Rick Rosenthal, 2002
Starring: Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Tyra Banks
“Trick or treat, motherfucker.”
After the events of Halloween H20, Laurie Strode is in a mental hospital and is badly traumatized. It turns out that she did not decapitate her brother, Michael Myers, but confused him with someone else. (Yes, really.) He shows up at the hospital and kills her before returning to their childhood home in Haddonfield. A reality TV producer, Freddie, has selected six college students to spend the night in the Myers house. Bill, Donna, Jim, Rudy, Jen, and her shy friend Sara all agree to spend the night exploring the house, all outfitted with cameras, and no one will be let out till morning. “Survivors” will be awarded scholarship money. Sara’s friend Myles, who has a crush on her, is watching the show during its live broadcast on Halloween night.
They split up into three groups of two and begin to look around the house. Donna and Jim go to the basement to make out, but find a wall full of corpses. These turn out to be fake, though Donna finds a hidden tunnel and is killed by Michael Myers, who has already secretly killed one of the cameramen. Myles, watching from a Halloween party, realizes Donna’s murder is real, though the viewers are now convinced that everything happening is fake. Everyone else runs into Freddie dressed up as Myers and they attack him, so he has to explain that it’s a set up to make some good “reality” TV. Myers is now able to prey upon everyone in the house, because most of them believe the danger is fake.
The eighth and final entry in the Halloween series, not counting Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake and its sequel, is such a shit film, I can’t even begin to describe it. Everything about it is bad: the script, acting, general premise, cinematography, style or lack thereof, etc. The fact that the film re-writes the ending of Halloween H20 is offensive, even more so is that fact that Resurrection opens with Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis again) in a mental hospital and Michael arrives and kills her soon after. Basically Resurrection is here to tell us it wants to shit all over anything we remotely liked about Halloween or some of the less offensive sequels.
The director, Rick Rosenthal, was personally chosen by John Carpenter to direct Halloween II, a decent sequel. This previous performance led me to believe that Resurrection would be at least mildly entertaining, but that was clear naiveté on my part. Here Rosenthal borrows from the earlier Halloween films, as well as numerous other horror movies. The general premise of people spending the night in a haunted or dangerous house and making money if they survive is ripped right from Vincent Price vehicle House on Haunted Hill, a fun, whimsical film.
The only person who seems to be having fun with Resurrection is Busta Rhymes, but there’s nothing he can do about the terrible script or truly awful lines of dialogue. He does have a few reasonably entertaining scenes, particularly one funny moment when he dresses up as Michael Myers and runs into the real Michael. He also saves the day with some outrageous martial arts moves, which is hopefully Rosenthal’s way of admitting that he didn’t take any of this seriously. The rest of the actors are totally forgettable. Tyra Banks has five decent minutes of screen time as Busta Rhymes’s assistant, but much of that time is made up of a shot of her ass. Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica, Riddick), who I normally adore, is stuck playing an obnoxious blonde who spends half the film looking in the mirror or talking about her future internet fans.
Resurrection also uses my least favorite horror trope of all time: the Blair Witch, first person camera, fake documentary bullshit, which is used here because the characters are in the Myers’ home to film a reality TV show. This doesn’t make it any more entertaining, neither does the spectator’s commentary we get from the Halloween party where Myles is watching.
No comments:
Post a Comment