It's interesting that a lot of the critcisms of this movie are the fault of John Carpenter.

I personally think this improved upon the original in a few ways, though it does have a few issues of it's own. They're pretty close in quality and honestly this is way better than a lot of Carpenter's later work.



It is always a bit funny when you see a director trash a movie when they've made many worse movies themselves. I recall Jeff Lieberman (Just Before Dawn, Squrim) talking about how awful he found Night of the Living Dead. I love Just Before Dawn but Squirm is okay at best and Night of the Living Dead pisses all over it.

I've heard the sister criticism for years but i always thought it worked well. Other wise Michael weirdly obsessing over one specific victim and going out of his way to kill her makes no sense. They needed the sister angle to keep her relevant to the story. When the new movies erased the sister angle they had to shoehorn her into the story by having Michael's new Doctor conveniently bring him to her doorstep.

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Carpenter didn’t even want to make this film.

The original plan for the franchise was to be a different story every time. Myers was only going to be in the first.

But he was forced to bring Myers back by the producers after the first one was a big hit.

Then he killed off Myers and Loomis so they couldn’t be brought back again.

Carpenter didn't write that the Hospital should appear virtually deserted. That's the director's job to make it credible. (But ultimately it's the producer's job to ensure that the director takes care of that, so ultimately it's at his and Debra's door.) IT could have been a part of the script that there was a reason for Laurie appearing to be the only patient. They might have moved her to a quieter wing of the hospital, away from reporters and rubberneckers. To be honest the emptiness of the hospital never bothered me except for the fact that a maternity ward with all those babies would only be found in a large, quite busy hospital.

They wound up relying on gore because none of the director's stuff was scary enough. The added scene of the girl in her house on the phone who heard Mrs Elrod screaming is the only well directed kill in the film. It only has a brief blood spurt. And Carpenter shot it.

The sibling reveal is a desperate attempt by the writer to convince himself there is a story worth telling when he knew he didn't actually have one. I guess Carpenter felt it didn't violate his original concept if Michael's first victim and his intended, perhaps final victim in this movie would each be his sister. Just for symmetry. Rather than to provide motivation or justification which he had not intended with the first movie.