Halloween: Resurrection review.
Michael Myers is back for another adventure. This time reality tv is on the chopping block. Yeah…it’s a series low point.
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.
Halloween: Resurrection
Directed by Rick Rosenthal
Screenplay by Larry Brand and Sean Hood
Starring Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajich, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Tyra Banks, Katee Sackhoff and Jamie Lee Curtis
Halloween: Resurrection Review
In 1998 the Halloween franchise marked its 20th anniversary by releasing Halloween H20. Jamie Lee Curtis returned to her iconic role of Laurie Strode for the first time since Halloween II 17 years earlier. Series stalwart Donald Pleasence had passed away three years earlier. Original director John Carpenter had long moved on from the franchise himself…but was in line to return to the director’s chair until the Weinsteins wouldn’t agree to his demands. As far as I can tell, co-writer/producer Debra Hill was never approached to take part in the production. Despite 3/4ths of the tentpoles of the original not partaking…Halloween H20 was a big hit and reinvigorated the franchise. Four years later Halloween: Resurrection arrived to kill it.
I’m not going to mince words. Halloween: Resurrection is the worst entry in the Halloween franchise. I may hate Rob Zombie’s Halloween II…but I at least respect that he made something original and true to himself. Resurrection is a complete mess. It’s more interested in standing on a soapbox about reality TV than treating the Michael Myers character with any respect. It also finds time to crap on the final girl concept.
It’s not all bad, mind you. We do get to see the (brief) return of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode. Her character was given a perfect send off in H20…finally getting revenge on her brother and ending her nightmare by chopping his head clean off. The box office success of the film meant that was going to be unwritten no matter how satisfying it was. Curtis returned for the opening of the sequel to end it in a very different way. This time…Michael Myers succeeds in killing her.
It’s a fascinating inclusion in the series. Timelines have been rewritten so many times (Strode herself was said to have died in a car accident in Halloween 4) that nothing remains canon forever. It’s kind of neat to have an alternate ending that gives us Laurie’s demise at the hands of Michael Myers. Curtis shines as always in her limited role. She doesn’t make it past the fifteen-minute mark…but has easily the best part in Halloween: Resurrection.
The way they explain Myers’ surviving the end of H20 is one of the dumbest things in a franchise with no shortage of them, however. Michael Myers had switched places with a paramedic and that is who Laurie beheaded at the end of the film. Yep. That level of stupidity. It starts Resurrection off on a bad foot, to be sure. Something about rewriting the understanding of superior previous films that I may or may not have mentioned repeatedly. It’s the first bad idea we get. It’s far from the last.
The bulk of Halloween: Resurrection centers around Busta Rhymes reality TV show. I know he has a character name…but let’s be honest…he’s Busta Rhymes. His new idea is to livestream a group of young people spending the night in the old Myers’ house. That’s not an entirely empty concept until they put it into practice. This movie would be far better had the Laurie opening been the actual movie and this livestream concept the cold open. It’s an idea that can’t sustain a feature length film.
The cast isn’t bad. We can get into the Busta Rhymes of it all…but he’s not the problem here. He’s got a good screen presence and is certainly going for it. He just has terrible material to work with. We’ll get back to that in a moment. Some of the fresh faces who enter the Myers’ house are incredibly annoying…but they’re supposed to be. So good for them, I guess. There has been worse acting in this series than we get from a large part of Resurrection’s cast.
Now…it’s true, this is the movie where Michael Myers fights Busta Rhymes. And Busta Rhymes wins. It would be annoying in any more…it’s somehow made more annoying by this being the one where the ultimate final girl Laurie Strode was taken out by The Shape. It also marginalizes the film’s final girl, Sara. Busta saves the day, defeats the big bad, and gives a speech about all he has learned about the dangers of reality TV. God, this is a stupid movie.
It’s also not remotely scary. Not only is this the least intimidating Michael Myers has ever been portrayed as (and we once saw Paul Rudd defeat him by placing stones on the floor), but it also has zero atmosphere. Part of that is the constant switching between first person perspectives as the video switches from camera to camera. A larger part of it is that this is a poorly made movie. Halloween II director Rick Rosenthal returned to direct Resurrection. He all but proves that John Carpenter had a heavy thumb on the former’s production. In lieu of scary imagery, atmosphere or jump scares…we get a lot of loud noises. That’s the one trick Rosenthal had in his bag. A loud noise when you don’t expect it. Repeatedly. Actually, his one other trick is for producers of the tv show just missing a murder on the monitors. Stupidity.
The story ends with Michael Myers being taken to the coroner. His eyes open and we cut to black. It would be a tease for sequels we would never see. Halloween: Resurrection would mark the end of the H20 timeline. The next time we would see Michael Myers he would be covered in the filth of Rob Zombie’s remake. Thankfully, that timeline would also be wiped out eventually. Michael Myers would return in a direct sequel to the original in Halloween (2018). Jamie Lee Curtis returned, once again, in a series of films unconnected to the H20 version of her character. This time…she would be able to wrap things up on her own terms. Leaving Resurrection’s opening as an interesting, if inconsequential, moment in the franchise. And the rest of the movie in the trash where it belongs.
Scare Value
The only relevance that Halloween: Resurrection contains is the opening scene where Jamie Lee Curtis is forced to play Laurie Strode again. Even that would be wiped away by her (willing) return to the character in Halloween (2018). Every other aspect of the film is insulting to fans of the original, the series, horror or film in general. It’s a movie that would have been infinitely better had the main story been the cold open…and the opening the actual movie.
1.5/5
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