"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Halloween: Resurrection

A couple years back you’ll remember that I reviewed the whole HALLOWEEN series. And I mean the WHOLE series. The first one, the middle ones, the last one. The very last one. The one where they got the original stars back, they got a halfway decent script, they brought everything full circle, they chopped that fucker’s head off and they cut to the credits. The end, forever. Never again. Against all odds, they came up with a decent wrapup to an endless series of bad sequels.

Well sadly what they went and did, they talked poor Michael Meyers into doing ANOTHER one, one that nobody in the world wanted, one more in the tradition of parts 4, 5 and 6, but even worse. I guess I can’t blame Mike, with a mug like that how you gonna get leading man roles. He’s a character actor at best unless he’s in HALLOWEEN, then he’s the star.

Halloween: ResurrectionThey never really mean it when they say a movie is the last in the series, but I’m telling you, I really mean it when I say this is the worst in the series. The premise is sort of a self consciously modernized HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. Busta Rhymes (the rapper who I think should play Dolemite instead of LL Cool J) is Vincent Price, because he’s gathered all these kids together to spend the night in Mike Meyer’s childhood home, and straps cameras onto them like some kind of REAL WORLD type show, but it’s broadcast on the internet instead of real tv. This premise makes the following unwise assumptions:

  1. the audience doesn’t know that nobody watches “internet programming”, especially live on a day they could be doing something else (i.e. Halloween)
  2. the audience believes home computers can download 100 live feeds of full screen tv quality digital video at the same time
  3. people still believe computers make blipping and blooping noise whenever you hit a key or a graphic appears on the screen
  4. we’re really gonna buy that this company won’t get paid for their event until after it’s over
  5. we really want to see a HALLOWEEN movie that is almost entirely about a group of kids walking through the shadows of one small house
    5b. and that we don’t mind if all they ever cut away to is a bunch of kids at a party standing in a room watching a computer screen with the kids walking through the shadows of that one small house.

I think I called UNDISPUTED asinine, but I wasted it, I should’ve saved that word for this one. [update from the futuristic year of 2022: Sorry Walter Hill, I don’t know why I was so hard on your movie. It was a long time ago!]

The one section that doesn’t revolve around the house is the ridiculous opening which explains away the great ending to the last movie. We are told that the Michael Meyers who attacked Laurie at the end and then got his head chopped off was actually a paramedic who Michael had switched clothes with! In this scene Michael tracks Laurie down at an asylum where she has set up a bunch of boobie traps and manages to hang him upside down. But he kills her anyway and frames one of the other inmates for the murder. I guess I wasn’t paying attention in this series – when did Michael and Laurie turn into fuckin MacGyver?

This is one of those embarassingly out of touch movies where they seem to think that being on the cutting edge of technology is enough to make the movie work, even though they’re not really on the cutting edge of technology. They keep cutting to shaky, fuzzy digital video footage from mini-cameras attached to the actors. This was an interesting new gimmick in 1986 when they did it in ALIENS. Now it’s 2002, it’s, what, ten or more years later. You’re gonna have to try a little harder to dazzle us, asshole.

As long as I had to see the fuckin thing, I wish I saw it in the theater so I could’ve heard everybody laugh every time they had a “subliminal” Michael Meyers face appear when the video flipped over. SPOOOOOOKKKY!

Busta Rhymes is the most charismatic individual in the movie, but he doesn’t get shit to do except talk to himself making wacky jokes like he thought the movie was supposed to be more along the lines of HOW HIGH. Supporting my theory that he should play Dolemite, there are scenes where he does fake kung fu on Michael Meyers and is overdubbed with Bruce Lee style squeals. We understand that he knows these kung fu moves because earlier he watched a kung fu movie, which was also overdubbed with Bruce Lee style squeals, even though it wasn’t a Bruce Lee movie. At the end Busta has a sudden change of heart and makes a half assed stick it to the man speech about the media exploiting violence, which I guess you learn after you’ve faced Michael Meyers. It’s like one of those dolphin encounters you can get.

