Halloween: Resurrection

Dir: Rick Rosenthal

2002

*

1998’s Halloween H20 was a bit rubbish but it was fun to see Jamie Lee Curtis return and stand up to her brother Michael Myers after twenty years of sub-standard sequels. However, her character Laurie Strode had decapitated her serial killer brother at the end of the film – he didn’t fall down a mine shaft or blow up off camera in a hospital explosion – his head was removed from his body with a sharpened axe. How on earth are they going to explain this one? Horror films are famous for their nonsensical story lines and continuity errors but surely even Michael Myers – who is human after all – couldn’t survive dismemberment of the cranium? It was safe to say that Halloween: Resurrection was already on shaky ground. The only appeal came from the return of Jamie Lee Curtis and of director Rick Rosenthal, who had also directed Halloween II in 1981. That initial appeal was lost within minutes of the film starting. At the end of the last film there was an ambulance chase and Laurie Strode drove the van into her brother, pinning him against a tree. What we are told in this film is that Michael Myers – who wasn’t the smartest cookie – hid in the ambulance and swapped his clothes and mask with that of a paramedic. I’m not sure why the paramedic acted all Michael Myer-like toward his sister but what else could they do I guess. So, the guilt-ridden Laurie is now an inmate at the Grace Andersen Sanitarium, where the nurses believe her to be catatonic due to the shock of realizing she has killed an innocent man. However, she is faking it and is preparing for Michael's return. On October 31, 2001, Laurie, pretending to be heavily medicated, prepares herself for the inevitable confrontation with her brother. Michael breaches the facility and kills two security guards, decapitating one and slitting the throat of the other as he makes his way to Laurie. After a chase, Laurie lures Michael on to the institution's rooftop. Although he falls into her trap, Laurie's fears of again killing the wrong person get the better of her; when she tries to remove his mask, Michael stabs her and throws her off the roof, to her death. His life mission finally complete after more than twenty years of tracking Laurie down, Michael returns home to his abandoned childhood house. The film couldn’t be more disappointing at this point but it doesn’t get better. The following year, college students Bill Woodlake, Donna Chang, Jen Danzig, Jim Morgan, Rudy Grimes, and Sara Moyer win a competition to appear on an Internet reality show Dangertainment, directed by Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes) and his friend, Nora Winston (Tyra Banks), in which they have to spend a night in Michael's home in order to figure out what led him to kill. On Halloween, equipped with head-cameras as well as the cameras throughout the house, they search the house and separate into three groups. Sara's messaging friend Deckard watches the broadcast during a Halloween party. Meanwhile, Michael suddenly appears and stabs Bill in the head, and kills a cameraman. Donna and Jim begin getting intimate in the basement and a wall filled with corpses falls on them. Jim realizes the corpses are fake and the show is a setup. Jim leaves, but Donna notices a tunnel behind the fallen wall. Myers chases her through the tunnels before impaling her on a spike on the wall. At the party, Deckard and other partygoers witness the murder. Deckard realizes that the murder was real, but the others believe it is an act. Freddie goes through the house dressed as Michael, but is secretly followed by the real Myers. Freddie, mistaking Michael for Charlie (the cameraman who had been killed earlier), tells him to go to the garage and help Nora out; he goes to the garage and promptly kills Nora. When Rudy, Sara, and Jim find Freddie in the Myers costume, he reveals the scheme to them and begs them to cooperate, telling them that he's set up a nice payday for all of them. When he leaves, the trio decides to gather up the other three and leave. But before they can, Jen discovers the body of Bill (who was stabbed in the head and vanished earlier) and is decapitated by Myers right in front of Rudy, Sara, and Jim. Rudy and Sara flee, but Jim stays to fend off Myers only to have his head crushed. Michael kills Rudy by pinning him to the door with kitchen knives before chasing Sara upstairs. Locking herself in a bedroom, Sara begs for Deckard to help her. The other party goers realize that the deaths have not been staged. With Deckard messaging her Myers' location, Sara escapes and is found by Freddie. Myers finds and attacks them. Freddie is injured and Sara makes her way to the tunnels. She finds an exit near Donna's body and emerges in the garage, where Myers finds her and starts an electrical fire in the garage. Freddie returns and begins fighting Michael hand-to-hand. When he is overpowered, Freddie instead electrocutes Myers, tangling him up in electrical wiring before carrying Sara out of the burning garage. The Myers house burns to the ground, as Sara thanks Deckard for saving her life. Michael's body and the bodies of his victims are then taken to the morgue. As the medical examiner begins to examine Michael's body, he awakens. It is a poor horror film even among the poorest of sequels. It felt like a poor man’s Scream – inexcusable too given that this came after Scream 3. For the first time in the franchise I felt not just cheated but also tricked. I hope Jamie Lee Curtis got paid handsomely for her five minutes but personally I want my money back. Unsurprisingly this killed the series as it was, and at this point the continuity and what was canon was so confusing a re-boot was the only way forward. Sadly, they gave the re-boot to Rob Zombie.