Halloween Part II

joebshmoe dec 1 2009

arrrr now i gotta see it with the purist ST?! i missed that, bummer. i had mixed feelings about the default track – several scenes had no SFX and only score, but a few of them were much more tense so a mixed pros/cons there.

i will admit that i am not the biggest halloween fan – primarily because i think they drag on (and on) but modernknife’s H2 edit gives you ALL of the pertinent halloween plot (laurie strode) and mixed in a very creative way.

video quality and pacing are big weaknesses here, but this definitely replaces any non H1 halloween viewings. pair this and PhineasBG’s extended H1 edit for a pretty great way to watch michael myers kill ‘em off :)

casmirradon nov 12 2009

I had never gotten around to watching the Halloween sequels before, but of course am a big fan of the original. In fact, to get myself in the mood for your edit, I re-watched the original the night before.

I watched the purist soundtrack, but did watch the first 15 minutes or so with your remix soundtrack to see how it was. In my opinion you got it very close to the original movie with this score… but I always felt the original movie was over-scored anyway. I thought the purist soundtrack worked well for me. This brings up my biggest complaint about your DVD menus, which is that a first time viewer will often not look at the bonus features until after they’ve seen a movie… and in this case that would mean they won’t know there is a choice of soundtracks until they’ve already seen it. This would have made me upset if I had not known before hand, and I really wish the option was on the main menu.

For the most part, editing was great. I don’t have many complaints. You changed it so “–Jimmy is now killed in the pool of blood by Michael Myers.” which was a little awkward for me, and I could tell something was off, but it got the point across and well enough.

The part that really took me out of the experience was:
“–As Loomis, Marion and Marshall enter Hospital — Laurie runs to greet them and The Shape springs into attack.”
This didn’t work for me at all. I had to rewind and watch it a second time, and I could only figure out what was going on by reminding myself that it was a fanedit. Really took me out of the experience, it was just way too abrupt and disjointed. Even though I’m sure you spared me some annoying parts by editing it in this way.

Also it was awkward towards the end when Laurie tells her son and girlfriend to drive away while she goes back for Michael. When she gets out of the car the audio cuts, and then just as abruptly music comes back in. I know you reference audio troubles in your info, but this again took me out of the experience.

Other then these complaints, it was a good experience, and even came together to make a pretty decent film and a worthy enough sequel. It’s still based off sequels that will never be great, but I will say that this was worth watching, and that I would recommend it to friends in the future. Good work.

tmbtm nov 10 2009

To reunite Halloween 2 and H20 was an idea that needed to be done.
I saw this edit with the purist soundtrack. It was a good.
Of course there is the “20 years later” text in the middle of the movie but I think that in this case it works well,
I prefer that simple way to tell the story than constant flashbacks that would have killed the tension.
(I liked the flashbacks of Loomis with young M.M though)

boon23 nov 5 2009

Prologue:
I am not a huge Halloween buff. The first one was great, but about everything that followed was IMO rather lame, most of all caused by a slow undying and very unbelievable creature named Michael Myers. What made the first one so special became in its repeats a bore most of the time, when there was constantly more gore added, because the scares were not scary anymore. The concept of this fanedit directly intrigued me though, because it is a bold one. Combining so many movies to one, what Modernknife calls an “epic” is a huge and very difficult undertaking.

As for all my reviews: this is just my personal opinion of this fanedit. I cannot tell anybody else, if he or she will experience it in the same way or the opposite. So my review is not objective and does not reflect the opinion of fanedit.org.

!!!!This review contains heavy spoilers!!!

The edit:
I watched the “John Carpenter Remix” version and skipped then through the “original purist soundtrack” and I think I regret that decision a lot. While the movie is edited well and follows the fate of poor Laurie, the music was the one thing that bothered me in the entire first part of this fanedit. It felt “over-scored”. Scenes that should have been silent to be scary were suddenly all drenched in the Halloween theme, which although well done, took all the scary mood away. The “original purist track” contains the badly needed silence for a horror movie. It is what made Halloween scary. It is what kind of makes any horror movie scary. Silence that is suddenly interrupted has a lot more impact than a score with an altering theme that plays almost all the time.
The long hospital scenes were a bit confusing for me, especially when at one time Michael leaves the building for no reason and then is back for no reason. Now Michael is not known as a big thinker, but that felt weird to me. The hospital scenes were more or less a body-count delivery and had so little impact on the story of Laurie.
Part 2 of the fanedit with the H20 parts was great IMO. It was very well edited and heavily trimmed at the right places. And the sound mix and score worked great for this part.
So, while the first half was a rather frustrating experience for me, the second part was pretty good. But discovering that my main issues were not present in the “original purist soundtrack” was quite a revelation of the not so great kind, because it made me truly wish I had watched that first or that at all, but right after oen time, I could not watch it again.
Overall I was a bit entertained from the first half, very entertained from the second half, but in the end disappointed by the overall package. It was not bad, but also not epic for me. Worse than the originals? Oh no, but I was hoping for more.

editing: 8 of 10 (the hospital scenes were too long and a bit confusing)
entertainment: 5 of 10 for the “John Carpenter Remix and 7 of 10 for the original purist soundtrack (which is an estimate, since I did not watch that entirely)(originals: H2: 6 H_resurrection: 4, H20: 6)

Image and video quality:
Image and video quality were very good.
Video quality: 10 of 10

Audio editing and audio quality:
There were no hard audio cuts. Audio was too low ion volume.
audio editing: 10 of 10
sound quality: 8 of 10
resulting in a 9 of 10 for overall audio

presentation:
The DVD comes with slightly but quite basic animated menus with sound that are ok. Cover art is attached and quite well done. The extras contain a different audio mix (which is a great extra) and a basic info menu. There is a new title sequence in the movie and also partly self created end credits that could have been done a lot better. The fanedit.info is detailed and informative.
To sum it up:
Some room for improvement, yet an overall really good presentation.
resulting in a 8 of 10 for overall presentation

Final result: 7 of 10 (because I stick in this case to my concept of not rating more than 1 star higher than the movie was entertaining for me)
A bold concept and an interesting edit. For Halloween fans highly recommended.