HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION (2002)

Studio:     Dimension Films
Director:    Rick Rosenthal
Writer:     Larry Brand, Sean Hood
Producer:  Paul Freeman
Stars:     Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Ryan Merriman, Daisy McCrackin, Katee Sackhoff, Billy Kay, Luke Kirby, Sean Patrick Thomas, Tyra Banks, Jamie Lee Curtis

Review Score:

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Summary:

Michael Myers stalks participants in a reality show that dares people to spend Halloween inside his haunted childhood home.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Two nurses at Grace Andersen Sanitarium discuss patient Laurie Strode, who has been in the psychiatric care facility faking catatonia in hopes of luring Michael Myers. Nurse Wells reveals that the masked man Laurie killed three years earlier was not Michael Myers. Michael actually switched uniforms with a paramedic whose larynx was crushed to prevent him from speaking. Michael sneaked away from the crime scene at Hillcrest while Laurie was tricked into beheading an innocent father of three.

Michael Myers infiltrates the sanitarium, murders two security guards, and breaks into Laurie’s room. Michael chases Laurie to the rooftop where Laurie springs a rope trap that hangs Michael upside down by his foot. Before cutting the rope completely, Laurie moves to unmask Michael to make sure it is really him. Michael grabs Laurie and stabs her as the rope unravels, leaving both of them to dangle over the rooftop edge. Laurie kisses Michael, promises to see him in Hell, and falls to her death.

On his way out of the building, Michael gives his bloody knife to sanitarium patient Harold, a serial killer enthusiast.

Haddonfield University students Sara Moyer, Jennifer Danzig, and their friend Rudy Grimes learn that DangerTainment selected them to participate in an online reality show where they will spend Halloween inside Michael Myers’ haunted childhood home. The three of them attend an orientation conducted by producers Freddie Harris and Nora Winston where they also meet fellow participants Bill Woodlake, Jim Morgan, and Donna Chang. Sara briefly considers dropping out of the show, but Freddie convinces her to stay.

While he rigs a camera inside the Myers house, Michael kills video tech Charley by stabbing him in the throat with a tripod.

Sara communicates with her online friend Deckard, whom she believes is a computer-savvy graduate student. In reality, ‘Deckard’ is high school freshman Myles Barton. Myles’ friend Scott convinces him to attend a costume party. At the party, Myles sneaks away to a study to watch Sara’s show on a computer, and gradually attracts more partygoers as interested viewers.

The show begins. Freddie and Nora monitor activity from a control center as the six participants explore the house.

Michael breaks through a mirror to kill Bill.

Jim and Donna unlock a floorboard hatch in the basement that leads to an underground torture chamber. Jim and Donna start to have sex, but a wall crumbles, scaring them with fake skeletons staged by Freddie and Nora.

Freddie enters the house disguised as Michael Myers. Freddie encounters the real Michael, but dismisses him under the assumption that he is merely Charley in another costume.

Donna discovers the hidden subterranean room where Michael Myers had been living. Michael finds Donna and impales her on a broken metal rod.

Still disguised as Michael, Freddie grabs Sara, prompting Jim to hit him with a board. Freddie remotely cuts off the cameras to explain he is putting on a show and to ask everyone to play along. Freddie leaves and the show resumes.

Sara and Rudy decide to quit when they hear Jen screaming after finding Bill’s body. Initially thinking it is just Freddie again, Sara, Rudy, and Jim watch in horror as Michael cuts off Jen’s head at the top of the staircase.

Michael chases the remaining three participants. Michael catches Jim and crushes Jim’s head with his hands.

Rudy lures Michael away from Sara. The faceoff between the two men ends when Michael stabs Rudy with multiple knives.

Sara appeals to a camera for help, specifically pleading for Deckard. Having already suspected that the broadcasted murders were real, Myles texts Sara with messages warning her about Michael’s movements.

Sara discovers Charley’s body in the attic while fleeing from Michael. Freddie finds Sara as the two of them look for a way out of the house.

Michael confronts Freddie. Freddie fights Michael using kung fu, ultimately kicking Michael through a second story window. Michael becomes strung up on a cable outside the house.

Sara and Freddie try to leave the house again. Having cut himself loose, Michael sneaks back inside and stabs Freddie.

Sara flees through an underground passageway leading to the control room, finding several bodies along the way. Sara discovers Nora butchered and hanging from the control room’s ceiling.

Michael confronts Sara. Sara battles Michael with a chainsaw, ultimately cutting an electrical wire whose sparks ignite leaking gasoline. In the subsequent commotion, Michael moves to stab Sara, but Freddie arrives to fight Michael once more.

Freddie electrocutes Michael, who stumbles backward into more wires and burns along with the house. Sara and Freddie escape.

With police, paramedics, and press on the scene, Sara publicly thanks Deckard over a live newscast. Freddie speaks to the media disparagingly about Michael Myers’ celebrity status before punching a camera. Sara and Freddie then verify that Michael Myers is inside the coroner’s body bag.

At the morgue, the coroner unzips Michael’s bag to examine his body, whose mask is melted to his face. Michael opens his eyes.

