Halloween: Resurrection Recap
Halloween: Resurrection opens with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) sitting in an asylum, waiting for Michael Myers. She’s thought about him for three years, ever since she cut the head off a man she believed to be Myers. Turns out, she actually decapitated an ambulance driver with a crushed larynx who only acted like Michael Myers. Anyway, she gets stabbed and gets a pathetic death that a horror heroine like Laurie Strode didn’t deserve.
Smash cut to Haddonfield where a different movie is happening. This one feels like they had a script for a satire of reality tv and slapped Michael Myers in it at the last moment. A pair of producers find six teenagers with attitude to take part in their reality show, Dangertainment.
What’s the show about? Oh, it’s a simple little show where our main characters stay in the Michael Myers house overnight and try to understand why he kills people. Coincidentally, Michael is also in his old house, hidden from the cameras that are all over the building, and murders most of them and then the movie ends. At this point the audience wakes up from the 90-minute nap they took.
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Halloween: Resurrection Review
To say that Halloween: Resurrection was a mistake would be an understatement. It’s a film that only exists due to a contract that stated Michael Myers can’t die (because of course such a contract existed). This film, by the way, was so bad that it ironically ended up killing the franchise until a Zombie came around to revive it.
Every choice made for Halloween: Resurrection is somehow tamong he worst choices that the franchise has ever made. Keep in mind that this franchise has an entry all about witches, another entry where Michael Myers is part of a cult called “The Thorn” and another entry where Rob Zombie turned his wife into an angel who walks around with a white horse. Halloween has had some awful entries, even by slasher movie standards. Somehow, Halloween: Resurrection manages to be the worst of them all.
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Halloween: Resurrection manages to claim the worst title for many reasons, the main one being that it looks like crap. Sure, in 2002, attaching a camera to every character’s head was considered pretty inventive. This was only three years after The Blair Witch Project put this ‘let the actors also be the cameraman” thing on the map. In Halloween: Resurrection, every single one of the shots that’s shown from the actor’s perspective looks like garbage. It’s jarring when they edit shots from these crappy little lipstick cameras alongside the proper footage of the film, which also looks bad but in a different way.
It’s painful how bad Halloween: Resurrection looks, especially when compared to the film that started the franchise. The ingenuity and visual prowess of the original film, and many of the sequels, is to be commended for making these movies visually interesting. None of that happens here, there is no moment where you enjoy a single clever thing the camera does.
Then there’s the acting, which is so bad from all parties (Except Jaime Lee Curtis but we only get 10 minutes with her) that I’m stunned some of these people had actual careers. This cast has got talent… for some reason, they decided to not use any of that during Halloween: Resurrection. The only person who is close to watchable is Busta Rhymes and that’s only because he’s so bad that it loops around to become camp.
It doesn’t help the actors that the script is pure garbage, with horrific dialogue that at best is stupid and at worst is pointless. Many characters wax poetic about the evil of Michael Myers, using frilly language that used to sound good coming out of Donald Pleasance but doesn’t work without his gravitas. The dialogue feels like a first draft that hadn’t gotten around to giving anyone a personality – unless you count “Irritating” as a personality.
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You end up wondering if the people making Halloween: Resurrection even understand the franchise they’re a part of. Halloween stands out from its slasher brethren because it’s not a film that relies on gore or shock to get the job done. The best Halloween films are all about the suspense, the violence is almost incidental in comparison. Halloween: Resurrection has no tension, it wouldn’t know what to do if you explained to it what tension looked like. It sticks with occasionally shocking violence that isn’t shocking, especially when you consider this film came out two years before Saw came out and upped the ante for violence in a mainstream horror film.
Normally I would try to give some kind of compliment to balance out the negativity, maybe it has some particularly memorable kills or a funny line but there’s nothing here. I can’t even praise the stuff with Jaime Lee Curtis in it because there’s none of it that’s good. It’s dumb and Halloween movies shouldn’t be dumb.
The Conclusion
Looking back on Halloween: Resurrection it hits me how bad it truly is. At least when I watch Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers I’m in awe of the stupidity of it and how excessive it is, at least Rob Zombie’s Halloween & Halloween 2 had the decency to make me angry. Halloween: Resurrection is a nothing film, it’s not even interesting enough to be bad.
They’d probably have made a better film if they put Michael Myers in space, at least that would be interesting. There’s nothing interesting about Halloween: Resurrection. It’s a nothing film that is best left dead.
What did you think of this 20 year Celebration of Halloween: Resurrection?
What did you think of this 20 year Celebration of Halloween: Resurrection? Did you hate it or rate it?
Let us know in the comments below.
