{"id":41444,"date":"2023-10-23T00:00:19","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T04:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=41444"},"modified":"2023-10-22T22:20:58","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T02:20:58","slug":"bad-movie-monday-halloween-resurrection-2002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/23\/bad-movie-monday-halloween-resurrection-2002\/","title":{"rendered":"BAD MOVIE MONDAY: HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION (2002)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Watching each new entry in a long running franchise is kind of like eating a big bowl of delicious super spicy authentic Texas Chili. The first is awesome. The second is pretty darn good too. The third is when you start to feel like this might be a good time to stop. The fourth is a bit decadent. The fifth is just pure unadulterated gluttony. The sixth you have to nearly force down your throat out of sheer perversion and greed. The seventh makes you feel as if there is something broken and very goddamn wrong with you. Why can\u2019t you stop eating you degenerate??? The EIGHTH though? That\u2019s when you realize that you are a completely depraved lunatic who will need immediate medical attention because your butthole will not able to push out everything that you\u2019ve just shoved into your body.<\/p>\n

Halloween Resurrection is the eighth entry in the Halloween franchise, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to review today. It\u2019s the cinematic equivalent of the third and fourth circles of Hell.<\/p>\n

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Quick Recap! When COVID shut down everything in early 2020, I started an online bad movie night get-together with some friends that we eventually dubbed \u201cBad Movie Monday\u201d. The premise was simple: We\u2019d torture each other every Monday with the worst trash we could find, tell a few jokes, cheer each other up, and in the process maybe discover some weird obscure cinema that we might never have seen any other way. This series of reviews will feature highlights of those night, along with some of my favourite trash, so you can all share in the fun and maybe get some ideas for your own movie night.<\/p>\n

My friends and I watched this one for Bad Movie Monday last year since Halloween coincidentally happened to be on a Monday. So it seemed appropriate to torture ourselves with what is arguably the absolute worst and most cynically made of all the Halloween films. It stars Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Ryan Merriman, Sean Patrick Thomas, Tyra Banks, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Brad Loree as Michael Myers. It’s directed by Rick Rosenthal, who also directed the rather excellent Halloween II. However, don’t let that lull you into a false sense of hope, because after watching this I very much suspect that John Carpenter directed quite a few scenes in Halloween II and almost certainly did all of the pre and post production work himself. Perhaps I\u2019m being a bit dismissive of Rick\u2019s contributions, but Halloween Resurrection certainly makes the theory that he didn\u2019t do much on Halloween II sound rather convincing.<\/p>\n

Okay, a little history before we begin reviewing this empty soulless shell. By the time Resurrection came out in 2002 the Halloween franchise had seen not one, not two, but THREE reboots. They tried rebooting the series as an anthology with Halloween III, and when that didn’t work they brought back Michael Myers in Halloween 4. It was a soft reboot of the first two films that ignored just how big the explosion and resulting fire at the end of Halloween II was. Then, when that continuity became utterly insane with Druid cults and incest, they tried rebooting the whole thing AGAIN with Halloween H20. This time the new reboot once again re-imagined itself as a sequel to Halloween II, but ignored parts 3 to 6. In the H20 continuity Loomis was severely injured by the blast in the hospital at the end of the second film, Laurie went into hiding under an assumed name, and Michael disappeared for 20 years. Where did he go? How did he come back? Where did he get a new mask and coveralls? Why did he wait twenty years? What has he been doing this whole time? I don\u2019t know. Nor do I think the filmmakers know either. H20 wasn\u2019t a bad movie, but it was drenched in 1990s slasher revival tropes. If they could have gotten away with calling it Screamoween, they would have. Resurrection, on the other hand, doesn\u2019t even aspire to imitate it\u2019s own imitator, it just wants to rip off whatever was popular at the time. Namely, found footage films like The Blair Witch Project, Reality TV, and the internet.<\/p>\n

Great…<\/p>\n

You know, people have trashed David Gordon Green for his recent Halloween trilogy, but I thought he did a good job. None of his three films feel as if they were made purely out of a cynical desire to exploit the franchise for money like Resurrection does. Yeah, Kills suffers from what I feel often afflicts a lot of modern movies, which is that the script seems to have been banged together at the last second, but other than that all three are pretty decent. Flawed, but decent. I even really like the last one, which you can\u2019t say doesn\u2019t have ambition at least. Heard Green screwed the pooch with the new Exorcist, but I have not seen it and cannot comment.<\/p>\n

WHAT\u2019S THE STORY, JEREMY?
\nWe open with Laurie committed to an insane asylum after having apparently been driven crazy by the fact that it wasn\u2019t Michael she decapitated at the end of H20, but a paramedic that Michael swapped clothes with and put his mask on. He crushed the man\u2019s windpipe so he couldn\u2019t cry for help. Yeah, no one\u2019s gonna win any writing awards here. Anyway, she\u2019s consumed by guilt and waiting for the day when the real Michael returns to kill her. Intending to lure him in so she can use a trap to finish him off for good. Honestly, this part of the movie is not bad. I mean, don\u2019t get me wrong. This is incredibly stupid, but I would have watched a 90 minute version of this story. It\u2019s a hell of a lot better than the actual movie we end up getting.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the actual movie about? Well, Laurie\u2019s plan fails and she is killed about fifteen minutes in. Now, since Michael can\u2019t chase Josh Brolin because he\u2019s much too expensive for this movie, the screenplay switches gears and we follow a bunch of hot hip twenty-somethings staying at the Myers house on Halloween night as part of a Reality TV show called \u201cDangertainment\u201d that\u2019s hosted by Busta Rhymes. I don\u2019t think I need to explain any more of this intricate labyrinthine story, do I? I think y\u2019all can figure out what comes next. The only real moment of note is that Busta Rhymes kicks Michael\u2019s ass and drops the single greatest one liner in any of the Halloween movies: \u201cTrick or Treat Motherfucker!\u2019 A thing of beauty that shall never be equalled.<\/p>\n

