Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The film that ruins the entire series., 27 Jul 2003
Why, when the Halloween series had reached such a successfully satisfying conclusion in 'Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later' did the money grabbing Akkads feel the need to undermine all that H20 had achieved, by completely rewriting the ending?
For those who havn't already seen Resurrection, it won't be giving much away to say that unstoppable killing machine Michael Myers wasn't really killed by his sister Laurie (Jamie-Lee Curtis) at the end of the previous film, and is back to wreak more havoc on a group of unsuspecting Haddonfield teens. However, the rather flimsy and implausable reason given for Myers' 'resurrection' is by no means the most offensive flaw in the film. No, that would be the casting of rapper Busta Rhymes. Playing a cunning internet entrepeuner who plans to show a live webcast of a group of students exploring the house where Michael lived as a child, Rhymes displays a complete lack of talent and ability to act. The inclusion of a rap icon proved successful with LLCoolJ in H20 - who brought humour to the role and provided the script with a carefully limited dose of comedic value. However, Rhymes is annoying, loud and very rarely talks in comprehensible sentences. He gurns his way through the film, performs an embarrassing display of martial arts against Myers, and generally smacks of the producers attempting to include as many aspects into the film that they deem popular with the audience - thus gaining maximum box-office returns.
It has been clear that producer Moustapha Akkad sees the series as nothing more than a sure-fire way to pay the mortgage, but never has it been so evident as in 'Resurrection'. Without giving anything away, the first ten minutes of the film are completely unnecessary and poorly executed, leaving what should be the series' most poignant sequence looking like the most amateurish and embarrassing; in what is supposed to be a steady tracking shot down a corridor, the camera actually wobbles.
Rick Rosenthal (who more than competently handled 'Halloween 2') however, can not be entirely blamed for the film's downfall. The script is uningaging and often embarrassing and sorely missing any of the psycho-babble that Donald Pleasance used to spout in the previous films. That - the only adult or intelligent aspect of the previous films which set the Halloween series apart from its evil cousin 'Friday the 13th'- has now completely disappeared, replaced with a focus on a bland, indistinguishable group of teenagers being methodically buthchered in 'inventive' ways.
However, the film does manage to create a few moments of well crafted suspense. Although the whole intenet aspect is a naff attempt to bring the series into the 21st century (previously failing in 'My Little Eye'), the sequence where one of the characters must follow instuctions from an internet user who can watch Michael's every move is genuinely tense. For a moment. The final scenes are also well carried out - were it not for the presence of Busta Rhymes. The setting of the house proves to be quite spooky at times, although when it is realised that all the scary artifacts from Michael's childhood have merely been set up, any potential for an exploration of Michael's evil is immediately lost.
Of course , for general horror fans, 'Resurrection' will still prove entertaining, though not at all on the same levels as the first two outings or H20, but for die-hard fans of the series, the half-hearted execution of (practically every aspect of) the film (even the music is dire) and undoing of the perfect conclusion to the series in H20, will cause serious frustration.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Are you dumb enough to spend the night in the Myers house?, 17 Oct 2003
The title "Halloween - Resurrection" has an ironic dimension because at face value you would think it has to do with bringing back the character of Michael Myers from the dead, since he was killed by his sister, Laurie (Jamie Leigh Curtis) at the end of "Halloween H20: 20 Years Later." But actually what they are trying to revive here is the "Halloween" franchise. This 2002 film is a sequel to 1998 film, which makes it the eighth film in the series, which is a bit misleading because "Halloween III: Season of the Witch" had nothing to do with the rest of the series and movies four through six were completely ignored in the last two films (at least I think that they were) to explain the return of Laurie Strode. This also helps to explain the return of Rick Rosenthal as director, who directed "Halloween II," the original sequel in all this fun. "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...
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
It put the series straight back to pre-H20 levels., 22 Jul 2009
Okay, I'll try to be balanced here. This movie was terrible. I know a lot of people were disappointed in H20 because it is far too similar stylistically to the post-Scream slasher movies, and some because it abandons the storyline of Halloweens 4-6. However, I think that was the correct thing to do seeing as the wider audience is far more familiar with the Jamie Lee Curtis story, which showed in the box office for H2O.
So, three years later, plus an extra one because of production problems, we have Resurrection. And was it worth the wait? Far from it.
The Jamie Lee Curtis cameo was the most ill-conceived idea since they killed off James T. Kirk in a cameo in Star Trek: Generations. We had 20 years and three movies of build-up to the event that was motivating this serial killer, and they deliver the most insulting anti-climax since the aforementioned demise of one starship captain. And what's worse, it's the best 10 minutes of this movie. I don't lay this blame entirely with one party, because what was an ill-conceived idea was then filmed very badly by Rick Rosenthal, and then edited even more slopily in post production. Jamie Lee Curtis should have used her contracted obligatory appearance for something much more useful, like having Myers searching for her the whole movie and then she appears at the end. That would have worked much better. Besides which, Laurie's 'death' is highly ambiguous, given that she is stabbed once and falls from the roof, landing softly on the tree tops. I must admit, that is perhaps the best shot of the movie, but it doesn't totally convince you of anything really. After all, look at dear old Dr Loomis. He burned, he was thrown through a window, he was stabbed, he had an apparently fatal heart attack, and then something incoherent happens to him at the end of H6(!). And you KNOW he would have been in H2O if Donald Pleasance were still alive.
Anyway, moving along... to the score, or rather, to a mediocre version of John Carpenter's classic theme (although how many more 'variations' on that I can take, I don't know). I struggled to pick out any decent new cues throughout the entire film, or to be more accurate, any cues at all! Not a good sign. They might as well have just replaced it with some of Marco Beltrami's score from Scream, as they did in H20.
Basically, there is just no point to this story. The reality TV/internet broadcast thing was already two years past its sell by date, besides which it was done much better in My Little Eye that year. It completely undermines the whole story behind the Halloween movies, whether you prefer the H1, H2, H4, H5, H6 or the H1, H2, H2O, H8 path. After finally dispensing with his sister (until H40!) all he seems to do is a spot of housework, cleaning away an unsympathetic bunch of reality TV partygoers.
And cutting past the chase to the denouement, Resurrection also has perhaps the most impotent and predictable final scene in the whole series. At least the incoherent mess at the end of H6 left you wondering what the hell had happened. Not Resurrection.
If you ever wonder why they stopped making the Halloween sequels and went for the remake, then this movie is all the answer you need.
Lame.
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