow. Led by a vision of his mother (Sheri Moon Zombie) and a white horse, Michael embarks on another murderous rampage through Haddonfield, once again on the hunt for his sister, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton). Even for the murky standards of the latter entries into the original series, the setup is bad, but it’s the sort of bad that you can (and inevitably will) laugh at, so in the right mindset this isn’t so much an aggressively unwatchable film as much as it is a daft and unintentionally amusing one.

Meanwhile, the supporting characters are given slightly more sensible things to do, as Michael’s former psychologist Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) tours a book he wrote about the Myers murders, and deals with accusations of encouraging not only the mythopoeia surrounding Myers, but the murders themselves. On the downside, it means you’ll have to sit through a very strange Weird Al Yankovic cameo, and Loomis’ story is largely too isolated for most of the film to coalesce well with the mayhem in Haddonfield. More interesting is Sherriff Brackett (Brad Dourif), who spends most of his screen time trying to protect Laurie and his daughter Annie (Danielle Harris, returning from the previous film, as well as several entries in the previous series as a child), who survived an attack from Myers in the last film. Thanks to another reliable performance from Dourif, Brackett is the most believable and sympathetic character in the whole mess.

Rob Zombie falls foul chiefly on two counts with Halloween 2 – through indulgence and through rudiment. Although Zombie’s got a keen visual style that befits this sort of material, he too often believes that his vile dialogue – most memorably involving a discussion about necrophilia between two medics – has a sort of feral intelligence that makes it valuable, or more scarily, Shakespearian. What’s more troubling, though, is the awkward symbolism that Zombie pigeon-holes into the film. The film’s first shot is a title card defining the mythology of the white horse, and throughout the film we get numerous glimpses of the horse accompanied by Myers’ mother, which seems more like Zombie showing off his wife rather than him injecting any depth or meaning into proceedings. Furthermore, Zombie indulges several strange dream sequences, most memorably as Laurie is laid out on a dinner table at a Halloween party attended by strange pumpkin-headed monsters, in probably the film’s funniest moment. Aside from the aforementioned cow incident, anyway.

As far as rudiment goes, Zombie makes things as pedestrian an entertainment as possible; there’s a lengthy and downright deceptive dream sequence early in the film that serves little purpose and pads the film out by a good 10 minutes, and he lingers too long on pointless dialogues between Laurie and her friends as they get ready for a Halloween party. The film’s true crime, though, is how yawn-inducingly tame the whole thing is; Myers kills with ice-cool, mechanical efficiency, but it’s never exciting, largely because the film barely justifies its 18 rating. While it falls under the BBFC guidelines for sadistic violence and a focus on injury detail, Myers too often slashes out of shot, or Zombie is too close up for us to really tell what is going on, or it is expected that we’ll be satisfied with a few squishy sound effects. This is a vile film for sure, but one would hope that Zombie, of all filmmakers, would at least deliver on the visceral side of things.

Halloween 2 is occasionally daring enough to challenge the conventions of the series mythology, particularly in its ending, but I haven’t a clue where Zombie hopes to take things with the inevitable third instalment (other than the already announced 3D element). Halloween 2 has solid atmosphere and decent direction, but it’s also got pompous symbolism, a truly cheeky dream sequence, and most alarmingly, a distinct lack of satisfying gore. It’s difficult to imagine many being pleased with this uneven, flimsy, so-bad-it’s-funny sequel.