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Review:

“Are you 18?” asked the ticket taker with his eyebrows in a V and more than a mouthful of attitude in his voice. “I’m 27,” I laughed by way of incredulous response. “Well, this movie is Rated R,” he volleyed in return. Perplexed as to why our silly exchange was even taking place, I assured the surly multiplex gatekeeper, “I’ll be fine,” and made my way into the theater.

When end credits rolled on “Halloween: Resurrection,” my memory rolled back to the ticket taker two hours earlier. Although his reasoning was wrong, he tried to stop me from seeing the most disappointing chapter in the storied “Halloween” saga. And like a comely Crystal Lake counselor dismissing Ralph’s ramblings as crazy, I paid dearly for not heeding his warning.

Normally, I wouldn’t want to lift so liberally from other critics’ content to fill a paragraph of my own. But some of these quick quotes about the misery collectively endured in 2002 are too good to not repeat.

Dave Kehr of The New York Times sniped, “spectators will indeed sit open-mouthed before the screen, not screaming but yawning.” Variety’s Joe Leydon took out the sarcasm and went straight for, “more uselessly redundant and shamelessly money-grubbing than most third-rate horror sequels.” “It’s so devoid of joy and energy it makes even ‘Jason X’ … look positively Shakespearean by comparison,” quipped Lou Lumenick of The New York Post. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Edward Guthmann simply left it at, “cheesy.”

Considering all of the above, yet taking a fresh look at the film all these years later, what I now realize is that “Halloween: Resurrection” isn’t as irredeemably awful as many people remember. It may not be particularly “good,” but it is at least formulaically functional as a straight slasher. The problem actually lies in how much of a sore thumb it is for the series as a whole.

More than anything, “Halloween: Resurrection” fails to satisfy franchise fans because it doesn’t resemble “Halloween” in any meaningful way. Rename the killer and change his mask. What would be different? You could rework the setting as Jason Voorhees’ childhood home and make the movie a “Friday the 13th” sequel just the same. Sure, a 15-minute prologue brings closure to Michael’s longstanding relationship with Laurie Strode, except it essentially operates as a short with no bearing on the other 67 minutes of the movie.

“Halloween: Resurrection” doesn’t feel much like its titular holiday either. There are a few Fall weather exteriors and decorations as well as cutaways to a costume party. But much of the movie is spent inside a cobwebbed home that looks like every other haunted house ever depicted in cinema.

The setup dares six participants to spend Halloween inside the Myers house while remote cameras capture their actions for a reality show. For this premise, the Myers house conveniently morphs from a small, suburban Midwest home into a mile-long mansion with subterranean tunnels and seemingly countless corridors. Enough distance also exists between every room that no one can hear any commotion taking place unless it happens to be five feet in front of their faces.

I mentioned in my “Halloween H20” review (review here) that the convoluted continuity involving the Man in Black, druid cult, and family bloodline inarguably reached a boiling point of incomprehensibility, although the overarching storyline still valiantly attempted to build an evolving mythology. Here, Michael’s only motivation is a “get off my lawn” grievance, dispatching random college kids who dared to intrude upon his abode. I recognize that this is the same springboard John Carpenter and Debra Hill jumped from for the 1978 original. But by this point in the property, that kind of thinness no longer flies. It’s enough to make one wish the series had kept going in its creatively crazy direction instead of reverting to such a simplistic one.

In stripping their script so far down, writers Larry Brand and Sean Hood remove almost everything that might have earned the “Halloween” in front of “Resurrection.” The audience is left to watch an assembly of empty archetypes as they creep about a dusty domicile getting killed in single file progression. Horror movie plots don’t come any duller than that.

Things become so lazy, you can’t be sure how much thought went into anything at all. One of the characters, an aspiring chef, notes that fennel in the 40-year-old house’s kitchen is surprisingly fresh. I’m still not sure if this clue means to suggest that the reality show crew futzed with the props, or hint that Michael still lives there. I love the latter possibility though. Remember, Michael is the semi-supernatural boogeyman who ate a stray dog in the first film and also eats raw rats here. The idea that he now cares enough about cuisine to keep seasoning on hand is hilarious. It doesn’t make sense that the crew would have been eating in the kitchen either, or at least not anything requiring fresh fennel. Regardless, I can come up with 1,000 ways to indicate something strange is going on in that house and none of them involve a spice rack.

Director Rick Rosenthal and company contentedly go through the motions. Count how many inconsequential close-ups there are in the beginning when a security guard purchases a vending machine snack. Then try telling me the crew only focused on critical matters. Busta Rhymes may play the only character worth mentioning and that mention is earned by virtue of being an entirely ridiculous inclusion. Katee Sackhoff comes somewhat close, yet stays forgettable to the point that the credits don’t think enough to spell her name correctly.

Additional detailing of the film’s missteps is pointless because the ultimate result remains unaltered. “Halloween” tried course correcting three times, first with “Halloween III: Season of the Witch,” then returning to the original timeline with “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers” (review here), and finally opting for a new continuity with “Halloween H20.” “Halloween: Resurrection” killed all of that, paving a path where completely rebooting became a more promising prospect than trying to salvage whatever “Resurrection” hadn’t soured.

As mildly intrigued as I was at the time to see Michael Myers continue with a mask melted to his face, I have to agree that the stakeholders made a smart call. Would anyone really have wanted another movie along the lines of “Halloween: Resurrection?”

Review Score: 40

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