Rewatching these films has become a bit of a habit, always binged back-to-back for the ultimate experience. They are now deep, personal favourites of mine. This time around I especially loved how Zombie revisits the spaces of the first film – the strip club, the houses – but they now all feel either desolate and abandoned or barricaded for an incoming storm. This Haddonfield is plagued by hostilities, battered and bruised. The open wound from the first film has now scabbed over, unhealed. So much writing about Halloween II focuses on its explicit portrayal of Laurie’s trauma, and yet people are quick to forget or ignore that Michael is essentially promoted to co-lead, with his own visions, nightmares and trauma fully represented and explored. A truly radical move on Zombie’s part. Everyone is screaming, everyone is frayed. One of cinema’s great unflinching, visceral hangovers.

Watched on blu-ray