PREDICTIONS, PROMISES, AND PONDERING!
\n#1 – Jamie Lee Curtis is in this only long enough to be legally credited on the poster. Also, she didn’t even bother posing for a poster head shot. That\u2019ll give you a clue as to how interested she was in reprising the role of Laurie Strode for this turd.<\/p>\n

#2 – The fact that the tagline for this movie is “EVIL FINDS ITS WAY HOME” instead of “TRICK OR TREAT MOTHERFUCKER!” shows that the filmmakers had no clue about the strengths of their movie.<\/p>\n

#3 \u2013 One thing I\u2019ve always hated about the Halloween sequels is how bad the mask looks. It can\u2019t be a question of money. Tommy Lee Wallace made the original that they used in the first and second films using a cheap Captain Kirk mask, some scissors, and a couple of cans of spray paint. Yet, no matter how much time and money the producers spent to recreate that appearance it always looked like ass. They even went to far as to get Stan Winston to try and make one for H20. That couldn\u2019t have been cheap. Yet, the one Winston made still looks like some bland knockoff from the dollar store. In fact, it wasn\u2019t until Rob Zombie came along that we had finally had something that looked decent. So, as much as I didn\u2019t like the remake of Halloween, I can really appreciate the fact that Zombie put a lot of effort into the getting the mask to look right.<\/p>\n

#4 \u2013 Speaking of the mask, allow me to posit a pet theory of mine: You ever notice how, in the original 1978 movie, the mask that Michael wears kind of looks like him as a kid? Look at Michael\u2019s wild hair when he\u2019s six, then look at the mask\u2019s wild hair. It\u2019s pretty similarly styled. Same blank expression too, and the darkest of eyes of course. I think Michael made his mask. It wasn\u2019t something he got off the shelf. A hardware store would have had spray paint and scissors and I\u2019m sure Star Trek, and by extension Captain Kirk masks, exists in the Halloween universe. Night of the Living Dead and The Thing certainly seem to be popular movies.<\/p>\n

#5 \u2013 The Myers house in Resurrection is shockingly similar to the house in the original Halloween. I\u2019m actually impressed that they took the time and trouble to make it look so good. Now, if they could only have used 1% of the money they spent building this rather impressive Myers house set and fixed that godawful mask.<\/p>\n

#6 \u2013 Man, this movie makes me miss the late 1990s and early 2000s. Yeah, we were totally a bunch of loud, stupid, offensive, crude assholes, but what a time to be alive! Bloodhound Gang was playing constantly on the radio, Ed the Sock was a bone-fide comedic phenomenon, and women with tramp stamps as far as the eye could see.<\/p>\n

#7 – Katee Sackhoff is very cute in this. The only way she could be more of a nineties chick is if she was wearing a flannel shirt tied around her waist and listening to Mudhoney while driving around Seattle in an old car with Lollapalooza stickers on it.<\/p>\n

#8 \u2013 I like to think that this movie and Halloween Kills could both have been immensely improved if they\u2019d swapped catchphrases. How badass would it have been to see Busta Rhymes spin kick Michael in the face and go \u201cEVIL DIES TONIGHT!\u201d and how much more entertaining would it have been to hear the angry mob in Kills chant \u201cTRICK OR TREAT MOTHERFUCKER!\u201d as they chase after Michael? Just a thought.<\/p>\n

#9 \u2013 The two guys dressed up as Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega for Halloween is peak nineties, even though this takes place in 2002.<\/p>\n

#10 \u2013 Movie, neither you nor Busta Rhymes\u2019 character earned the right to give a long moralizing speech about exploiting violence and murder.<\/p>\n

WAS IT REALLY THAT BAD?
\nSadly, yes. It\u2019s kind of slow and kind of bland. It\u2019s not the worst mainstream teen horror movie to come out of the post-Scream boom, but it\u2019s pretty bad. At the same time, I feel it can be very watchable with friends and the right frame of mind. It\u2019s dumb but fun, and if you\u2019re a nineties kid you might enjoy this, if only for nostalgia\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n

Still, having watched this, I often think of how going back to the well to make more and more and more sequels becomes untenable after a while. To paraphrase The Bible: What does it profit a film to gain a whole franchise if it loses it\u2019s own soul? John Carpenter\u2019s Halloween was a masterclass in tension and suspense, a nearly perfect horror movie in every way that worked just fine all by itself. It didn\u2019t need a sequel. Never mind NINE sequels, and a remake, and a sequel to the remake. Maybe I am a cranky old man, but I simply do not want to see the same goddamn movie over and over again. I want to see ONE movie, and I want it to grab me. There is something noble about having the confidence of allowing a successful or cult movie not to have a sequel.<\/p>\n

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