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Halloween II is a 1981 horror film produced by Dino De Laurentiis and is set in the fictional Midwest town of Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween night, 1978. It is the sequel to the influential film, Halloween (1978). While other films in the Halloween series follow, this is the last one written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. The film immediately follows the events of the first film, and centers on Michael Myers's attempts to find and kill Laurie Strode and Samuel J. Loomis's efforts to track and kill Myers. Stylistically, the sequel reproduces certain key elements that made the original Halloween a success such as first-person camera perspectives and unexceptional settings. The film, however, departs significantly from the original by incorporating more graphic violence and gore, making it imitate more closely other films in the emerging splatter film subgenre. Still, Halloween II was not as successful as the original, even though it grossed $25.5 million at the box office in the United States despite its $2.5 million budget. Halloween II was intended to be the last chapter of the Halloween series to revolve around Michael Myers and the Haddonfield setting, but after the lacklustre reaction to Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), Myers returned in the film Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988).