“Halloween: Resurrection” is described as yet another sequel to the 1978 classic Halloween,” but in fact its only source material is Halloween: H20, the film where Jamie Lee Curtis’ character Laurie Strode made her return after years away from the series. Halloween: H20’s only tie to Halloween was Curtis’ character and “Halloween: Resurrection” opens with her character’s death. Now that she’s gone, the origins of Halloween don’t seem to matter anymore, as long as Michael’s back, or whoever the big football player in the garage overalls is supposed to be playing.
Laurie Strode has been through too much in her Halloween adventures to die in the classless way the makers of “Halloween: Resurrection” dispatch her, but inexplicably, that’s what happens. You’ll recall that Halloween: H20 ended with Laurie chopping off the head of Michael Myers, her lifelong nemesis and eternal specter. You’d think that would be enough to turn the cops into Michael Myers believers but Laurie has spent the past couple of years in a mental institution. Even her son doesn’t come to visit her. The opening scenes show darkly lit sanitarium hallways and then Michael shows up.
In logic that’s impenetrable, it seems that wasn’t Michael who had his head chopped off but rather a cop who he switched bodies with. What, didn’t they find the dead cop? How did Michael have time to steal his clothes? Never mind. Michael throws Laurie over the abyss of the sanitarium(how did he find her anyway?)and then he returns to Haddonfield, back to the Myers house, the source of his “evilution” close to forty years ago. Michael’s getting older, and taller, and heavier, and he doesn’t walk as creepily as he used to. Remember in Halloween when he knifed that guy up against the wall and then tilted his head to the side, as if he were an artist admiring his work? He was played brilliantly by future film director Nick Castle. This new Myers, Brad Loree, a stuntman, isn’t nearly as graceful. How can this guy ever surprise anybody?
Anyway, for some reason Michael is determined to go back to the Myers house where a group of college students are setting up a streaming video TV show to monitor the nubile subjects who are spending a night in the house, to chronicle the legend of Michael Myers. You’d think that the cops would be the first ones to log on to the live feed since they’re investigating a murder and where’s Michael going to go anyway? Maybe the cops think the house is just too obvious. Why would Michael want to go back to his old house? Well, he knifed his sister to death in the upstairs bedroom when he was six. I guess the house brings back pleasant memories.
The young dullards in the cast of “Halloween: Resurrection” are supposed to be investigating the legend of Michael Myers but they spend more time talking about college life and sex and we don’t see much of the sex. What could they know about Michael Myers anyway? That he killed a bunch of people twenty years ago, just down the street from them? Do teenagers like this really care? Since Halloween: H20 declared that everything after Halloween was void, including the revelation that Laurie was Michael’s sister, what’s there to look at, other than a guy in a black suit? As played by the weightless young cast, the characters are so devoid of human feeling they accomplish the task of making us not wish they were dead, but just gone. They’re not worthy of immolation.
“Halloween: Resurrection” is the ultimate in cynical film-making. Why do franchise producers structure plots in sequels so that the viewer need not have even seen the original film? On the basis of Halloween: H20 and “Halloween: Resurrection,” there’s no need to have any familiarity with the original film, a film which these so called sequels claim to be paying homage to. Dr. Loomis is dead, the teens from the first film are dead and now they’ve gotten rid of Laurie. All we have to look forward to in “Halloween: Resurrection” is how director Rick Rosenthal comes up with a tired invention to set up the plot of the next sequel.
How could they surround Jamie Lee Curtis with eighty five minutes of this dreck? Laurie Strode was a true horror movie heroine, a modern day incarnation of Janet Leigh’s character in “Psycho.” The producers of the Halloween movies at the very least had an obligation to let Laurie die on her own terms, not just go out in a four minute cameo, like every other typical “victim.” It would’ve been nice as well if Ms. Curtis had been able to comb her hair and put on some makeup for her distasteful ending as she looks like a demented bag lady in the film. Producer Moustapha Akkad who began the Halloween series with Curtis, should be ashamed of himself.
There’s one moment in “Halloween: Resurrection” where I felt the excitement of expectation. One of the characters crashes into a wall in the house and a rotted corpse falls out. Even though the sixty previous minutes of “Halloween: Resurrection” had been nothing more than filler, I moved up on my toes for the excitement of discovery. Whose body was this? One of Michael’s relatives? Was this a clue to the secrets of Michael’s madness? No, it turns out it was just a dummy. After almost twenty five years, the Halloween series has been reduced to a false alarm.
