Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

ANOTHER slasher pick? Yes, it's the new Halloween, the 7th or 8th in the series, lost count. No 7th or 8th film in a series is any good, the 4th, 5th and 6th usually aren't neither, but that's ok. Actually, I had some hopes for this film, walking in the theater. The original Halloween was one of the best in the genre, with never-dying Michael Myers entering the big-screen in spectacular fashion. But the second in the series was already far beyond par, and the rest was pure formula (haven't seen any of em though). Then came H20: 20 YEARS LATER, which benefited again from Jamie Lee Curtis' presence. Not a good film, far from being a stand-out in the genre, but at least it had SCREAM-writer Kevin Williamson on the credits, and was actually pretty enjoyable too. So I thought: well, maybe this new Halloween will have some suspense too, maybe some surprises (I'm a sucker for surprises). But what I saw...well, I'm still speechless. This film was even worse than most stupid entries in this genre.

First of all, we get a stupid explanation for the fact that Michael is STILL alive (unbelievable if you saw the previous one). Then we get Jamie Lee Curtis in the mental hospital. What happens next, might show her attitude towards the series by now. The beginning has actually nothing to do with the rest of the film, it isn't even a good opening to this film, unlike the SCREAM-intros. Then we get to see the actual film, which is pretty much, like one of the characters puts it, Halloween meets the Osbournes, or Big Brother, or the German movie DAS EXPERIMENT, or whatever. You put the usual bunch of irritating high-school friends in one house, put some cameras on top and let Mike (umm...Michael) Myers do his thing. Is it thrilling? Nope, it just seems Myers is doing a routine slashing in here. There's no suspense at all, just people getting killed like you knew they would. Not hard to guess that the "smartest" will survive. Is it funny? Yeah, if you can laugh at lame dialogue and the aforementioned irritating characters. If that's your thing, fine, shows why all these dumb-headed high-school comedies nowadays are such a success. Oh, and it's so dumb-minded that you can't even stop shouting at the screen: "Oh, come on! As if..."

But what could you expect from a movie that was directed by the same man that directed Halloween II? It's so formula that you cannot only predict everything from the first til the last minute, but it's so bad that the last-minute surprise is even more irritating than usual. It's so obvious by now that, indeed, "Evil never dies" , that it's even boring to see these people trying to put M.M. to rest, without being ultimately successful. How long will they go on with this and what's the point of making another movie like this if nothing works out in the end. I'm sure Michael must be pretty tired by now. But maybe we get a Halloween: 60 years later, in x years time, where Michael is a geriatric patient, killing off his fellow patients. Maybe that would be a thriller! As far as this one is concerned: it's more of a thrill finding ways to stay awake while Michael is doing his thing than watching this bore. 1/10

Fmovies: Halloween: Resurrection starts off on the wrong foot and it's all downhill from there. Sure they found a clever way to undo the closure of Halloween H2O and make it possible to bring Mike up to his old shenanigans, unfortunately that whole segment is hasty and the rest of the movie's garbage. The "what really happened" explanation is just a loophole for making a movie that's neither necessary nor any good, and so I present to you Halloween: Resurrection.

I'm not going to write any spoilers about what happens to Laurie, but I think anyone who loves the original Halloween and its characters will think what they did with her in this movie is crap and only put her in here for the sake of having Laurie in it.

The characters are plastic. Even by the end of the movie when you get to know all of them a little bit, you don't care enough about them to want to see them escape the wrath of Mike Myers. In fact, you'll probably look forward to their demise at his hands. That's how flat and/or despicable these characters are. Even the lead role doesn't have much personality. She's nice and smart and decent, just like Laurie was in fact, but somehow she doesn't have much personality. I don't think her character was developed enough, otherwise she could have made a good heroine. The rest of the characters are people you pretty much hope get killed off, especially the tech lady played by Tyra Banks and most of the kids that tour the haunted house. Obnoxious people, hastily made characters. And Busta Rhymes plays the typical black dude with a boisterous personality. Not a bad acting job, but what a typical cliché character.

The technology is another factor. Another case of fusing horror with the fancy gimmick of modern technology (or what was modern in 2002 anyways). Just because we have things like reality shows and phone-texting nowadays does not mean it will make a horror movie any scarier, or realistic, or better at all. Having people emailing and playing on their phones and all in the movie takes away from the good old-fashioned terror you get from something as simple as a lurking shadow or the gleam of a butcher knife.

There's a couple of notably cool things in the movie, like when Freddy dresses up like Mike Myers while Mike is there in the flesh and you see two Mikes walking one behind the other. Well that was more funny than anything. The scene with the bong was funny too. And the murder scenes are alright and in typical Mike Myers fashion, but otherwise Resurrection bombs as a horror film and leaves you yet again with no closure, except this time you wouldn't really want to see another sequel.

There are just some times when a good movie franchise is abused and milked for all it's worth. The first of the series is great and sets the mark ,the 2 occasionally 3 sequels that follow are mediocre and anything after that is just trying to make money of an audience that has no other place to spend their money. I, unfortuantely was a member of that audience, as I paid money to watch HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION, the 8th installment of the once classic HALLOWEEN franchise.

I don't even no where to start; bad cast, bad acting, boring death scenes (not to sound wierd, but why else do you go see a movie like this), need I go on.

