Published on
The last time we saw Michael Myers he got his head chopped off by his sister Laurie in Halloween H20. A movie that was a welcome return to form after some abysmal sequels. Since that ending seems pretty definitive, it came as a bit of a surprise that four years later another sequel saw the light of day: Halloween: Resurrection. A movie that features both Michael Myers and Laurie prominently on the poster and other marketing materials. This does not come as a surprise. The Halloween series is known for retconning endings from previous movies just to have an excuse for another go-round. Halloween H20 even ignores parts three to six!
During the opening scene we see how Laurie is now hospitalized after the events from the previous movie. She was already suffering from PTSD in Halloween H20, so this seems like a logical place for her character to end up. We are treated to some flashbacks from H20 with several new scenes added. It turns out that at one point Myers took down a paramedic and crushed his larynx, rendering him unable to speak. He then switched costumes and fled the scene as Laurie chopped off the head of an innocent man. The lengths they will go to in order to keep a franchise alive.
On Halloween night a few years later Myers comes to finish of Laurie in the institution. But he did not expect that Laurie has been waiting for him. Brother and sis have one final showdown together, but this time it’s Laurie who meets her demise. Yes, after four movies Myers finally reaches his goal and kills off his sister. This also means that Jamie Lee Curtis is only in the first 15 minutes of a 90 minute movie. Killing off the survivor(s) from a previous movie is a classic slasher movie trope. But killing someone in the opening scene while featuring her in all the marketing seems like false advertising to me.
Now that Myers’ crusade is finished he goes home to his abandoned childhood house. One would expect that he will go after Laurie’s son since chopping down the family tree is what he’s been doing for almost 25 years now. But since Josh Hartnett actually had a career in 2002 he was probably too expensive to appear in a low-budget slasher movie. Enter a new gimmick: the house of Michael Myers is being used in a online reality show broadcast where a group of teens are going to spend the night in his home on Halloween. Little does everybody know, the house is not as vacant as they think it is. And that’s it; that is the entire plot of Halloween: Resurrection.
Let’s face it: you know you’re not going to watch a good movie when the first name on the title sequence is Busta Rhymes. Yes, the speed-rhyming rapper is the top billed star of this movie. A movie that belongs to a franchise that once had a thespian like Donald Pleasance attached to it. He’s a pretty terrible actor who loves to injects “motherfuckers” in as much lines as he can. He also knows kung fu which leads to one of the most goofy moments in the Halloween series. A scene in which he goes full Karate Kid on Myers.
The rest of the cast also reads much like a who’s who from the early 00’s. Sean Patrick Thomas (Save the Last Dance), Thomas Ian Nicholas (American Pie) and Tyra Banks (Sports Illustrated). Their unthankful task is to serve as knife fodder for Myers while the world watches from behind their computers. And by world a mean some college kids in a dorm the movie constantly keeps cutting to.
Halloween: Resurrection tries to inject the franchise with elements that were state of the art back then. The TV show Big Brother for one, but also webcams and a streaming service. The problem with trying to tap into the technological zeitgeist is that it can make a movie feel dated quite fast after its release. Such is the case here as well. Nowadays a concept like this would have been the subject of a 14 minute vlog by Logan Paul. And if you’re reading this in 2028 and have no idea who Logan Paul is then my review has just made the same mistake the writers of Halloween: Resurrection did.
After Scream the slasher genre saw a resurgence. This led to a whole slew of slasher movies both original and based on existing properties. Halloween H20 was one of those movies. By the time Halloween: Resurrection came out, the whole revival was already declining. Even the series that started it all was already done for with the disappointing Scream 3. Most slasher movies made in the wake of Scream and released after 2000 tend to disappoint. Movies like Jason X, Seed of Chucky, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. Few people like these films.
Realism has always been a bit of a stretch with slasher movies. The killers are always able to murder multiple people with nobody finding out until we’ve reached the finale and all of the corpses just come falling down from trees or attics when the script requires it. Sure, I can get with that. It’s part of the charm. Halloween: Resurrection makes similar mistakes, but the movie requires also requires a large amount of suspending your disbelief. From the outside the Myers’ house is just your average house in the suburb. But from the inside it has so many rooms and hallways it seems as if its a mansion. It even has direct access to a sewer. Myers is able to roam this house unseen for most of the time, killing off everybody he comes across without anybody else noticing.
Meanwhile the kids in the dorm are watching this go down. At first they think this is staged, but when it all becomes too real nobody decides to call the police. The same goes for the teens in the house. They never try to alert the authorities or even leave the house. There is a masked killer in you house. What’s the first thing you would do? My guess is probably not running up to the roof.
The premise is too farfetched to over be convincing and the execution rather boring. Not once did I actually care for these characters. When they killed off Laurie they also killed off any possibility this movie had to have a well developed lead character. Halloween II director Rick Rosenthal returns to the franchise and while the movie looks good it lacks atmosphere and tension. But is does have Busta Rhymes performing jump kicks to Myers’ face. That is actually makes the movie worth a viewing alone. Or you could just watch that scene on Youtube.
