Franchises: Halloween. Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Though I didn't see it until a couple of years after I first learned of the franchise, from what I'd read, Halloween H20's ending sounded pretty final. Michael Myers may have seemed like an unkillable slasher from the little bits of the movies I'd seen, but decapitation was something that nobody, not even him, should be able to survive... at least, that's what I thought. But when I got online in the early 2000's and learned that they were actually planning yet another movie, I was absolutely baffled, wondering, "Is Michael now going to be like the headless horseman or something?" Needless to say, I was very curious as to how they were going to work around his decapitation, but I wouldn't learn the answer for a while. I didn't see Halloween: Resurrection in the theater (at 15, I was still too young to see an R-rated film without a parent, and neither my mom nor my dad were going  to take me to see a bloody slasher film), nor did I read a single review, although I didn't need to in order to sense that it wasn't very well liked, to say the least. I finally saw it that December, when I got the DVD for Christmas, but by then, my cousin Jonathan, who had already seen it, told me how Michael was alive, as well as that he finally managed to kill his sister at the beginning. He actually thought the explanation was really intelligent, whereas I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it, and I was shocked to learn that Michael managed to kill Laurie. But, I decided to reserve judgment until I saw the movie for myself and, when I finally did, while I didn't think it was an awesome movie by any means and certainly not one of the franchise's shining moments, I enjoyed it for what it was: a dumb slasher movie. The concept and execution didn't feel that inspired (in fact, it was so of the time that it felt like it would become dated very quickly), and the characters were certainly nothing to write home about, but during this time, I still felt that H20 was overrated and didn't care for it as much as everyone else. Thus, I did genuinely get more entertainment out of Resurrection and I held that opinion for a very, very long time.

However, things change, and just as my opinion on H20 has gone up in recent years, my opinion on Resurrection has become more negative. As I approached this review, I came to the realization that I hadn't seen this film in its entirety in a long time, and certainly not since I'd warmed up to H20. As I've down with a few of these reviews, I figured I'd best watch it again before I dived headfirst into a detailed write-up, and after doing so... ooh, boy, has this aged like milk. I still don't hate it and it does still provide me with some cheap entertainment, which is why this isn't a ranting installment of Movies That Suck, but that said, they definitely should've ended with H20. Despite its flaws, that was the perfect cap on the series; this, however, is a purely by-the-numbers slasher flick that's just filled with clichés, a lot of cardboard characters, no scare factor at all, and just feels like they didn't put much, if any, thought or effort into it. I can definitely see what John Fallon of Arrow In The Head meant when, in the Halloween: 25 Years of Terror documentary, he said, "That's when they totally forgot about filmmaking. They just said, 'You know what, let's just do a product. We got a target audience... Let's put Busta Rhymes in there and have him be cool and hip. Fuck the script, fuck the suspense." Moreover, the whole thing just feels very tired by this point, and making another movie after H20's definitive, crowd-pleasing ending really comes off like they were just beating a dead horse. While I do maintain that I can get some enjoyment out of it and would watch it any day of the week over the two movies that come next, they should've left it alone.

Three years after Michael Myers tracked her down to Hillcrest Academy in Summer Glen, California, Laurie Strode is now in the Grace Andersen Sanitarium. It turns out, rather than her murderous brother, she had accidentally beheaded a paramedic whom he'd switched clothes with in the confusion of his killing spree's aftermath and had rendered mute by crushing his larynx. In October of 2001, Michael, who has been in hiding for the past three years, appears and manages to sneak inside the hospital. After killing two security guards, he makes his way up to Laurie's room and chases her to the roof, where she has a trap set up for him. But while she manages to ensnare him, her fear of killing the wrong person again causes her to drop her guard and he manages to finally kill her. Shortly afterward, back in Haddonfield, six college students win a competition to take part in an internet reality show called Dangertainment. With each of them wearing small cameras on their person, they're tasked with spending Halloween night in Michael's abandoned childhood home and try to find clues as to what led him to become the notorious killer that he is. Unbeknownst to them and the crew behind the show, Michael himself has returned home and is living in a room beneath the house. As the night progresses, Michael begins wiping the intruders out one by one, while the others gradually learn that, despite show-runner Freddie Harris' claims, the whole show and everything they find inside the house is indeed a setup. Eventually, they find themselves trapped inside the locked house with the masked killer, and as their numbers dwindle, Sara, one of the few left alive, must depend on an internet friend of hers who's watching the live broadcast at a Halloween party to help her escape with her life. 

Despite how it was marketed as the final confrontation between good and evil, as I said in my review, from the beginning, Halloween H20 was never meant to be the final film. Even though nearly everybody, from director Steve Miner to, especially, Jamie Lee Curtis, wanted it to end with the definitive death of Michael Myers, Moustapha Akkad stepped in with his legal clause which stated that couldn't happen. And while Curtis almost left the movie as a result, Kevin Williamson came up with the scenario of how H20 would end with Laurie seemingly decapitating Michael, when, in reality, he'd switched outfits with a paramedic whom he'd rendered unable to talk. As much as she hated this, and initially wanted no part in whatever the eventual follow-up would be, Curtis begrudgingly agreed to do H20 and to briefly appear in its sequel. Funnily enough, though, if Miramax had had their way, Curtis needn't have worried, as they approached Akkad with the idea of the next movie not involving Michael at all. Akkad, obviously remembering how poorly-received Halloween III: Season of the Witch turned out, was opposed to this. To prove his point, he put a poll on HalloweenMovies.com to see if any of the fans would be up for that and, of course, the answer was a resounding no. So they moved ahead with what would, sadly, end up being the final film Akkad was ever involved with. Three years later, both he and his daughter, Rima, were killed in a terrorist attack in Jordan. Not only was this a horrible tragedy in general, especially for his family, but it would really throw the franchise into chaos and result in the Rob Zombie movies being produced.

As per his contractual agreement in writing the initial screenplay for H20, Robert Zappia got first crack at the next film, coming up with a scenario that involved Michael being captured and put on trial, with numerous survivors from his previous rampages being brought in to testify. Naturally, he would escape police custody and start wiping out the survivors. Said idea was rejected, as was one by Todd Farmer and another by Daniel Farrands, who attempted to connect the Thorn Trilogy with H20 and have Laurie herself be revealed as the killer this time around. Ultimately, Larry Brand, who happened to have the same agent as producer Paul Freeman, was brought in and he pitched an idea he'd had for an unrelated horror film about a killer stalking around a house that's the center of a reality TV show. As he'd worked as a production assistant for Orson Welles when he first started in the industry, the main inspiration for Brand's concept was to do the reverse of Welles' infamous 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, with people mistaking something real for being fictional. Moustapha Akkad liked this approach and hired Brand to turn it into a screenplay, which would be further rewritten by Sean Hood, with the two men sharing credit on the final movie. Brand, who died in 2019 at the age of 69, was interviewed in the book, Taking Shape: Developing Halloween from Script to Scream, and he pulled no punches about how he hated working for Dimension and made it clear he had no love at all for Bob Weinstein, whom he referred to as a moron and doubted if he could even read. He also said that the movie was severely dumbed down from what he initially intended in the rewrites and that, while Malek Akkad did ask him if he wanted to pitch an idea for the unmade Halloween 9, he turned him down.

