Halloween Resurrection (2002)

HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION

WRITERS: Story by Larry Brand

Screenplay by Larry Brand and Sean Hood

DIRECTOR: Rick Rosenthal

STARRING: Busta Rhymes as Freddie Harris

Biana Kajlich as Sara Moyer

Thomas Ian Nicholas as Bill

Ryan Merriman as Myles Barton

Daisy McCrackin as Donna

Katee Sachoff as Jen

Billy Kay as Scott

Luke Kirby as Jim

Sean Patrick Thomas as Rudy

Tyra Banks as Nora

Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode

QUICK CUT: Michael and his sister finally work out their problems, and he heads home for the holidays.

THE MORGUE

Sara - A quiet shy girl who is easily spooked. Boy is SHE in the wrong movie, huh?

Jen - Sara’s more outgoing friend who keeps roping her into schemes, and she has designs of being famous.

Rudy - Their other friend who loves food, and works as a chef.

Freddie - A tv producer who loves reality tv and will do almost anything for ratings.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Happy Triskaween! And you know what that means, it's time for one more trip to Haddonfield with the eighth installment in the Halloween franchise, Halloween: Resurrection! This is the final installment in the 'classic' series, and even that's not accurate since they've already shifted gears and continuities a few times, but in general. Aaaanyways, let's get into the tricks and the treats.

We start off floating through some tunnels as Laurie narrates, and we eventually see she's hanging out in a hospital room, pretty much catatonic and staring at the walls.

Some nurses wander by and give us the infodump that she killed the wrong man at the end of the last movie, someone put into the mask by Michael, and when she found out it was an innocent, well that's how we got here.

Once they leave, Laurie leaps into action however, and sees her brother outside the window.

Meanwhile, a guard is wandering around outside, and just when you think he's about to find Mike, he finds a serial killer obsessed patient who went for his walkies.

He escorts the patient back to his room, and once he heads back to the security closet, they see someone in the basement they assume is that same patient, but nope, it turns out to be Mikey.

One of the security guards grabs a snack, while the other tries to round up the 'patient' but ends up letting out a scream, drawing his friend's attention.

You too can have a sexy bod like this in time for Halloween, if you start the Michael Myers workout today!

He finds his coworker's head in the dryer, and then trips over the headless corpse, making me wonder how he missed that just laying there, but I digress.

The guard backs into Mikey, and gets his neck slashed, kicking the movie off in some decent style.

Mike continues on to his sister's room, bashes through the door, and finds...nothing! Well, Laurie finds him, bashes him with a lamp, and runs for the roof.

Laurie catches his foot in some rope like she's reenacting The Bricklayer story, hoists him up, and is about to dump him off the roof, when she decides she needs to check and make sure it's really him underneath, which is reasonable, all things considered.

Sadly, it IS Michael, they struggle, and Laurie goes over the edge, getting his knife in her gut, and falling to her death. Yes, that's right, they finally offed Laurie, at least for a few more movies.

With the prologue out of the way, a very classic "finish off the final girl from the last movie" plot, which I rather like in theory, we jump over to our main cast.

Don't get your hopes up to see Laurie's kid, whether it be boy or girl or something else, because they left Josh Hartnett behind in the last movie. This time around, we are focused on a trio of students who have signed up to play ghost hunters with video cameras in the old Myers house to learn the secrets of Michael's malevolence.

Sara is reluctant, but her friends talk her into it, and we also learn she has an online flirtation with a kid she only knows as Deckard. His real name is Myles, but I shall now proceed to forget that.

Later at the cast interviews, she gets a bit of a scare, and she wants to back out. Producer Busta Rhymes talks her into at least sleeping on it, and going back to his chop socky movies.

And uh, we don't really see her 'sleeping on it'. She just shows up in the next scene ready to go! Talk about your economy of storytelling.

They might be the biggest names in this movie.

We get the setup with the cameras so the movie can do some weak attempts at found footage, but fortunately never go all in.

