The Halloween Saga: Halloween - Resurrection

Evil Comes Home

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later ended up being the best of the sequels in the Halloween saga. It was well made, well reviewed and eaten up at the box office. Unadjusted for inflation, it was the biggest money maker in the series. As well, it seemed to have put an end to the series with an ending where Michael Myers literally loses his head.

Around the release of H20, the horror industry was in an interesting time. Scream had reinvigorated the slasher (and horror in general) film at the box office. Horror movies were making money and doing well and being talked about. But unlike the original era of slasher films, where they dominated the box office for over a decade, the slasher as king didn't last nearly as long.

In 1999, one movie came out that reshaped the face of horror. And like the original Halloween in 1978, it was a low budget independent film that went on to break box office records. This movie was The Blair Witch Project and it scared audiences to the tune of $140,000,000, an unheard of number for the type of film it was.

Blair Witch was a found footage, faux documentary horror film. The camera was hand held and shaky and was controlled by the characters in the film. It was shot on film and video and it had a simple story. And like 1978's Halloween, it had no gore, no special effects, a simple story and about an hour and a half of sheer terror.

That's not to say the slasher film didn't play it's part at the movies. A new Friday the 13th (although now they were 'Jason' movies) film was released, a third Scream came out and a new original slasher style film came out called Final Destination. Horror was doing well and on July 12th, 2002 Halloween returned to the big screen.

Halloween: Resurrection follows the continuing story of H20, and like that film it ignores parts four to six. It turns out that Laurie had chopped off the wrong person's head, not Michael's. Technically this doesn't make sense based on the behaviour of the man behind the mask in the last 10 minutes of H20, but as a Halloween fan, sitting in the audience, one can let it go.

Resurrection goes on to wrap up the story of Michael and his sister and introduces a new story line. Michael returns home to Haddonfield, to his house and finds a reality game show being filmed there. Hence he has to knock off the people in his house, one by one and in increasingly gruesome ways. The reality game show allows for Resurrection to throw in a bit of a Blair Witch influence. Each character in the house gets their own camera and thus the view switches back and forth between shaky, video style footage and nicely framed, smooth film footage.

This makes for an interesting idea, and some cool scenes with Michael making his way through the halls and not being noticed by anyone except the audience, but overall Resurrection fails as a movie. First and foremost it fails because it is not scary. Myers himself works pretty well, he seems looming and scary, he walks the right way and he has the creepy head tilt, but once again he no longer looms in the background for very long. He's always clearly visible and ready to strike. Technically, for Resurrection's given story, this makes sense, but it doesn't work for the scare factor.

Like Halloween II, this film is directed by Rick Rosenthal. When he made part two he had taken Michael Myers and made him less of a realistic monster. He made the second Halloween a film filled with jump scares and didn't capture the tension that the original did. And following H20, he does the same thing here. 

But it isn't only the lack of terror that makes Resurrection ultimately fail. The story is plain and generic (although the first 10 minutes with Jamie Leigh Curtis are pretty good) and the dialogue is pretty poor. Most of the actual dialogue sounds fake and expositional, where the characters instead of sounding like they are talking to each other end up having conversations that spell out the story for the audience.

The acting for the most part is okay. The acting by the staff at the hospital is sub par but all the leads do a pretty decent job. Although his performance isn't bad, Busta Rhymes does end up sinking the movie some what. His character says some really stupid things and in one scene he  does some really cheesy and out of place kung fu poses and noises before he drop kicks Michael Myers. What was Rosenthal thinking when he included that?

Another really strange omission is a wide shot of the Myer's house. Although it sounds small, a wide shot to show the outside of the house would of helped the atmosphere of the film in many ways. For example, seeing the Myer's house in a wide shot, establishing to the audience that they were back to where it all began could of built up tension, but for some inexplicable reason, all the audience ever gets is interior shots and quick close ups of various outside features. 

The film is rather well shot, with great choreography and editing, especially when you take into account that in addition to the film cameras, there were the six or seven video cameras that were used throughout the film. So the film does flow nicely and never really leaves the audience bored. But when all is said and done, and the end credits start to roll, especially after H20, Halloween: Resurrection sadly end ups  leaving one with a strong and overbearing feeling of disappointment.

 Film Rating: 64%

Breakdown (How Halloween: Resurrection scored 64%):

Production Design: 7 out of 10
Cinematography: 7 out of 10
Re-playability: 6 out of 10
Originality: 6 out of 10
Costumes: 7 out of 10
Directing: 6 out of 10
Editing: 7 out of 10
Acting: 7 out of 10
Music: 7 out of 10
Script: 4 out of 10