The movie went through several titles, with Brand titling his original script, Halloween: MichaelMyers.com, whereas, before he was hired on, it was ostensibly titled Halloween 2000 and H2K: Evil Never Dies, as they'd originally intended to release it in 2000. When I first heard about it, it was going by the title, Halloween: The Homecoming, and that stuck until February of 2002, when it was finally titled Halloween: Resurrection (I didn't know it had been re-titled as such until I suddenly saw some TV spots for it while I was on vacation that summer). I know what their thinking was behind it, that they wanted a title that said upfront that Michael was alive, but let's be real: if there's a new Halloween coming, I'm sure people would deduce that Michael is still alive. Also, at the time, I wasn't aware of how overused a subtitle "resurrection" is in movie sequels (in his interview, Brand said that a friend of his noted how the use of that subtitle is a sign of laziness), but I still thought it was an odd choice. Not having yet learned how Michael survived being decapitated, I wondered if it tied into how he came back but, of course, I turned out to be very wrong. (At least with something like Alien: Resurrection, the title made sense, given how they brought Ripley back from the dead by cloning her, but there's no actual resurrection here.) While The Homecoming wasn't the best title, either, it made more sense, given how Michael does return to his childhood home in this film (I also kind of wished they'd brought that title back for the 2018 movie, instead of just calling it Halloween again, but we'll get to that).

Dimension initially considered Whitney Ransick, who'd mostly done television work and a few films here and there, to direct. According to both Taking Shape and Larry Brand, Ransick was briefly attached, but left before shooting. They also tried to coax Halloween 4-director Dwight H. Little back but he turned them down as well. Ultimately, though, they did get another series alumnus to return: Halloween II-director Rick Rosenthal. In the twenty years since Halloween II, Rosenthal had mainly directed a lot of television, from little known shows like Darkroom, Code of Vengeance, and such, to much more popular ones like The Practice, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Strong Medicine, and Crossing Jordan. He had directed a few films too, though none of them were particularly successful: 1984's American Dreamer with JoBeth Williams, 1987's Russkies, and 1988's Distant Thunder, as well as the much maligned made-for-TV movie, The Birds II: Land's End, on which he used the Alan Smithee pseudonym. According to IMDB, the only theatrical films he's done since Halloween: Resurrection ate something called Nearing Grace in 2005 and a 2013 film called Drones; otherwise, he's mainly done more TV work, on shows like Smallville, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the revamp of 90210. In any case, from what I can tell, he was hired to do Halloween: Resurrection because, like most TV specialists, he could shoot fast and work with small budgets. Being someone who loves Halloween II, all I can say is that, whether it was the script he had to work with or interference from the studio, which it seems there was a fair amount of, it's hard for me to believe this was made by the same guy. The film does have some style and okay bits of atmosphere, but it's nowhere close to the level of Halloween II.  

I knew from the TV spots that Jamie Lee Curtis was back again as Laure Strode, but I assumed she would be in the entire movie, maybe trying to stop the others from spending the night in Michael's house or, at least, having a final confrontation with him at the end. So, when Jonathan told me that not only was she in just the first fifteen minutes but that Michael actually killed her, I was stunned. I couldn't believe they would kill off this character who had been one of the most beloved aspects of the series from its inception. Turns out, that's the only way Curtis would agree to appear here, as after she was screwed out of having a true final confrontation with Michael in H20, she was done with it all. But, even though she only did the film to make sure both she and Laurie would be freed from the series (little did she know), I thought Curtis did well with what she had to do. I, for one, really feel bad for Laurie when you first see her in her room in Grace Andersen Sanitarium, as she looks absolutely destroyed, both emotionally and physically, due to having killed an innocent man. That overwhelming guilt, coupled with being taken away from her son (whose picture you can see on the wall behind her), after what felt like such a triumph at the end of H20, has also apparently made her lose the will to live. Or at least, it seems so, given how she's virtually catatonic when the two nurses at the beginning visit her and give her medication. In reality, she's faking her catatonia, pretending to take her meds and hiding them with the Raggedy Ann doll she often holds. Knowing that, like before, Michael will come for her sooner or later, she's been preparing. Though she's been discovered on the hospital's roof, supposedly attempting suicide, it turns out that she's actually been setting a trap for him up there (though where she got the materials and put it all together without being caught is anyone's guess). And when he does inevitably show up, she manages to ensnare him in it.

Unfortunately, not only is Laurie killed off, but the reason for it makes her look so stupid. After Michael chases her up to the roof, she catches his foot with a pulley system and rope, hoists him up over the edge, and prepares to cut the rope and drop him. (After everything that Michael has survived, does she really think a long fall is going to kill him once and for all? Plus, she had three years to prepare for Michael and this was the best plan she could come up with?) Just as she's about to do it, he starts grabbing at his mask

and Laurie, remembering the tragic mistake she made, needs to be sure this time and tries to take the mask off. Some have questioned how she would even know what his face looks like but, as brief as her glimpse of it was in the original Halloween, I doubt she's forgotten and would probably still recognize it even after twenty years of aging, not to mention how he should burned and blind in one eye). What gets me is that she thought this might be another instance of mistaken identity. Who else would burst into her 

room specifically, wearing that outfit and mask, in an attempt to knife her to death? Does she think Michael once again swapped clothes with somebody while he was in the middle of chasing her up to the roof? And even on the slim chance that it's not him, it's clear that this person wants her dead, so I think it'd be okay to do away with him. But, nope, Laurie attempts to take the mask off, he grabs her, they tumble over the edge of the roof, and he manages to grab the knife and stab her in the back. I do like that, before Michael lets her fall to her death, Laurie actually kisses him and says,

"I'll see you in hell," but it doesn't change that this is a very undignified way for her to go out. If they absolutely had to kill her, they could have at least come up with something better, like maybe have her get killed after another fight with Michael or die protecting someone else (but then again, it seems like Curtis had very strict, stringent ideas for how exactly Laurie was to go out, and probably didn't feel like doing another big "final" confrontation with Michael).

As far as the other characters in this prologue go, the only one who's kind of interesting is Harold (Gus Lynch), a patient who's an expert on serial killers, often spouting facts, as well as dressing up like them (when he first appears, he's wearing a clown mask to imitate John Wayne Gacy) and, according to the guards, tends to escape from his room a lot. Notably, after killing Laurie, Michael walks into Harold's room, gives him the bloody knife, and just walks away, while Harold spouts off information about him. I don't know why that part makes me smile but it does, I guess because Michael's smart enough to know that Harold will take the blame for his murders, and how Harold is too wrapped up in realizing that Michael is back, or too crazy, to realize it. Heck, he might know but just doesn't care.

As for the movie's main story, a good chunk of the characters aren't anything that special, but there are a few that I don't mind, including our final girl, Sara (Bianca Kajlich). That said, she's far from one of the series' most impressive leads, as her character is pretty generic: the typical quiet, smart, goody two-shoes who's the antithesis of everyone else, doesn't even really want to participate in the Dangertainment show, but is pressured into it; in other words, she's a low-rent version of Laurie in the original Halloween. The reason why I say I don't mind her is because she's not annoying or obnoxious as some of the other characters, but she doesn't have the most expressive face and her line delivery is pretty monotone for much of the movie. And though we see how intelligent she is in her introductory scene in psychology class, as she's the sole person paying attention to the professor (a cameo by Rick Rosenthal, by the way) and able to answer his question about the dark side of humanity, it never comes into play at all. You'd think it would, given how Michael certainly embodies that concept, but other than Sara giving some thoughts as to why he became the monster he is (based on evidence that turns out to be rigged), nope. Most of what she does during the third act is scream a lot (not really her voice, though, as Kajlich can't scream very well) and run from Michael. She even does something really stupid at one point and yelp even when she's specifically warned not to. Now, she does help Freddie when he's fighting Michael, as well as fend him off with a chainsaw at one point (although, her line, "You bastard! This is for Jen! This is for Rudy! For all of them!", is painfully bad), so she's not totally helpless, but she still has to be saved by Freddie during the climax..

I'm going to get a lot of crap for this but, I kind of like Busta Rhymes as Freddie. I know he's one of the most hated parts of this very hated movie, and his character isn't the most decent human being, but I can't help it; he has a certain energy, natural likability, and charm that I really gravitate towards, and I'm always entertained whenever he's onscreen. I like some of his lines, like when, after Sara gets startled during an interview and screams so loud that a nearby glass explodes, he goes, "Now that's what I'm looking for. Ooh!", or when he's watching a martial arts movie in his motel room and going, "Get his ass! Get his ass! Get his ass! Who could be better than Wat Chun Lee? Come on, whoopin' everybody ass while he's smokin' a cigarette." Then there's a knock at the door and he goes, "Oh, shit. Who's knockin' on my door this late? Whoever this is is distractin' me from seein' Wat Chun Lee whoop some ass." And I always laugh at the part when he's dressed up as Michael, is confronted by the real Michael, and berates him because he thinks it's someone who works for him trying to steal his thunder. Yes, he should've gotten butchered for that, and it doesn't make sense for Michael to just stand there and take it, but it's so damn funny, mainly due to the sound of Freddie's muffled voice: "If them kids come around and see us dressed up in the same shit, you're gonna ruin the whole effect! Goddammit, what the hell is wrong with you? I said, 'What you lookin' at me like that for?" Huh? Huh? [Taps Michael on the forehead.] You don't get it?! You don't get it?! Your shit ain't workin' up there or somethin'? You need to take your ass back into the garage with Nora. That's your job! Go back there to Nora and help her ass out. Go do your job. I left the backdoor unlocked for your ass to go back into the garage. That's what I did. You need to get the hell out of here! Go on scoot, skedaddle! Get the fuck out of dodge!" Then Michael actually turns and walks away, and Freddie goes, "Goddamn. What the hell's somebody got to do to get a little decent help up in this motherfucker?" Believe me, I used to chastise myself for laughing at that, but I just figured that if it makes me laugh, it makes me laugh.

Like I said, you learn that Freddie is pretty scummy, as the entire Dangertainment show was a set-up: he and his crew rigged the Myers house with a bunch of fake evidence, made the participants look like morons live on the internet, and he even freely admits to Sara, Rudy, and Jim when they find out that he has no qualms about it whatsoever and only wants a paycheck after it's all over. But, in my opinion, he does redeem himself. Once he discovers that Michael is indeed in the house and has killed everybody

except for him and Sara, he attempts to get them both out, rather than leaving her behind and saving himself. Plus, when they run into Michael, he actually charges at and fights him instead of running away like a coward, keeps him from hurting Sara, and even manages to get some licks in. Now, that said, it is ridiculous to see Michael Myers taking so much abuse from Busta Rhymes, of all people, doing Kung-Fu and making those stereotypical sounds, and I get why people hate it. But he doesn't totally

dominate Michael in the fight, either, and would've died at one point if Sara hadn't intervened. The same goes for the fight between him and Michael in the burning garage: he gets knocked back at one point and, if he hadn't regained consciousness when he did, he would've easily died. And speaking of that confrontation, it happens because he broke into the garage to save Sara, again instead of just saving himself, which he could've done, especially after Michael had stabbed him repeatedly in the shoulder (although, he doesn't act at all like he has a serious

shoulder wound). Plus, again, I must be honest, I do like some of his lines, like, "Burn, motherfucker! Burn!", and, "Hey, Mikey, happy fuckin' Halloween!" (although, yeah, maybe too many such lines in that one scene). And finally, Freddie clearly recognizes that it's his fault so many people are dead, as he solemnly tells Sara he had no idea whatsoever that Michael was there. At the end, upon realizing he himself was being this dickish earlier, shuts down the news reporters when they shove cameras in their faces and ask for statements, saying that Michael is a serious threat that can't be trivialized or exploited.

I also don't mind Sara's friend Rudy (Sean Patrick Thomas), as I thought he was rather likable and funny, with his quirk of being obsessed with food and feeling that a poor diet is what causes some people to become murderers: "Too much protein, not enough zinc. Next thing you know, you're cuttin' up bodies in the bathtub. I mean, look at, uh, look at Hitler. He was vegetarian. The brother was seriously malnourished." "Remember that guy who was on trial for murder in San Francisco? All he ate was Twinkies." Another moment I like is when he and Jenna are getting high and, when Sara bursts in on them to tell them she saw Michael, Rudy is laughing like a loon while, at the same time, telling her that there's nobody in the house besides them. I've been in those moods where you're so out of it that you'll laugh at anything (and no, I wasn't stoned) and so, I found that relatable and funny. I also like how Rudy has some integrity, as when he finds out that the show has been rigged for sensationalism, he decides to forget the money and quit, as does Sara. Finally, I have to admire that he chooses to fight back against Michael, going so far as to divert his attention away from Sara. As Michael corners him in the kitchen, he tells him that he should try a little less protein in his diet to control his violent tendencies and proceeds to whack him with a rolling pin, throw some stuff in his eyes, temporarily blinding him, and use two knives to fend him off. Unfortunately, the door leading outside is locked (I love the way he says, "Oh, shit," when he learns this) and Michael is able to corner, overpower, and kill him in a pretty nasty way.

But as much as I like Rudy, I can't say the same for Sara's other friend, Jenna (Katee Sackhoff). My God, is this girl is annoying! I may still not be fond of Tina in Halloween 5, but at least her affection for Jamie Lloyd was one redeeming quality; this girl, on the other hand, is the definition of an air-head dumb blonde. She's obnoxious, cares about nothing except getting some fame from being on Dangertainment, pressures her less than enthusiastic friend into doing it with her (according to Sara, she's talked her into similar things before), does annoying stuff while they're in the house, like fool her friends into thinking she's being attacked, and the way she talks is just irritating, as are some of her lines. Right after she's introduced and she and Sara go to see Rudy, he says, "Don't distract me," as he's slicing up some vegetables and she says, "Oh, I can't help myself. I am distracting." When she's being interviewed and is asked what she expects to find in the Myers house, she says, "My way into network broadcasting," before going, "Pfft!", in a ditzy manner, which just makes me groan. I especially hate the line she says to Bill early on, "You are, like, this close to getting voted off the island," because of how badly dated it is. And when they're in the house and she lies on a bed, commenting, "And this must be the bed where he was conceived," I was thinking, "God, shut up!" I can't even get interested when she's lifting up her top at one point because of the dumbass face she makes while doing so. Plus, it didn't help that her skin is so sickly pale (does this woman ever get out in the sun?). And unfortunately, like Tina, she doesn't get killed until very late in the film.

Just about as annoying as Jenna is Bill (Thomas Ian Nicholas), who's constantly trying to get into her pants. Before they go into the house, he's using the lipstick camera to get a shot of her cleavage, uses her foot going through the house's rotten staircase and stopping her from falling as an excuse to grab her butt (he keeps the camera on it as they head on up), and convinces her to lift up her top, even though it ends up being just a tease. All of that would already make him intolerable (I'm not a fan of American Pie, so I don't like those kind of teenage characters anyway), but he's also just a snarky smartass who's often making obnoxious comments, like his deadpanning, "Wow, a chair," when Sara and Rudy show them this high chair that Michael was apparently strapped in when he was a kid, and, "Worried about your internet fanbase?", to Jenna at one point. Fortunately, he's not in the film that much and is the first one of the group to get killed. 

I also don't care much for Jim (Luke Kirby) or his would-be love interest, Donna (Daisy McCrackin). Jim, while not as obnoxious or as much of a smartass as Bill, is still only interested in getting in banging Donna, as well as the money he'll get from participating in Dangertainment. He's even willing to just sit around and not even give the viewers a good show, and contemplates going on with it even when he knows it's all fake, which he was legitimately angry about at first. As for Donna, even though there

wasn't much to her, I didn't mind her at first, since she came off as smart and seemed interested in exploring the house and finding out why Michael Myers became evil. She also continually resists Jim's lecherous advances... and then, when they're down in the basement, she comes on to him. Well, that was sporadic. An earlier comment she makes about cameras being phallic not withstanding, she spends much of her screentime shutting Jim down whenever he acts sleazy towards her, even giving him the finger when he comments, "You know, Donna, you got great legs. What time do they open?" (I do like his retort of, "That be 1:00?"), and then, out of nowhere, she starts making out with him and is fully prepared to go all the way, only getting stopped when a bunch of fake corpses fall onto the two of them. And when I talk about the kills, I'll mention how both of theirs are pretty underwhelming. 

One person whom I always enjoy seeing onscreen, as I have childhood nostalgia for him, and wish he was a part of the actual action, is Ryan Merriman as Myles Barton, aka Deckard, Sara's online friend whom she often communicates with on her palm pilot (boy, does that date this movie). Yeah, he did lie to her and tell her that he's a grad student when she needed some tech support, and does think of it like he's dating her, even though they've never met, but he comes across as a pretty decent guy overall. As slightly creepy as this scenario is, as he looks smitten when he finally sees an image of her, despite her never learning what he looks like, he's good enough to do what she asked and watch the show, since she's really nervous about it. Even when he and his friend, Scott, are at a Halloween party, he uses the house's up-to-date computer system to watch the show, which gradually gets the attention of everyone else at the party. He's also the first one to realize that Sara and the others in the Myers house are in real danger, as he knows that Michael killing Donna onscreen was real, as is Jenna's beheading, and decides to call 911. Most significantly, he begins communicating with Sara on her palm pilot, telling her where Michael is and which way she should go to avoid him. Unfortunately, they don't make use of this angle for very long, as Deckard and everyone else at the party are forgotten about until after the climax, and Freddie is the one who ultimately saves Sara. She does credit Deckard for saving her life and, yeah, he did help, but he's not like the hero of this flick.

I don't mind Deckard's friend, Scott (Billy Kay), either, although he comes off as a massive geek who doesn't understand how the world works, as he clearly thinks that getting invited to a senior party when he's a freshmen is going to lead to anything major for him. Plus, as Deckard himself says, the only reason the two of them got invited was so Scott wouldn't tell his mother about his sister's tattoo, and when he tells Deckard, "You can either sit here in your little dream fantasy world, or you can come with me to this party

and learn to walk like a man," I'm like, "Jesus you're a loser." He also looks ridiculous dressed as Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction (although it seems to get him a girl, so what do I know?). And by the way, if you're a fan of Freddy vs. Jason, you should recognize Kyle Labine, the guy who played the Jason Mewes-like character of Freeburg in that movie, as the one partygoer with the red outfit.

And finally, Tyra Banks as Nora, Freddie's partner, is... well, just Tyra Banks. Obviously, you know why they put her in the movie without even needing to be told, but she certainly doesn't bring much else to the movie besides eye candy. They don't even pretend that she was hired for any other reason, as when she makes herself a Frappuccino, the camera gets a close-up of her gyrating rear end (the song she's listening to in that scene sucks big time, by the way). Mind you, I certainly don't mind looking at her, but her acting skills leave a lot to be desired, and her role could easily be removed from the movie, as she doesn't even die onscreen (a death scene for her was shot, but not used).

If nothing else, Halloween: Resurrection is a very good looking film. With a budget of around $15 million, slightly lower than that of H20, the production values are still very high, with the film looking very slick and polished, perhaps even a bit more so than its predecessor. The nighttime interiors, both the asylum in the opening and the Myers house, are where the cinematography really shines, as they're filled with a lot of cool blue lighting, which, for me, is always a welcome addition in any of these movies. Sometimes, those blue streams of moonlight are the

only hints of light in complete darkness (while I don't care for their design or aesthetic, the tunnels beneath the house are especially well-lit), and are sometimes further accentuated by the flashlights and lanterns that the characters use. And there are also many areas of shadows and total blackness, giving Michael plenty of space to hide in, with shots of him in the dark, his white mask either partially hidden in shadow or highlighted by the blue lighting. And the climax in the burning garage makes for a nice bright red-orange contrast to the rest of the movie. But what's most

notable about Resurrection's visual style is the way it uses the webcam gimmick, with numerous instances of the film cutting back and forth to footage shot by the digital cameras set up in the house itself and POVs from the lipstick body-cams worn by the characters. It does give the movie a unique style, and there are some shots of Michael captured by these cameras, like when Donna runs into him in the underground tunnels, as well as murder victims that are kind of scary in how real and immediate they feel

due to the footage's graininess. I also find it interesting that they did this by having all camera devices recording at the same time, and it turned out to be rather tricky to pull off, as the shooting from the body-cams, the cameras in the house, and the actual film cameras had to be well coordinated, and then they had to edit all of that footage into a cohesive whole.

While the technical filmmaking is definitely efficient, there are some instances of camerawork, editing, and sound effects that are rather strange. For instance, early on, when Bill startles Jenna, there's a random, split-second shot of Michael's face (that could possibly be part of the web-show, but I'm not sure). Also, when night falls on Haddonfield, we see that the group inside the Myers house are lighting some candles, and we then see what seems to be a POV shot of Michael from down the hall, followed by a quick glimpse of him in the darkness (it looks like it's

a few frames taken from the scene where he kills Donna down in the tunnels beneath the house; you be the judge), which is noticeably slowed down, as happens a few times in the film. We then cut back to the POV shot ,but it continues to move forward until it's in the room with and practically on top of them. All the while, you can hear Michael breathing, so it is indeed meant to signify his presence, but I don't get that latter part of the POV, as it makes you wonder how they don't see him. Another moment that's always perplexed me is when, while he and Sara are

looking for Jenna upon hearing her scream upstairs, Rudy turns around and unknowingly illuminates Michael, who was standing in a room behind him, with his flashlight. As he does, we hear a rather loud, wheezing breath, which I'm not sure was meant to be coming from Michael or if it was just a random sound effect intended to creep you out. There are also some inexplicable knife scraping sounds when Michael is either standing still or walking down a hallway without scraping the knife on anything. It's

common in slasher movies to hear a knife scrape when it really shouldn't be there, like at the very beginning of H20, when that woman raises the butcher knife to carve a jack-o-lantern, but it feels pretty random when you hear it in those instances here. And finally, there's the part during the climax when Michael is just about to kill Freddie but he grabs some live cables and shoves them right into Michael's crotch (!), sending him flying backwards. When he does, you hear this echoing, "Ooh!" If that was supposed to be Michael, then it may be the first time he's ever audibly responded to pain, and it also gives you an idea as why he tries to be as silent as possible.

This is, by far, the Halloween movie that feels the least like it's taking place in the Midwest in October; especially in the daytime exteriors. In fact, when I first saw the movie, until I started seeing the occasional jack-o-lantern and Halloween decorations, I figured it was taking place in the springtime (which is when it was shot). It does not have the fall vibe to it at all, with all of those completely green trees and the bright sunlight during those scenes. They try to give it a feeling of autumn by having dead leaves blow in from off-screen and shots of pumpkins, decorations,

and kids dressed up in costumes, but it doesn't feel genuine. The movie also just has a warm, springtime feeling to it overall. When Sara is driving to the motel to first meet with the Dangertainment crew, it looks like a warm evening in May, so much so that it actually perplexed me when I saw a jack-o-lantern! Now, on Halloween night, when you see people dressed up, like in that scene where those kids run up to the Myers house and leave a pumpkin on the porch, it comes off better, and fortunately, there aren't that

many daytime exteriors, as the movie was mostly done on a soundstage, but on the whole, this just does not feel like Halloween, or like Haddonfield, for that matter. In fact, I would've bet money that this was filmed in California in the spring and early summer, like the original film, but, as it turns out, it was shot entirely in Vancouver.

Of the two major locations in the film, the first, Grace Andersen Sanitarium, is something of a throwback to Haddonfield Memorial Clinic in Halloween II, with its long, dimly lit hallways and shots of Michael wandering around on the security monitors, as well as how he sneaks inside after walking the grounds (which might not be a coincidence, since it's Rick Rosenthal again). As is often the case, the basement area is the spookiest by far, with dark tunnels lined with low lights on either side and piping going across the ceiling and walls (makes me think of the tunnels

within Smith's Grove in the theatrical version of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers), and a laundry room that looks a lot creepier than it should, thanks to the swinging overhead lights and the steam. The upstairs area where the patients' rooms are is where I especially get Halloween II vibes, again due to the hallways and also the rooms themselves. Although, granted, Laurie's room here is certainly nicer than the small one she had at Haddonfield Memorial, with big windows looking out onto the

main yard, some nice lamps on small wooden tables, including her nightstand, and that picture of John on the wall above her bed. Harold, the patient obsessed with serial killers, has a room decorated with all sorts of drawings, as well as reading material about said killers, and a large window that looks out into the hallway. However, I have to say that the security in this place is horrendous, as patients are seen walking around no problem, and Michael simply opens Harold's room to give him the knife. Regardless, save for the rooftop, which was filmed on a soundstage, the immediate exteriors and the interiors of this location were shot at Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam, British Columbia.

The best example of production design here by Troy Hansen is the old, dilapidated Myers house, which was built entirely on a soundstage, including the exterior and front yard, with a blue screen in the background to digitally put in a surrounding neighborhood. Even though they don't focus that much on the exterior, it did fool me the first time I watched it, I just assumed it was shot on location, as was always the case before. Also, since this is the first time in the series' history that the house was built specifically for the film, they were able to make it

look very much like the house used in the first two, just aged another twenty or so years. And while the film is hardly scary, the house's interiors do have an eerie quality to it, looking how you would expect the inside of an abandoned, haunted-looking house to look: old and rundown, with dust, dirt, and cobwebs everywhere, boarded up windows, old, rotting wood, and no electricity, making it really dark when nighttime comes and forcing them to light candles in some candles. You see the living room, dining room, and kitchen downstairs, while upstairs, they go into

Judith's room, the parents' bedroom, and Michael's old room (I think). There's also an attic where Sara takes shelter when Michael chases her after killing everybody else. However, where things get a bit much for me is when you get down into the basement. First, Jim and Donna find a normal-looking basement, but then they come across a large, metal lid on the floor that Jim opens with an enormous key they found upstairs earlier. This leads down into a dungeon-like room, with chains on the walls and ripped up toys on

the floor, and while this turns out to be part of Dangertainment's set-up, as there's a section of wall with fake corpses hidden within it, beyond that are these sewer-like tunnels where Michael actually lives. And it now feels less like a house in Middle America and more like a relic from Europe's medieval times (it was even based on the tunnels of Paris). I guess it's meant to be part of Haddonfield's sewer system, but it doesn't feel right, with how it's brick-layered and there's even a spot with an old-fashioned, iron gate.

It's still well designed, though, and Michael's actual room down there is rather eerie, as Donna finds a filthy cot, a doll with nails shoved into its eyes, and a newspaper clipping about Laurie on the wall, as well as some half-eaten rats lying around, (does Michael just not have a taste for normal food or something?), one of which is still alive! And finally, the garage, which is where the show's control center is set up and is connected to these tunnels through a hatch in the floor, is a completely new addition, as it wasn't in the original film.

While the movie was definitely brought down from what Larry Brand originally intended for it, not all of the satire and social commentary he put into his initial screenplay was lost. The movie does still say something about the jadedness of the internet age, with viewers seeing these people getting killed and thinking it's all a put-on, and this was back when the internet was still in its infancy; it's certainly all the more relevant nowadays, since it's hard to believe anything you see in the media or on the internet. For that matter, Freddie knows that people won't believe

it's really Michael Myers when he goes around dressed up as him, but he's willing to do it because he's, "Only tryin' to give America a good show." And, to be fair, he's not exactly wrong when he says, "America don't like reality, first of all. Second of all, they think the shit is boring. They want a little razzle-dazzle, a little pizazz, a little thrill in their life..." When you watch a reality show, you're well aware that a good chunk, if not all, of what you're seeing is hardly "reality" but, rather, is amped up for entertainment purposes, and that's what the partygoers

initially think when they see Michael going around, wiping out everyone. They even cheer when he kills Rudy in a pretty nasty way because they think it's all part of the show. But then, when they realize it's not fake and they're actually watching people get killed, they get into it in another way, as they're now genuinely concerned for Sara's safety, telling Deckard, "Tell her this, tell her that," and the one guy even yells at the computer screen, "Come on, go!" even though it's pointless because she can't hear him

(but how many times have you done that yourself when watching something, regardless?). And as the authors of Taking Shape note, you can also look at it as a metaphor for the experience of horror movie production and exploitation, with those in the Myers house being the actors, Dangertainment representing the filmmakers, and those at the party, obviously, being the audience. You can even see Freddie's speech to the cast about why he's doing it and asking them to go along with it for monetary gain as something either Moustapha Akkad or Rick Rosenthal might say to the cast and crew.

Before really getting into discussing Michael Myers himself, we may as well first discuss the explanation as to how he's still alive after he was apparently beheaded at the end of H20. In flashback during the opening, we learn that, after Laurie stabbed Michael numerous times and sent him falling off the balcony onto one of the tables in the Hillcrest dining hall, the police not only arrived but a paramedic was allowed to go in by himself and examine Michael's body. After he took the knife from his hand, Michael suddenly sprung to life, grabbed him by the neck,

crushing his voice box, and slammed him up against the wall, choking him to the point where he passed out. Seizing the opportunity, Michael switched outfits with and put his mask on him, making it the paramedic whom Laurie decapitated after that big crash. Despite my mixed feelings when my cousin first told me about it, the minute I actually saw the movie, I knew it was complete crap even though, as a devoted fan, I tried to tell myself it wasn't. Let's count the ways in how this is a bunch of bull, shall we? First off, again, why did that one lone paramedic go

into the dining hall while everyone else stayed outside? Is that standard procedure for investigating a crime scene? Second, Michael must be pretty fast when it comes to swapping outfits with someone because, as long as that would've likely taken, you'd think somebody would walk in and check on the paramedic. Third, when Michael walked out wearing the paramedic's outfit, did nobody notice that he wasn't the same guy who went in there to begin with? And since Laurie knows what his face looks like, shouldn't she have seen him and been like, "Oh, crap,

that's him! He's going to get away!"? Fourth, even if he didn't walk out until after Laurie had taken off in the ambulance, as we see in the flashback, wouldn't somebody have come up to this "paramedic" and ask, "Why are you walking around with that knife? That's evidence." (There's a moment where two people walk by him while he's carrying that knife and they don't bat an eyelash at him.) I'm not going to ask what exactly Michael's plan was, as they eventually did learn he was still out there when they found the

paramedic's decapitated head, so he obviously meant this as a temporary disguise so he could get away. But let's now get into how this doesn't at all fit with what we saw during H20's climax. If that was indeed a paramedic and not Michael, then why did he lunge at Laurie after he managed to get out of the body bag? How did he survive going through a windshield and, after that, getting crushed between a fallen tree and a coroner's van? And even if he couldn't talk, he still could've taken the mask off at any point. If I were to

wake up after being rendered unconscious, I think I'd realize there was something on my face and grab at it. As this scenario was thought up while H20 was shooting, they considered this and put in a moment in that movie where "Michael" appears to grab at his mask after he awakens from being crushed in-between the log and the van. But still, they only went halfway with it, and didn't think about everything else I just mentioned.

Again, going back to Taking Shape, the authors were definitely correct when they said that, whatever its main plot turned out to be, Resurrection was at a severe disadvantage from the get-go, as it was burdened with undoing H20's triumphant, crowd-pleasing ending and tying up all these loose ends, along with telling its own story. Even if the rest of the movie turned out to be really good and hadn't been screwed so much from the initial screenplay, the opening would've still left a really bad taste in everyone's mouths. Moreover, it makes the movie's

structure feel very uneven, as that prologue comes off completely disconnected from everything else. While they did shoot scenes that made the transition from one to the other a little smoother (such as Michael actually arriving home following the opening), as it is, we go from Michael killing Laurie, finishing off the plotline that, in this continuity, began all the way back in the original Halloween, and walking off into the night, right to the main plot involving the Myers house, wherein Michael just suddenly appears while the web show is being set up. While the best direction

likely would've been to make a whole movie revolving around the opening's core concept, said movie wouldn't have gone over any better than the one we got (and Jamie Lee Curtis obviously would've had none of it, regardless). For my money, if Resurrection absolutely had to finish up this business, it might've been better had the movie been flopped the other way, starting with the main plot involving the reality show at the Myers house, then having Michael, after springing to life in the morgue and,

predictably, killing that female coroner, escape, somehow learn where Laurie is, and go in and kill her. It would still suck that Laurie died after all but, at the very least, even though the ending of H20 would have been infinitely better, this timeline would've had a concrete conclusion, rather than ending on a stupid, cliched jump-scare that will almost certainly never be followed up on.

Finally getting to Michael himself, I must admit that I kind of like his portrayal here. Like H20, they really downplay the "force of evil" approach in favor of making him more akin to an actual serial killer, with only hints of anything supernatural, such as his unnatural strength, extreme resilience, and ability to appear in places he shouldn't be able to (like when he bursts through the wall behind a mirror to murder Bill). However, it doesn't bother me as much here as it did there, mostly because the movie doesn't feel as overt with this approach. (And like I said in my review of H20, the pure evil concept doesn't really come across anyway when there's no Dr. Loomis around to remind us of how Michael is more than just a psychotic man, so it's probably best that they don't dwell upon it.) Regardless, they again portray Michael as a very cunning and creepily patient killer. Ignoring how stupid and poorly executed that whole scenario was, he did still manage to slip away from the site of his previous murder spree, and the idea he came up with to do so is something I could see him doing (again, if only it hadn't been pulled off so illogically). He's also managed to avoid capture in the three years since, has, yet again, learned where Laurie is, and is able to sneak inside, kill the security guards, and get at her. And once he's finished her off, he stops by Harold's room and gives him the knife, likely so he will be blamed for the murders he's committed there. Besides that pragmatic reason, it also suggests that Michael, having overheard Harold talk about John Wayne Gacy to the security guard who took him back inside after he found him wandering the grounds, understood that he was obsessed with serial killers, also understands somewhat that he himself is rather infamous among them, and decided to frame Harold under the guise of gifting him with a memento.

Because of how hated the opening is, one thing that Resurrection almost never gets any credit for is how Michael killing Laurie finally dispenses with the sibling bloodline subplot that so many hate and now, for the first time since the original Halloween, he has no agenda or any true motives driving him. He doesn't even try to locate John, so unlike in the Thorn trilogy, where his focus went from Jamie to her baby, Laurie was his sole target, and now, he can stalk and murder anybody he wants for no reason other than it's just what he does. Now, that said, they waste the

opportunity by having him seemingly decide to take this Halloween off and stay inside his old house, only for all these intruders to show up, prompting him to act like Leatherface in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and wipe them out because he doesn't like strangers roaming around his house, when it would've been better to have him go around Haddonfield and murder random people on Halloween night (like in Halloween 2018). But still, if you always hated the brother/sister thing, at least that's one silver lining you can apply to Laurie's death. And while they seem to

be explaining Michael's behavior, throughout the movie with all of the evidence of emotional and physical abuse they find in his house, in the end, it turns out to be a setup, so unlike in the Thorn trilogy, we still don't know why Michael became what he is, why he wanted to kill his siblings, or how he became more than just a mere human. So, at least they left the mystery intact. And we get a few more possible peeks into Michael's mind, like when he watches Jenna teasing Bill with a flash from the doorway. Either he's

genuinely turned on by this or, since this in Judith's old room, it could be reminding him of when he saw her naked when he walked in as a six-year old and stabbed her to death. And while I will never argue that it's wrong for Michael to just take all that verbal abuse from Freddie, I like to think that the reason why he walks away like Freddie tells him is because he told him where Nora is and he decided to go take care of her while she's a sitting duck, while still planning to kill Freddie later.

I also think Michael's physicality and performance are on point here. Like in H20, he's played by someone, Brad Loree this time, with a tall, thin body style that's similar to the people who played him in the first two films. And while Loree's actual performance isn't anything that we haven't seen before, coming across like a slightly juiced up version of Chris Durand from the previous film, I think he does a more than passable job with the movements and gestures, and I think he's quite good in the many moments where Michael is stalking someone from the shadows before

going in for the kill. Plus, it's nice to hear Michael breathing heavily beneath the mask again, something Durand didn't do. Speaking of which, just like in H20, Michael's main weapon of choice is his butcher knife but, also like that film and the first two, he will use another method every now and then if the opportunity arises.

However, there are things about Michael in this movie that I don't care for. Going back to the prologue, before she's about to drop him off the roof, Laurie sees him grabbing at his mask, just like the paramedic did, which prompts her to make the dumb decision that gets her killed. How would he know to do that? He definitely wasn't there to see the paramedic do it, so was it something he just came up with in the moment and it happened to work? Moreover, Sara seems to have some connection to Michael that she shouldn't. Before they head to the

Myers house, there's a moment where Jenna is having her try on a new outfit at a clothing store, and when she looks in the mirror, she sees a reflection in of Michael standing outside the storefront window, but when she turns around, he's not there. It's nothing more than a callback to a similar moment with Laurie in H20 (one of several allusions to that movie), but there, it was a manifestation of her trauma of the events of 1978, but because Sara has never encountered Michael before, it makes no sense here. It's further compounded when she first arrives at the

house and again appears to hallucinate seeing Michael watching her from one of the windows. This time, it actually is him, but it still makes no sense that she would be seeing him. And, while his physicality is spot on, there are also moments where I feel he's a little overly strong, as he kills Jim in a manner similar to Brady in Halloween 4, and effortlessly decapitates Jen with his butcher knife (good kill, though). Plus, I feel that moment where he bursts through the wall and mirror to attack Bill was a bit much for this version of the character, and felt more like something you'd see in the Thorn trilogy or even the Rob Zombie films.

As for Michael's mask, I kind of have the same feeling that I did with the main mask in H20 (thankfully, there were no big debacles with it this time around): when it's lit and shot well, it looks good, but other times, it looks a little funky, and the hair is sometimes a tad too poofy. Still, I can safely say that I like this mask's face more than the previous one, and as I've said in other reviews, the fact that you can often clearly see Michael's eyes behind the mask doesn't bother me as it does others. And during the climax in the burning garage, I swear that there are

times when the face looks like Jamie Lee Curtis'! Maybe I'm the only one who sees that but, when Michael flings Freddie back against the wall, knocking him out, it cuts to a close-up of the mask (the second image here) and, to me, it looks the way Laurie did at the beginning of the movie. Does anyone else see that? If so, tell me so I know I'm not crazy.

One thing I definitely appreciate about this film is that, to me, it doesn't appear to have as many false scares as H20. There are a few, sure, and they're definitely dumb, like that aforementioned one where Sara imagines she sees Michael outside of the storefront, but they didn't do it so much here that I got sick of it. (Either that or, the ones in H20 annoyed me more because it felt like they cheapened that movie, whereas this movie's standards aren't nearly as high.) There's one right near the beginning, with the mental patient Harold coming up behind Willie wearing his

clown mask and scaring him, which is very cheap and predictable. The stupidest one by far is when the group inside the Myers house hear Jenna scream upstairs and, after running up there and looking around for her, Sara enters one room, Jenna pops out of the dark at her, and they both scream like banshees. Jenna then says, "Gotcha!", with that stupid smile on her face, which leads into Sara calling her a bitch, and Jenna fires back with, "Slut!" (You see why I hate that woman?) There's a weird one where Sara, Rudy, and Jenna are in the parents' bedroom, Sara looks around

in the closet, and a mannequin with a face that looks like Michael's mask suddenly falls out from behind the clothes and onto her. It leads into this overly dramatic moment where she flails around, causing the closet door to shut behind her, and Rudy feels the need to smash through the slats in order to get to her. When they pull her out, they ask,what that thing is, which is what I want to know. I guess Freddie may have put in there to create a cheap scare for his show but, who knows, maybe Michael models his masks on

that thing. Maybe that thing scared him as a kid and it inspired him to find a mask like that when he started killing people. Following that, we have the moment where the fake corpses hidden behind the wall in the sub-basement suddenly burst out and tumble all over Jim and Donna when they start having sex down there, and a moment shortly afterward where Sara is seemingly grabbed from behind by Michael, only for it to turn out to be Freddie. That's about all of the fake scares, though.

While not the goriest film in the series, either at the time or especially now, you do get some pretty good kills in Resurrection, kills that I find much more memorable than the ones in H20. The blood itself is a little too brightly-colored in spots, granted, which was pretty typical of horror films of the time, but still I think Gary J. Tunnicliffe and his crew did some pretty good work. Ironically enough, according to Rick Rosenthal, the same thing that happened with Halloween II happened here: he didn't want a lot of gore but the producers made him go back in and beef

it up a little more (at least in this instance, he didn't have somebody else doing it behind his back). In any case, you get your first gruesome special effect less than five minutes in, with the paramedic's decapitated head in the flashback (in fact, Tunnicliffe himself plays the paramedic!). As for actual kills, we get our first couple shortly afterward. Michael decapitates one of the asylum's security guards, Franklin, offscreen, which leads to Willie, finding the head in a running dryer, along with the headless body on the floor, before he himself gets a really nasty throat

slash. Of course, after that is when Michael kills Laurie but there's nothing special about it: just a bloodless stab in the back (she can't even go out with a spectacular death). Charlie, a cameramen for Dangertainment, falls victim to Michael when he's setting up cameras inside the house. Michael takes one of the sharp points at the end of a tripod's legs and slowly impales him through the neck with it when he backs him up against a wall. Standard bloody kill, but effective. The kill that always makes me cringe,

even though there's no blood whatsoever, is Bill's after Michael bursts through a mirror. Michael grabs him, stabs him several times, and finally puts the knife right through the top of his head. Ouch! As much as I really don't like that character, the violent, quick action of the blade going through his noggin makes me go, "Ooh, damn!" As I said before, the most pathetic death is Donna's down in the tunnels beneath the house. I'm not talking about the method, which is Michael pushing and impaling her on a bar

that's sticking out from this metal gate, but because said gate has a hole big enough for her to climb through. It's mangled, but she could still make it through. But no, she just pointlessly shakes the gate and allows Michael to reach her and push her into the bar. The shot afterward of Michael looking at her webcam and then walking away, leaving her dead face staring up at the ceiling, is a bit eerie, though. 

They must've realized what an irritating person Jenna is, because she gets probably the best death. Michael corners her at the top of the stairs, swings that butcher knife, and slices her head clean off, sending it tumbling down at Sara, Rudy, and Jim. As I said, a bit of an overpowered moment, but I can let it slide because it's an awesome death for an irritating character. Next, he grabs Jim's head and crushes it with his bare hands, like Brady in Halloween 4. Although, like that kill, this is another one that feels a little too Jason Voorhees-like, I think Brady's death

was more effective and came off as much more painful thanks to those loud, bone-snapping sounds. For some reason, the crushing sounds and the blood coming out of Jim's eyes and mouth don't affect me in the same way. Rudy, after fending Michael of with various items in the kitchen, including two knives of his own, gets cornered and, when he tries to stab him with both, Michael catches his arms, pulls them both down, holds him in place as he lifts him up, and then impales him through the sides with the knives, fixing

him on the dining room door. And then, just for good measure, he goes to a cabinet, takes out another knife, and puts it right through his chest and out the other side of the door, finishing him off in kind of a more grisly version of Bob's death in the original. That's the last onscreen death, though when Sara makes her way to the garage during the climax, she discovers Nora hanging above a pool of blood.

I still maintain that Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers has the series' most unimaginative opening credits sequence (not counting the Rob Zombie movies, which don't have any, although what they do have is still more memorable), but Resurrection isn't far behind it. While fairly atmospheric, thanks to Danny Lux's particularly effective rendition of the Halloween theme, which is accompanied by ghostly female vocals and what sounds like creaking footsteps, the first minute-and-a-half or so is just

typical credits appearing over a black screen. It gets a little better when it transitions to an apparent POV going down a tunnel that's later revealed to be Grace Andersen Sanitarium's basement, and transitions again to a hallway and a door that turns out to be Laurie's, but it's still one of the series' more uninspired credits montages.

While the kills themselves are enjoyable enough, Resurrection unfortunately lacks in terms of thrilling chase and suspense sequences, save for the climax, which is basically one big chase/fight with Michael. There are some sprinkled throughout the movie, to be sure, but they leave little impact. But, as horrendous as its ultimate conclusion is, the opening at Grace Andersen Sanitarium does manage to be fairly atmospheric. There's a nice shot where, after the nurses come and give her some medication, and after

she puts it in with all of the other pills she's placed into her Raggedy Ann doll, Laurie looks out her room's window and sees Michael watching her from the grounds. He also disappears in-between cuts to her reaction, an obvious nod to the moment in the original Halloween where he was watching her from a neighbor's backyard. Following that, when Willie takes Harold back inside the building after finding him roaming around, there's a shot of Michael lurking in the darkness. And then, Franklin sees Michael in

the basement thanks to the security monitors and, thinking it's Harold (even though Harold and Michael have completely different body types), takes Willie down there to go get him. When they reach the basement, Franklin goes on ahead while Willie, having already proven to love snacking, stops at a vending machine. He even takes time to eat his snack, only to then hear Franklin scream in the next room after confronting "Harold." The set-up for this next little setpiece is actually fairly well done, with Willie creeping into the very spooky laundry room around

the corner. He slowly makes his way to the back, towards one of the dryers, which is banging louder than it should as it spins around. He turns it off and looks inside, as Michael descends from the ceiling behind him by hanging onto a large bar (one of the noted H20 callbacks). Shifting the bloody sheets, Willie screams when he sees Franklin's severed head staring back at him, and backs away, tripping over the decapitated body. As soon as he gets to his feet, Michael grabs him from behind and slits his throat. This is followed by a wonderfully spooky image of

his shadow on the wall, as he breathes heavily while looking down at his handiwork, then heads upstairs. Him walking the hallways leading to Laurie's room is also pretty cool, accompanied by the Halloween theme, but the minute he bursts through her door, goes to stab her in bed, only for her to get him from behind, it goes downhill and leads into her disgraceful death.