If you noticed that this movie is mostly made up of celebrities, it is no mistake. This is all the movie has going for it, and yet it fails in that department. The biggest mistake a horror movie can make is when it spends most of its time setting up the big death scenes and then knocks off its characters one right after another. That is exactly what happens in RESSURECTION. Every character w/the exception of 2 die in a consecutive chain that takes up about 20 minutes of the movie and the other hour is spent trying to gather of what little plot exists.

The horror doesn't stop there. This HALLOWEEN installment doesn't have the style that made the first two so good. With the exception of a somewhat unexpected opening, the movie is poorly put together.

Clearly an attempt to make some fast cash off a dying series, HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION hopefully is the last time Micheal Myers takes the screen. Yet, I am sure there will find some way to bring back the masked killer. There always is a chance that the executives in charge of this franchise will make a good decision and hang up the white mask and throw away the knife. HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION rates as just a 2/10.

Halloween: Resurrection fmovies. Halloween 8 Resurrection should really entitled Halloween 8 destruction of a franchise or how to kill a franchise in 90 minutes. Halloween 8 is an awful movie that is devoided of any orginality or redeeming qualties (Trya Banks is smoking hot, but is little more than an extra with a line or two). Halloween 8 spits on everything that previous movies have worked hard to preserve since John Carpenters genre inventing original, the worst Halloween 8 actually think's it has the goods.

H8 had an impressive budget (due to the healthy box office of the last film) but squanders it on actors that add nothing to the movie but prolong their own dismial carrers. Busta Rhymes actually proves a good leading man until becoming undone by his own ego, most of the other actors have tongue firmly pressed in their check and most phone it in. Jamie Lee Curtis deserves special mention as she almost displays hate for her iconic cult character and cant wait to put to the whole franchise in the past.

As a fan of the franchise the biggest problem I had was an arrogance to acknowledge previous movies in the series and tries to forge it's own path that leaves Michael Myers holding his dick in his hand. Halloween 8 Resurrection come across as a scream hybrid that wont satisfy casual fans or die hards and as the final reel fades out everyone will be thinking "That would never happen".

AAWWFFUULLLL doesn't even begin to describe it. I went in expecting something else. But in the Big Brother era, sooner or later there would come a movie about it.

Listing all thte things that bothered me would be too boring, but the main thing is the predicability. The movie's end is known beforehand halfway in the movie. You could guess thousands of things before they happened.

The casting is really, really, really bad. The only ones that emerge are Luke Kirby, Tyra Banks and the eternal Jamie Lee Curtis. The scary scenes aren't scary; the setting is ridiculous and the screenplay: tedious. The only scenes that had potential were Jamie Lee Curtis's cameo and the girls death chase in the basement, not for director's talent, but for John Carpenter's. For his truly fantastic and everlasting Halloween theme.

Keep out.

"They don't make 'em like that anymore," friends of the horror genre often remark on their web sites in reference to killer films from the late 1970s and 1980s era. They are right.

It's not just that sentiments of nostalgia have turned those films into little treasures in our memories. It's because current horror films stink. Not all of them, but plenty or more anyway.

Ever since Dwight H. Little last captured the right Halloween spirit and atmosphere in 1988's Halloween 4, the series deteriorated into a ridiculous, messy and pathetic show. I don't care how many fans of the series curse part 3, it was a pleasant watch compared to what came after part 4. Halloween 5 was a complete prank and lacked any sense of storytelling (compliments to Danielle Harris, who managed to perform extremely well under the circumstances). Part 6, well, let's not waste any words on that one. H20 had its moments and decent acting by Jamie Lee Curtis, but a Southern California private school seemed like a poor replacement for Haddonfield. The producers dedicated it to Donald Pleasance, ignoring the fact that his last name was Pleasence (with an E) and had been spelled correctly on all earlier installments that involved his acting. So much for Moustapha Akkad's commitment to the project!

Halloween Resurrection had a nice opening scene. A 1960s home movie at the Myers house, with the sounds of Johnny Angel performed by Shelley Fabares. It was cut. Of course, the Akkads in their infinite wisdom must have thought, why bother young people with an old song from someone they have never even heard of! Let's keep the film simple (and let's take a popular hip hop artist as the lead actor).

But, thank God, Rick Rosenthal filmed one other decent scene. It involves Jamie Lee Curtis's character hospitalized in a mental institution. This actually is quite a nice scene, with the actress performing wonderfully. It provides a satisfactory and surprisingly original bridge between the events at the end of H20 and the current state of affairs in "Resurrection", with Laurie Strode at the end of her wits and a killer still on the loose.

And after this? We might as well have left. After the promising Jamie Lee Curtis opening scene there seemed no budget, and more important: no inspiration left to come up with something, anything. It's a bore. It's a drag. The prospect of a replica of the original Myers house showing up is a joke. We're allowed one glimpse, and even on that one occasion it is very unsatisfactory: a big car is parked in front and taking the view, as the camera briefly glances up from a low, moving position. It beats me why they even bothered rebuilding it. The interior scenes can be ignored in this sense: it may have been any old house that Busta Rhymes's character Freddie Harris decided to do his online reality show in. And about these characters: have they ever been this flat in ANY Halloween sequel? NO! The characters in Halloween 5 or 6 were drawn brilliantly compared to what is presented to us here! Okay I realize this is actually pretty much of an achievement. Credit to Larry Brand and Sean Hood. It's amazing. The unimpressive cast (I'm not counting Curtis) is highlighted by 'stars' Busta Rhymes (pop artist who is kindly given the chance to act) and Tyra Banks (model who is kindly given the chance to act). Let's suffice by saying that in this case the actors have been given the roles they deserve.

Enough said.