![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philosoraptor42
Halloween Resurrection (2002)
This marks the return of the director of "Halloween II" and while the script isn't great and the inclusion of Busta Rhymes seems like a massive misstep, there's a more familiar tone here which is very welcome after the flatness of the previous movie.
And y'know what? While Busta Rhymes has little in the way of acting skills and looks ridiculous when he starts doing kung fu high-kicks towards the end of the film, he does at least have experience as a showman. Unlike LL Cool J's role in Halloween H20 which actively had me groaning, I at least found Busta Rhymes fun here. He's completely over-the-top and ridiculous, but he also has an energy to his performance. He makes up for lack of acting talent with enthusiasm and it's that sort of thing that at least helps to elevate this from the dreck we've seen in earlier sequels.
And we even have some semi-decent actors here too. They've got little to work with script-wise, but they put proper effort into the delivery and the director captures their performances well and it ends up at least being entertaining. Katee Sackoff, of Battlestar Galactica fame, here plays a girl hoping to use a cheesy reality tv program (yeah I know, I know) as an opportunity to reach fame and fortune.
The idea of having a reality tv program which unleashes a group of ordinary people in the house of a known murderer on Halloween seems just about plausible. Broadcasting it live on the internet and then expecting it to be massively profitable seems rather less plausible. Still, every actor has a definite character (even if they are often cliched) and Michael Myers has plenty to do over the course of the film. Even if there isn't a fantastic story here, there is an atmosphere all the same.
The opening worked a lot better than I was expecting. The previous movie finished with the final triumph of Laurie Strode over Michael Myers. That would seem to be the final end of series. Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't want to carry on making sequel after sequel, so the only way this movie could "resurrect" the series after that would be to somehow reverse things so that Michael lives and Laurie Strode is dead. How can they possibly do that?
Naturally the solution was first to show that Michael had never really died. It turns out that the figure in the final scenes of the last movie was not Michael at all. There was a crucial window for Michael to crush the voicebox of a paramedic and switch clothes with him before leaving. So the body wheeled out of the school was not Michael at all. The clever part of this is that when "Michael" had been struggling and trapped at the end of "Halloween H20" it is now explained that this was because the man was trying to remove his mask and reveal his true identity.
We are now told that Laurie Strode has spent the last few years in an institution processing the guilt. She seems suicidal since she has been found on the roof a few times. But is Laurie Strode really giving up? Not a bit of it. There's a proper showdown between Laurie and Michael which I won't spoil the ins and outs of here. When Laurie inevitably fails to destroy Michael forever, she kisses him and tells him "I'll see you in hell" before she dies.
This film has set Michael back up as the central figure in his own franchise and might at least have given the opportunity for a series with rather less baggage since Michael's connection finally seems to be solely to his old house rather than to tracking down the same old family members over and over again. Then again, perhaps the series loses something without repeated appearances from specific protagonists to counter Michael as an antagonist. Dr. Loomis was a welcome presence because he was the Van Helsing figure who could inform whatever hapless victims Michael was facing that year what they were up against. But if Michael is just a faceless killer who waits in a paticular location for whichever idiots decide to ignore the warnings, then he's no different really from Jason Vorhees in the Friday the 13th series. Having an informed protagonist who knows full well what they are up against should, arguably, lead to more interesting stories. But then again so far it really hasn't led to anything of the sort.
"Halloween Resurrection" is an effective series of suspense and kills, making it a proper passable slasher film. It also has, as all decent slasher movies should, a sense of fun. It is, however, horribly written. This is in no sense a good film, but it is a passable slasher flick which is much more than could be said about the last two entries.
D+
If you are interested in checking out previous entries in this series you can find them at the following links:
