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.
They 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:
- the audience doesn’t know that nobody watches “internet programming”, especially live on a day they could be doing something else (i.e. Halloween)
- the audience believes home computers can download 100 live feeds of full screen tv quality digital video at the same time
- people still believe computers make blipping and blooping noise whenever you hit a key or a graphic appears on the screen
- we’re really gonna buy that this company won’t get paid for their event until after it’s over
- 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.
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.
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