There is one new addition to the Michael Meyers mythology: we now know that rappers are immune to his killing powers. When LL Cool J survived what seemed like certain death, I thought it was a fluke. This time Busta gets stabbed several times in the back, but appears again to save the day. At the end he gets a sling for an apparent arm injury but his rapping powers have healed over the stab wounds.

If Mike shows up again I wouldn’t bother calling the sherriff, just call the Wu-Tang Clan.

The asshole responsible for this poppycock is Rick Rosenthal, the director of HALLOWEEN part 2. That movie was okay but apparently he did a bad job so they had to fire him and have John Carpenter reshoot a bunch of the scenes. In an attempt to recapture that classic not-that-badness, they hired Rosenthal again and fired him again and replaced him with (I heard) Steve Miner, who doesn’t contribute any of the thrill he gave to part 7 or Friday the 13th parts 2 and 3-D. Before they did the reshoots, Dimension wasn’t even planning to release this piece of shit, but Ms. Curtis and Mr. Rhymes talked them into it. I guess you can’t blame Busta, he probaly told everybody he was in a HALLOWEEN movie and nobody believed him, and if they hadn’t released the movie he would’ve looked like a liar. Still, I’d rather be called a liar than be called the guy from HALLOWEEN 8.

One final question for you folks to ponder. How come they always got wires in these type of movies, and they always get cut and then they cause massive electro shock and fire. What kind of electricians do they have in Haddonfield, Illinois? They need to be more careful. Not that I don’t appreciate a livewire laying around here or there in case Busta needs to shock Michael Meyers in the dick. But there are kids in that neighborhood. Anyway, Michael’s house finally gets burned down at the end, so they’ve finally gotten rid of Laurie Strode and the Meyers house.

Or have they? I’m guessing Laurie faked her death, like she did in part 2 according to conversations in part 7. And the house was actually an innocent house that Michael switched with his house at the last minute.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 1st, 2002 at 12:11 am and is filed under Horror, Reviews, Thriller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

32 Responses to “Halloween: Resurrection”

  1. This movie really is terrible. Whatever you think of the remake I wish they would have made it before this thing got made. Killing off Laurie was disappointing. I’ve noticed something in H20 that might mean they always intended to go further in the series. When Michael gets pinned to the branch at the end and suddenly comes to, he starts to feel his mask like he does not understand why this thing is on his head. So maybe they planned to make it the paramedic all along.

  2. HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION has Busta Rhymes kickboxing Michael Meyers. That needs to exist.

  3. I guess this movie is non-canon now, which I’m fine with.

    Blumhouse

    You've been asking for updates on Halloween, well, we've got one! Jamie Lee Curtis returns to her iconic role as Laurie Strode in HALLOWEEN, released by Universal Pictures on October 19, 2018....

  4. I’m fine with RESURRECTION being non-canon, because it’s pretty awful. The more fundamental question: Bringing Jamie-Lee Curtis back yet again for “H40,” really? Feels super thirsty and uninspired. Say what you will about Rob Zombie, but he had a vision and made the franchise his own. Never say never, but it smacks of nostalgia event cash-in, and they’ve already played that card. I will say that it’s kind of cool to have ended the franchise, started a new remake franchise, and now apparently resumed the original franchise. That doesn’t happen often, does it? Does this mean they might bring Val Kilmer back for the next BATMAN?

  5. Yeah, I agree. I thought HALLOWEEN H20 already did a pretty good job bringing back Laurie Strode and having it feel meaningful and conclusive. I don’t know what this could bring to the table.

  6. yeah it kinda sucks that, from the sounds of things, *nothing* post HALLOWEEN II is canon anymore. it’s the whole narrowly-avoided-Blomkamp-ALIEN 5 debacle all over again.

    wait. i’m trying to stay positive at the moment. i’m sure this rebootinuation will be great. ALIEN 5 would have been great. mother! was great and definitely not a pretentious, self-important, heavy handed, staggeringly obvious, laughable, hollow, completely undisciplined, pompous, tedious, annoying, boring, pathetic, joyless, repetitious total and utter failure of an “”””””””art film”””””””” that gave me a literal headache because i was frowning and rolling my eyes so hard whilst watching it etc

    everything is great.

  7. Crazy to think we’re close to living in the era of H20-20.

  8. You guys are way to nice to “visions” because shitty visions are still shitty visions. No vision ribbon in my world

  9. Oh, Sterny. I enjoyed Zombie’s H2. I found it bold, confident, and powerful. I was engrossed. Zombie’s H1, I have no particular love for.

  10. As gimmicky as it is that’s the only thing that has me interested. Didn’t give a shit when I heard it was from Blumhouse with that Danny comedian guy as the writer. However now that it has enteres gimmick territory fuck it I’m in.

    I didn’t bother with Zombie’s H2. The first was so bad (the Love Hurts montage is still one of the most unintentionally hilarious things I’ve ever seen) I saved myself the torture.

  11. It would be awesome if this also skipped part 6 and had the Laurie Strode and Jamie Lloyd stories converge like a lot of people assumed would happen with H20.

  12. I own Zombie H2 and have watched it I think 3 times, and it’s gotten better each time. I’ve seen Zombie H1, and it did nothing for me, and I have no desire to revisit. I’m also no Zombie acolyte. I’ve not seen 1000 CORPSES, DEVIL’S REJECTS, and I saw LORDS OF SALEM and thought it was decent. I think if you check out H2 you’d be pleasantly surprised, but who knows.

  13. I still haven’t seen the theatrical cut of HALLOWEEN 2, but the director’s cut is undoubtedly Zombie’s best work, displaying a sensitivity and humanity that was completely absent from his other redneck geek shows. For once, there seems to be a higher moral purpose behind Zombie’s fascination with brutality, and the characters feel like people, not just collections of torturously convoluted profanity. There’s a scene with Brad Dourif (not seen in the theatrical cut, I’m told) that is among the most devastating I’ve ever seen, and certainly the realest and most humane treatment of the real cost of death that anyone’s ever put in a slasher movie. That and the only legitimately eerie psychedelic images Zombie has ever composed (his other weirdnesses feel secondhand, just a compilation of motifs he cribbed from other sources) make it the unheralded high point of what is becoming an oeuvre of increasingly diminishing returns.

  14. Ditto that. The Director’s Cut is the way to go. I have not seen 31. Zombie’s general steez is white trash nihilism and weird imagery, but he rises above that with H2.

  15. H2 does have two great scenes. It also has one of the dumbest things in the movie. Myers literally is in two places at once while at the same time managing to somehow know the right person to kill even though he would have never known they were friends.

  16. Skani- The Romero DEAD films are an example of a series which got going again after a couple of remakes. Can’t think of any others; TEXAS CHAINSAW 2013, sort of?

  17. Pacman, good call. LAND OF THE DEAD is great. Didn’t see his subsequent ones. The difference with Romero Zombie films is that they feel more like “spiritual sequels” or something. Definitely happening in a similar kind of universe, but the tone and feel and look and characters vary wildly across the film, and there’s no central identifiable antagonist or protagonist to follow through the films. There’s not any obvious continuity, though there is a general sense of the Zombie plague and human response moving through progressive phases across the films. Kind of a weird one. TCM 2013 I guess does fit the bill, perhaps.

  18. I like Land a bunch but the politics of this one can fuck off.

  19. The politics of LAND? What rubbed you the wrong way? I don’t want to fall into some kind of variant of Godwin’s Law where we end up arguing about Donald Trump after two iterations, but the social commentary and satire in LAND struck me as pretty solid.

