HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION (2002)
Starring Busta Rhymes and Tyra Banks
"Halloween: Resurrection" is third-worst worst of the entire eight-picture slasher franchise, a return to the shit quality of Halloweens 5-6 -- minus the presence of the late Donald Pleasence, who at least gave those films a mild air of respectability. "HR" really suffers from the lack of a Pleasence-like character, but it isn't a total fiasco. Jamie Lee Curtis does have a cameo: She's featured as Laurie Strode during the film's opening 15 minutes. During these precious moments, you actually think you're about to watch a kick-ass Halloween movie. Curtis' last appearance in the franchise is genuinely scary, dark and climactic. She embodies the character we've known and loved for so long -- and her conflict with Myers serves as the heart of this franchise.
But when Curtis refused to make Halloween films in the late 1980s, we at least had Pleasence's Dr. Loomis character to serve as Myers' chief nemesis. In the last three quarters of "Halloween: Resurrection," both Loomis and Laurie are gone, and we are left with a cast of cardboard teens to face the Boogey Man during a night in the Myers House. Taking its cue from the now out-of-date "Blair Witch Project," the story involves a video broadcast that goes horribly wrong. Naturally, the teens who are starring in their own Internet-based reality TV show, find themselves being whacked off one by one by the killer, who survived his extermination in "Halloween: H20" by switching bodies with a medic. Rhymes plays the leader of expedition, and gets to say catchy lines like "Happy Halloween, mother fucker!"
There's
no explanation why Myers, three years after disappearing during his last attempt
to kill his sister, is suddenly back and killing teens in the Myers house.
Presumably he watched the webcast and got pissed. There's some explanation late
in the film that he lived in the basement or something, but why didn't he kill
the myriad of other trespassers that had come there before?
In a year that saw such kick-ass horror films as "Frailty," "Dog Soldiers," "Jason X," and "Blade 2," the fact that "Halloween: Resurrection" even got made can only spell one thing: The end of the Halloween franchise as a significant series. For many of us, the real Halloween series ended with "H20" in 1999, when Laurie Strode climactically beheaded her brother with an axe. One can only feel sorry for director Rick Rosenthal (who helmed the second Halloween film as well) for making this. The real embarrassment, however, probably belongs with Curtis whose presence in the movie actually fooled some of us into thinking it would at least be up to the level of, say, "Terror Train." The ending clearly leaves the door open for what may be an even worse sequel.