Tyra is at the Myers house overseeing everything getting set up, and while one of the minions gets cameras into place, she wanders off and focuses on making a latte. So she completely misses Mike murdering the minion on camera, as long as she never turns around. Talk about convenient.

Everyone shows up, gets geared up, Busta says everything they encounter will be real, no actors, no props, nothing that's not there in the first place, and spoiler; this is all a lie.

So, the point of this is to wander around a house with...what? 12 rooms? for an entire evening, filming everything, and trying to unravel the mystery of Michael Myers, find some insight that no one has come up with over the last 40 years? Yeah, that sounds pretty weak.

We spend some time wandering around the house, get a few cheap jump scares from loud noises, and eventually find a high chair with tiny straps to hold the kid down.

…Wait, didn’t everyone have one like this??

"Deckard" heads off to a Halloween party, dragged by a friend, but he sneaks away and uses the homeowner's computer so he can watch Sara's big show.

Some of the kids do some exposition, and teasing nudity, in Judith Myers' bedroom, while Mike lurks nearby. And before he can be seen, the cameras go out. Dude is protect by plot convenience and contrivance this entire movie.

Jen lets out a scream and most of the kids come running, but don't worry! Things aren't getting interesting yet, just a prank! Sigh.

Bill pauses by a mirror so he can tell the viewers at home that he's gonna get Jen back, and that's when Mike busts through the mirror and starts getting stabby.

And while I can buy, however only just barely, the two producers being too distracted congratulating themselves to see the murder, how in the name of Phoenix does not a single home viewer see it and say something, especially Deckard?

That's when Rudy FINALLY realises this is all too easy. There's too much stuff still there, it's too convenient, too clean, too fresh.

Meanwhile, some of the kids are down in the basement, find a trap door, and go into the even more basementy basement.

Donna surmises this was never found, and there's no cameras down there, so while lurking in Michael Myers' personal prison, her and Jim get nekkid and start making out. As you do.

But as they do, the wall collapses, a few skeletons fall out, and we find out it was all rigged, there are cameras, and oh look, the corpses are fake.

Upstairs, we see Mike stalking around, and oh no! There's a second Michael Myers behind him! One of them is real, the other is Busta Rhymes plotting to scare the kids. He figures the real Mike is also fake, and tells him to go, get out, go bother Tyra and kill her! I am giving you explicit instructions on how to get into the control room!

Will the real Michael Myers please stand up?

Donna wanders around the more basementy basement, finds a tunnel into the still more basementy basement's basement in the hole where the fake corpses were hidden. She discovers Michael's secret lair, where we can assume he has spent most of his life since escaping. Fair enough.

Mike doesn't like people in his home underneath from home, and impales the redhead on a rather shockingly dangerous and stabby gate.

And this is when "Deckard" finally realises something is going on, although the people who have joined him in watching just laugh it off. Which is a good way to tee up the final act.

We really ought to do something about these hazards, someone could get hurt!

Sara sees Mikey, screams her head off, and then Jim beans him over the head. The killer screams to shut the cameras off. He pulls his mask off revealing it's just Busta Rhymes and explains most everything to the kids.

Jen finds Bill's body, leading to more screams, and they think it's just another prank. Myers comes up to her, and they still all think it's just more of Freddie's bullshit.

But no, this is real, and the real Mike slashes her head clean off. Don't worry, all you gotta do is fly into a nebula and listen to All Along the Watchtower, and she'll return, but it'll never be explained how or why.

…I may still be bitter over that final season of Battlestar Galactica, okay??

Deckard calls the cops, and they just kinda brush it off, and I know that we're just supposed to accept it, but it feels like poor storytelling if they don't set up first that the cops are expecting/have already fielded some pranks.

Anyways! Back to the murdery goodness, as Mike stalks the kids, grabs Jim, and squishes his head until it pops like a grape.

Rudy leads Mike away to the kitchen to buy the others some time, and he finds Mike's one weakness; spices!! To be fair, he IS awfully white...

