When reimagining John Carpenter’s classic Halloween in 2007, director, musician, and all-around scary dude Rob Zombie made plenty of concessions to the original (cheap plastic mask, anyone?). So, now that he’s paid proper homage to the franchise, he’s been given free rein to take psycho killer Michael Meyers 
in a whole new direction. And oh, how scary it is.

Rob Zombie


Why did you come back for the sequel?
Because now I can do whatever the fuck I want. The characters from the first movie are kind of 
a big snooze. They’re just nice girls who get victimized, so there really is not a lot to do there.

How’s it going to be different this time?
I wanted to make it more of a character study of the aftermath. I approached it like it was real. This is a movie about a girl who wakes up in a hospital to find that the man who put her there—and killed her friends—is her brother. That is compelling drama.

Has your musical background helped you work on a series famous for its theme song?
Music is everything. Halloween has got to have one of the most recognizable music scores of all time. For such a small film, it’s right up there with Jaws or Star Wars. So there’s always the search for 
the perfect piece of music for each scene. You know, when they first screened Halloween without that famous music people were like, “Ugh, this movie sucks.” And then you add the music and suddenly it’s like, “That’s genius!”

You’re a huge movie buff. Does the idea of remakes and reimaginings bother you at all?
It kind of bummed me out at first, but then I thought, “Who gives a shit?” If the movies are good, that’s great. A lot of the movies I loved as a kid were remakes, like Dracula in the ’70s. It’s been going on forever.

Halloween II hits theaters August 28.