Halloween: Resurrection

Absolutely the worst of the original eight HALLOWEEN pictures, HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION only exists through a ridiculous cop-out opening that explains how masked killer Michael Myers could still be alive after having his head definitively removed from his body by Laurie Strode’s axe at the end of HALLOWEEN H20. I suppose attacking a later HALLOWEEN sequel for being ridiculous is beside the point (after all, H20 expected us to believe Michael was just roaming around supporting himself for twenty years before stalking Laurie again), but even the slightest attempt at intelligent logic would have been appreciated.

Sigh. So anyway, yeah, Michael is still alive, and so is his sister Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis for the fourth time), whose guilt from committing H20’s beheading has driven her to a psychiatric hospital. But not for long. Getting on to the main story, which couldn’t be dumber or more cynical, a bunch of college students plan to spend Halloween night inside Michael’s boyhood home in Haddonfield, Illinois and stream everything over the Internet. For the first time in the series, the audience is glad Michael hates teenagers and can’t wait for him to start knifing away.

Rick Rosenthal is the director. He also directed 1981’s HALLOWEEN II — the first series director to repeat — and he’s worse this time around (the first two kills suffer from terrible blocking). The desperate screenplay by Larry Brand (MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH) and Sean Hood (who later wrote underperforming Hercules and Conan movies) gloms on to then-current fads that made RESURRECTION irrelevant fifteen minutes after it was released (“We’re gonna be bigger than THE OSBOURNES!”). Its disregard for history is shocking, particularly the fate of Curtis’ character. In her confrontation with Michael, she tries to pull off his mask, saying she has to be sure it’s really Michael under it, Rosenthal and the writers forgetting she’s never seen his face.

EDIT: I stand corrected (see comments below). Of course, Laurie briefly saw Michael's face in the original HALLOWEEN. This movie still stinks though.

Not a single character or scene is believable. The young victims couldn’t be more vapid. Some of the actors did more prominent work elsewhere: Bianca Kaijich on RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, Katee Sackhoff on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and 24, Sean Patrick Thomas in the BARBERSHOP movies, Thomas Ian Nicholas in AMERICAN PIE. Getting top billing is, of all people, Busta Rhymes, the rapper, who holds a heralded position in cinema history as the only actor (to date, I guess) to get into a kung fu fight with Michael Myers.