However, Rudy meets his end after taking a few slashes at the air, when Mike uses the kid's own knives against him.

Thisd new season of Hell’s Kitchen is getting wild.

Sara finds a camera and starts addressing it, begging for help, and oh gee, "Deckard" is watching, and sends her a text message.

A text message that we see appear, one...letter...at a time...like he is typing it live and MESSAGING DOES NOT WORK THIS WAY and I am angry.

So while Mike stalks his house for Sara, "Deckard" does his best to direct her away from him or at least keep her apprised of his location.

Eventually, she runs into Busta and they decide to Busta on out of there. But naturally, Mike shows up, and...oh geeze. Busta Rhymes going all "HIYAAAAA!" on Michael Myers is enough to almost make me tap out.

But he does chop socky him out a window and hangs him, and I'm sure the movie is ahahahaahaha, no, we've still got over 15 minutes, folks.

So he shows back up, stabs Busta, and following some more running around, discovering a few lingering bodies, the fight heads to the shed where mission control was set up.

Mike is caught off guard when Sara leaps out of hiding with a running chainsaw, and she is TERRIBLE at using it. Somehow whacks him REPEATEDLY with it, and barely does any damage.

But we get the required sparks and gasoline to start a huge fire that threatens to kill them both.

Congratulations, you’re still in the running for America’s Next Top Model

Rhymes bustas his way through the door though, and gets into it with Mike, getting in a few good shots before the inhuman monster flings him across the room.

Mike comes close to finish the job, and Busta jabs him with a bundle of live wires that sends the killer across into more wires, getting tangled up.

Busta scoops up the girl and they run off as the building burns down.

Cops arrive, medics, the news, and Busta has a life changing revelation, and decides he has wasted his life trying to glorify violence, and has a bit of a speech before they wheel the corpse off to the moruge for one last scare as his eyes open before credits roll.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Pretty solid, although I could’ve used a little less murky blacks at times.

Audio: Sounds good enough

Sound Bite: Sigh. How do I not go with Busta’s infamous “Trick or treat, mothafucka?”

Body Count: Myers always knows how to bring the body count, that’s for sure.

1 - Almost ten minutes in, and we see the first dead body of one of the security guards killed by Michael.

2 - And then he slashes another one's neck

3 - Laurie Strode takes a knife to the gut, and falls to her death

4 - Cameraman murdered by tripod

5 - Bill gets stabbed by the man in the mirror

6 - Donna gets imapled on a gate

7 - Mike slices off Jen's head

8 - Jim gets his head squished

9 - Mike double stabs Rudy

10 - Sara finds Tyra's dead body dangling

11 - Mike gets electrocuted and set on fire

Best Corpse: I am a sucker for a good squished head.

Blood Type - B: Some good splats of blood, that head roll was pretty great, and a few good pools here and there.

Sex Appeal: We get some sexy times, but pesky corpses interrrupted.

Drink Up! Every time Michael’s antics go unnoticed

Movie Review: I know this one gets dunked on a lot, but I definitely liked it more than I didn’t. It was cool, and shocking at the time, to off Laurie early in the movie, and sets things up for anything can happen. I do have issues with completely dropping her kid though. I’m glad they didn’t do too much with ‘found footage’ type gimmickry. There is some pretty weak logic behind a lot of stuff, and it gets a bit too camp at times, but if you’re along for the ride, it’s an enjoyable enough one to go on. It does feel like some plots kinda were handled poorly or tacked on last minute, like with Deckard never actually meeting anyone, but it’s a solid enough idea for something different to do with the franchise. Three out of five bottles of fennel.

Entertainment Value: Busta Rhymes might get a bit of mockery, and he is deserving of some, but he is having a blast, and he is chewing up his screentime. The kills are fairly creative, with a few standouts for me. It relied a little too much on loud screams and jump scares, but the movie remains entertaining enough. Three out of five cameras.