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A group of college students volunteer to be part of a reality show where they must spend the night in the childhood home of an infamous serial killer only for the killer to actually show up.
I noted before how interesting it was to see how long-running horror franchises tried to keep things interesting, especially when it came to slasher villains whose methods of murdering hapless humans only had so much variety in the first place. These often took a turn for the absurdly surreal such as Friday the 13th sending its villain to space or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre making its villain a pawn of the Illuminati. Halloween Resurrection - the eighth film in the franchise by that point, never mind the issues with separate continuities - opts for something that is at once a little more grounded in reality (as least as grounded as movies about a supernaturally invulnerable murderer like Michael Myers can be) and yet still so patently absurd that you can scarcely believe what you're watching at times. There's no bizarre reveal or over-the-top change of scenery or anything that makes this an obvious jump off the deep end - however, it does have a high concept that really doesn't gel with the starkly cruel and minimal nature of Michael and Halloween. Resurrection begins with a lengthy prologue that retcons the seemingly definitive ending of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later by revealing that series final girl Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) had not decapitated Michael but a hapless paramedic who got dressed up and used as a patsy by the real Michael. Now institutionalised, she plans on escaping before Michael can finish her off once and for all...
SIKE.
Turns out the real story of Resurrection (that the first 20 minutes of this 90-minute movie have no connection to whatsoever) is about a media entrepreneur (Busta Rhymes) who plans to set up a viral streaming site that follows six painfully generic college students as they are given cameras and locked into Michael's long-abandoned childhood home on Halloween night. The apparent goal is to explore the house and figure out what made him so evil, but it turns out that Michael himself is back on the premises and has no problem showing everyone how evil he can get.
Aside from the odd sub-plot such as a dorky freshman watching the stream at a crowded house party because he's infatuated with the final girl, it's stab-happy business as usual that is barely elevated by the relative novelty of the found-footage aspect granted by having each character wield their own camera (which does beg the question as to whether or not this might've worked better as a straight found-footage movie). What really makes things stand out for better and for worse is Rhymes's braggadocious businessman whose scenery-chewing antics make him fun to watch at first but definitely wear thin as the film progresses (especially when you see him repeatedly go head-to-head with Michael). It soon becomes clear that the film wants to treat him as a charmingly roguish anti-hero even though his dangerous buffoonery is such that he would make more sense as a secondary antagonist. Resurrection is all kinds of bad - it's an incredibly dated mess (thanks in no small part to a plot that relies far too much on anachronistically efficient Internet technology), its unnecessary prologue guarantees its place as a low point for the franchise, and what little entertainment value it offers comes from all the wrong places. It's no surprise that the next Halloween after this one ended up being a remake (and the next proper sequel after that ignores every other sequel to boot) - after Resurrection, this franchise needed actual resurrection.
#17 - Halloween: Resurrection
Rick Rosenthal, 2002
Rick Rosenthal, 2002
A group of college students volunteer to be part of a reality show where they must spend the night in the childhood home of an infamous serial killer only for the killer to actually show up.
I noted before how interesting it was to see how long-running horror franchises tried to keep things interesting, especially when it came to slasher villains whose methods of murdering hapless humans only had so much variety in the first place. These often took a turn for the absurdly surreal such as Friday the 13th sending its villain to space or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre making its villain a pawn of the Illuminati. Halloween Resurrection - the eighth film in the franchise by that point, never mind the issues with separate continuities - opts for something that is at once a little more grounded in reality (as least as grounded as movies about a supernaturally invulnerable murderer like Michael Myers can be) and yet still so patently absurd that you can scarcely believe what you're watching at times. There's no bizarre reveal or over-the-top change of scenery or anything that makes this an obvious jump off the deep end - however, it does have a high concept that really doesn't gel with the starkly cruel and minimal nature of Michael and Halloween. Resurrection begins with a lengthy prologue that retcons the seemingly definitive ending of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later by revealing that series final girl Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) had not decapitated Michael but a hapless paramedic who got dressed up and used as a patsy by the real Michael. Now institutionalised, she plans on escaping before Michael can finish her off once and for all...
SIKE.
Turns out the real story of Resurrection (that the first 20 minutes of this 90-minute movie have no connection to whatsoever) is about a media entrepreneur (Busta Rhymes) who plans to set up a viral streaming site that follows six painfully generic college students as they are given cameras and locked into Michael's long-abandoned childhood home on Halloween night. The apparent goal is to explore the house and figure out what made him so evil, but it turns out that Michael himself is back on the premises and has no problem showing everyone how evil he can get.
Aside from the odd sub-plot such as a dorky freshman watching the stream at a crowded house party because he's infatuated with the final girl, it's stab-happy business as usual that is barely elevated by the relative novelty of the found-footage aspect granted by having each character wield their own camera (which does beg the question as to whether or not this might've worked better as a straight found-footage movie). What really makes things stand out for better and for worse is Rhymes's braggadocious businessman whose scenery-chewing antics make him fun to watch at first but definitely wear thin as the film progresses (especially when you see him repeatedly go head-to-head with Michael). It soon becomes clear that the film wants to treat him as a charmingly roguish anti-hero even though his dangerous buffoonery is such that he would make more sense as a secondary antagonist. Resurrection is all kinds of bad - it's an incredibly dated mess (thanks in no small part to a plot that relies far too much on anachronistically efficient Internet technology), its unnecessary prologue guarantees its place as a low point for the franchise, and what little entertainment value it offers comes from all the wrong places. It's no surprise that the next Halloween after this one ended up being a remake (and the next proper sequel after that ignores every other sequel to boot) - after Resurrection, this franchise needed actual resurrection.