  20. It wasn’t really the rich versus the poor. That was fine. I was referring to the end where the guy is like “well I guess the zombies are just looking for a home too see I better not use this rocket launcher on them to kill them” and I”m like “bitch, they’re trying to fucking kill you, there is no grey area”

  21. I know it’s just a music video but am I the only one that isn’t impressed with the Christine music video Carpenter directed? Look, if he gets himself motivated to make a good movie again, I’m all for it, but as it’s own thing it’s pretty lame.

    Also, you’d think that he would try to make a music video for They Live and try to make it like super political or something.

  22. I totally forgot that bit. Yeah, that doesn’t scan. Like Wu-Tang, zombies ain’t nuttin to fuk wit.

  23. The music video was just a promotional thing he did for his Anthology album. I hate it that people refer to it as a short film. Which it is not. It´s hardly a music video even. Just a neat little thing he easily could have skipped.

  24. Shoot, even John Carpenter called it a music video so it’s a music video.

  25. You´re right. It is. I´m just annoyed when people make a big deal out of it not really being a big deal. I liked that he came out of his shell and did some shooting, that´s all. I´m just sensitive to the immediate relation to his other body of works and that it should somehow be compared. It shouldn´t. It was just a fun thing that didn´t cost you a goddamn thing.

  26. That came out a little harsher than I intended.

  27. It´s just that when I saw Carpenter posted a music video of his own making of Facebook it brought me a smile and I felt a little bit of happiness just that he did this little thing. It´s not something you´d remember in the future, but for me, who is not having a lot of fun right now it warmed my heart just a little bit. Sorry if I got defensive there.

  28. It’s ok, I love John Carpenter but on its own it was pretty lame. At least he is starting to work again.

  29. It’s weird when these dudes slow down and kind of cash out of filmmaking. They feel like slowing down, smelling the roses, or focusing their energies elsewhere. It’s totally their right to do so. They don’t owe us anything, and it may be that the creative juices just aren’t flowing like they used to, and they’re doing themselves and us all a favor. Yet, for as long as they’re still kicking and puttering around, there’s that sense of possibility. Spielberg is still cranking, and he’s Carpenter’s age. Hitchcock kept cranking. Why not Carpenter? The sense of what could be is a bit haunting.

  30. It’s very stressful work and if you find a way to pursue your passions without having to conform to a system that doesn’t vibe with your sensibilities I get why you would. He’s not the wirey younger 30 to 40 year old dude with that hunger anymore. Maybe he feels he’s said all he’s tried to say.

    I myself work somewhere where I have to put on a damn theatrical performance every stinking shift. It’s been a tricky thing for someone like myself to have to conform so much. Down right brutal. But you know the rat race.

    I’m finally tapping into that creative hunger inside me to see if it helps me find a way out. I’d kill to even be involved with 2 prime Carpenter accomplishments. I know I’d retire after something like that and pursue fixing cars and carpentry and other shit I actually like. So yeah I get it.

  31. I love that Carpenter decided to fuck off and become a rock star in his spare time. We all love movies and all, but has anyone heard one single thing about that business that makes you think it’s not a shitstorm of ego, pettiness, greed, betrayal, and basic fuckstickery? What’s a standup guy like Carpenter need with any of that? You think he gives a shit about weekend grosses? He’s got nothing to prove. Any filmmaker would kill to have his track record. Oh no, were his last couple movies not great? Motherfucker, he directed ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and THE THING back to back. Fuck your dog-and-pony show.

    If he ever wants to get back in the game for real, I’d love it. But until then, I take comfort in knowing that he’s out there, takin’ ‘er easy for all us sinners.

  32. If you’re cravin’ some more Carpenter check out his first season episode of MASTERS OF HORROR if you haven’t seen it, it’s one of the best episodes of the whole series.

    Unfortunately I didn’t like his season two episode as much, but that first one, titled CIGARETTE BURNS (and written by Drew McWeeney no less) is good enough that it could have been expanded into a feature length movie, it’s better than his actual last two feature length movies.

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