Halloween II: The Return of Michael Myers

Wow.

This is my first review of a fanedit, and one of the first fanedits I've seen. I can't forget how disappointed I was watching Halloween Kills in theaters. I also wasn't blown away by Halloween 2018, but I certainly appreciated the nods to the original and overall I found it to be a serviceable addition to the franchise. But Ryantology really picked some great highlights of both films to make for a leaner and ultimately more engaging slasher.

The editing is very clean, I love that it begins with the Kills flashback intro and I think cutting fluff like all of the "Evil Dies Tonight" chanting and some of the lackluster humor made beats really more impactful. Also having the researchers digging up Michael's past in the first half made Karen's calling out Michael at the end more impactful as well. I really like the addition of some classic Carpenter Fog music as well, it really plays better than his newer Halloween score. Very much recommend, and I'm curious to see if Ryantology can salvage Halloween Ends

Awesome job here. This is a real treat for Halloween fans. I noticed no issues at all with the video or audio editing. Everything about it worked. It's a significant improvement over the theatrical releases and I don't know why anyone would waste time with the theatrical versions with this gem now available to enjoy.

10 out of 10 across the board. Thank you so much from one Halloween fan to another.

Absolutely incredible! I'm one of many who loved 2018 but was...less than thrilled about the direction they went with Kills (now with hindsight we were blessed with Kills when looking at it's sequel but that's another topic.), and was extremely impressed with the way you sifted through the clutter of both films and managed to make their plots feel much more intertwined due to theme changes and removals. The cuts were brilliant, the music choices, my god the music choices(!). There's some great substituted cue placement throughout with one in particular ("The Shape Hunts Allyson") making me genuinely get excited once it popped up in its new place! Overall this will be my new go-to way to watch the newest version of the Strode saga no doubt! Highly recommended!

Truly outstanding! As someone who liked both Halloween (2018) and Kills, this edit keeps what works and removes what doesn't, effectively streamlining the entire experience while keeping a totally cohesive narrative! The flow between the two movies is seamless.

If I had to nitpick, I agree with another reviewer that mentioned how abruptly the film ends. There's not much time to process the final twist. I think this edit is short enough that adding the alternate ending from extended cut of Kills would be the perfect cherry on top. Still, a great fan edit nonetheless!

I was absolutely stunned when I saw how well Kills was narratively interwoven with Halloween 2018. It's impeccable and the narrative doesn't miss a beat. I was similarly floored with how well the climax of 2018 was transformed into an impactful sequence but also one that doesn't feel entirely like the climax of the movie. It's more like how the mid-film sequence in a Mission: Impossible movie is probably the biggest sequence but there's still another half of the movie to go.

Narratively, the edits to Kills works pretty well. There's a few elements that I do miss. Laurie is in this version far less than even in the theatrical cut of Kills and that's this edit's biggest issue. She really falls off and doesn't even show up anywhere in the finale, which makes the moment where she takes the shot of painkillers make even less of a point here because she doesn't do anything after this scene.

The finale is too abrupt. There's not a moment where the audience comes down after a pretty great finale switcharoo where the "Michael Survived" is shown as a twist, which is really effective. Perhaps, in order to give Laurie a little more, using the extended edition finale (the phone call) would've helped both of these elements.

Another slight nitpick: since we remove the podcasters interviewing Laurie, we aren't really given an location overview of Laurie's compound. I don't believe we even have a good establishing shot of her house until much later in the film. I did like turning the podcasters into investigative journalists, though. That element worked quite well.