Halloween: Resurrection [DVD] [2002] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

"Halloween - Resurrection" offers a rather lengthy prologue, the purpose of which is to effectively reset the Michael Myers story. The result is that I have not been so ticked off at the opening of a movie since "Alien 3" undid one of my all time favorite movies ("Aliens") by the end of the title credits. A similar affrontery is provided in this film, and, no, I do not buy the idea this is simply an homage to the beginning of "Friday the 13th Part 2." Anyhow, this film ends up starting off with one foot in the grave by opening with such a complete downer.

What is prologue is past when we get to the actual story of the film. At this point as an audience you simply need to have the same level of knowledge as the characters: what Michael Myers did in the first two "Halloween" films. The initial premise of the story is the old chesnut about a group of people who agree to spend the night in a haunted house, the brainchild of Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes). In this case we are talking about six college students and the house in question is the Myers house in Haddonfield, Illinois, where Michael killed his sister Judith on Halloween night in 1963. But this particular old chesnut is provided with a 21st century twist: all of those young kids on the dinner menu are going to be wired with web-cams. There are additional cameras all over the Myers house. This is because this entire experience is going to be shown on the Internet.

This makes "Halloween - Resurrection" something of a meta-film experience, because eventually we are watching the kids at the party who are watching the kids at the Myers house being sliced and diced by Michael. Of course despite all the cameras and monitors nobody notices that anybody is being killed (those watching on the Internet just assume it is part of the show--at least at first). But in the end, all that technology might just make it possible for one of these kids to make it out alive. You would have thought that all this technology would make for a badly needed infusion of creativity into a slasher flick like this, but you would be mistaken. The point here is simply to add another level of voyeurism to the experience. The assumption is the audience can relate to this, which would explain why there are characters in this film who think having sex in this house while being watched on the Internet is a good thing. The fact this is an above average entry in the series speaks to the general shlock of the genre more than the relative quality of this film.

Final Comment: We understand now that Michael Meyer's driving goal from the very beginning is to kill his sisters. He gets Judith in the beginning of "Halloween" and spends most of the rest of the films in the "official" quartet trying to get Laurie. My assumption has always been that if he were to get to that point something significant would happen. Apparently not...