One moment that I have to briefly mention is this random one when Sara and Jenna are in a dorm room after they've been chosen for the Dangertainment show. Suddenly, some weird guy shows up in the doorway, telling them, "Don't do it. That's the house where it all started. He walked its hallways, hid in its closets, dreamed in its bedrooms, helped his mother in the kitchen, watched TV in the living room with his dad, played in his sister's bedroom..." As he says this, he examines some pairs of panties hanging to his

right, even lifting one up like he's going to smell it, before continuing, "Then, one day, he picked up a knife... and he never put it down again." There's a beat of tension, when the guy suddenly goes, "Maaaa!", in a vocalizing tone, and continues doing it as Jenna forces him out and closes the door, commenting, "That guy's fuckin' weird." It's just one of those moments that leaves you sitting there, wondering, "What in the hell was the point of that?"

The first death within the main storyline, that of Charlie the cameraman, comes early the next day, when he and Nora are finishing setting up inside the house. After he fusses around with trying to find a good angle on the staircase behind the front door, Nora, who's in the command center in the garage, tells him to just pick a spot and move on, before going to make herself a Frappucino. While she does, Michael enters the room behind Charlie and takes the camera and tripod after he placed it in the corner.

Taking obliviousness to a new level, Nora is too busy dancing and listening to the music she has playing to see, on one of the monitors, Michael point one of the tripod's bladed legs at Charlie, back him into a corner, and impale his neck. Michael even has time to pull it out, drag Charlie's body away, and place the camera back in the corner, while Nora calls Freddie as she enjoys her drink. She even sits down right across from the monitor showing all this and doesn't look until Charlie has been dragged offscreen.

Things slow down for a while, but like I said earlier, the moment outside the house, where three little kids run across the street and leave a jack-o-lantern on the house's doorstep does have some atmosphere to it. The same goes for what you see happening inside, with the group lighting some candles, while Michael lurks in the darkness nearby; meanwhile, Miles, aka Deckard, is watching the broadcast from the Halloween party he's attending. During the moment where Jenna and Bill head upstairs, into Judith's old

bedroom, and Bill tries to get Jenna to flash the camera, Deckard gets his first hint that something is wrong when he sees a glimpse of Michael walking behind a camera in the hall, only for the feed to mess up. Once Nora fixes it, the landing at the top of the stairs is completely empty. Shortly afterward comes the moment where Jenna creates a false alarm upstairs by screaming and scares the crap out of Sara when she runs up there to check on her. After that is when Bill leans towards a mirror, telling the audience that

he's going to get Jenna back for that, only for Michael to explode through it, grab him, and stab him several times, before finishing him off a jab to the head. Amazingly, not only does nobody in the audience see this, but neither do Freddie and Nora, who are at the control center, having some wine. They only look when Nora notices that Bill's camera feed just died (revealing that the monitor was right in front of them!) and Freddie figures he just dropped it. Following that, Donna and Jim find their way down

into the sub-basement, while up in one of the bedrooms, Rudy finds an old coloring book and opens it to find disturbing scribbles on the pictures inside. He then starts to become suspicious about how much apparent evidence they're finding to explain Michael's madness, saying it's too easy. Shortly afterward, just as they're about to have sex down in the eerie chamber they find below the basement, Jim and Donna are, first, shocked and horrified when an apparent mass grave of Michael's past victims bursts through the wall and collapses on top of them, and

then angered when they realize the corpses are fake. Following that is when Freddie, dressed up as Michael, runs into the real Michael, and Donna, while investigating the back of the space the fake corpses fell from, stumbles into Michael's lair and is stalked, cornered, and killed by him. Meanwhile, the others run into Freddie while he's dressed as Michael and learn that the whole thing is indeed a setup.

Things really pick up when, as Sara, Rudy, and Jim discuss what to do, Jenna wanders around upstairs and finds an attic access door. Thinking she's found where Bill's been hiding, she brings the door down and yells, "Boo!", only to come face-to-face with Bill's corpse hanging upside from the hatch. Hearing her, then seeing her at the top of the stairs, they naturally assume it's just another trick. The same goes for when Michael rounds a corner and stands in front of Jenna. But then, when he beheads her with his butcher knife, and her head goes tumbling down the

stairs, they realize that this is the real thing; at the same time, at the party, while everyone else still thinks it's all fake, Deckard calls the police. Michael comes down the stairs towards them, as they run into the living room after trying the front door and finding it locked. In there, Rudy tries to break through one of the boarded up windows, while Jim grabs a camera tripod and whacks Michael with it when he walks in. This simply knocks him back a bit, and when Jim goes for another swing, Michael catches the tripod 

and raises his knife, only to stick it into the wall next to Jim and grab his head. Lifting him up, he slowly crushes his head, and then drops him. Sara runs out of the room, as Michael takes his knife and chases after her, when her foot goes through the rotten stairs and she gets stuck. He slashes at her, when Rudy comes behind him and gets his attention, prompting him to chase him through the living room and into the kitchen. Meanwhile, Sara runs to an upstairs room and barricades the door. That's when Rudy manages to fend Michael off for a little bit, before finding the door leading outside locked, getting cornered, and is pinned to the dining room door by three different knives.

Looking up at one of the webcams, Sara pleads for help from the viewers, then asks Deckard to help her. He begins contacting her through her palm pilot, as the others, slowly realizing it's all real, sees where Michael is thanks to the other camera angles. Deckard tells her that Michael is coming up the stairs, as he reaches the landing and approaches Bill's hanging body. Deckard then tells Sara that he's in the hallway outside, as well as not to scream but, of course, she does, giving herself away. As Michael approaches her door, she's told to climb out the window. She manages

to open and slip through it, but then finds she can't jump down because it's too high up. Michael smashes his way through her barricade and enters the room. Hearing him, she leans up against the side of the house, while he instinctively goes for the window and smashes his head through the glass. She promptly kicks him in the face, but as she climbs up along the roof, he manages to slash her in the back of the leg. Regardless, she makes her up to the attic window and crawls in. After getting herself situated up there, she

gets a message from Deckard, saying he can't see her. Using her lipstick cam's flashlight to illuminate herself, she, once again, quietly asks where Michael is and he tells her that he's in the hallway, then that he's gone into his old bedroom, while she finds Charlie's corpse up there with her. Realizing this is her chance to escape, Deckard tells her to do so and she quietly climbs down the ladder leading from the attic, over Bill's body, and makes her way around the stairway landing. She's suddenly grabbed from the dark by Freddie, who's learned that everyone else is dead and tells her that they've got to get out now.

Just as they're walking by Jenna's decapitated corpse, Michael emerges from the room across from them. Freddie immediately tackles him into the next room, only for Michael to lunge at, grab, and fling him across it. After getting to his feet, Freddie tells Michael, "So you wanna be on Dangertainment? Let's see what you got?", and proceeds to use the kung-fu moves he's seen on TV against him. While Freddie does manage to pulverize Michael with a kick to the head, he grabs his leg when he goes for another one. Freddie grabs his arm when he goes in with the knife,

when Sara jumps on Michael from behind and wraps a webcam cable around his neck. Michael spins around, whipping his knife, trying to get Sara off his back, and eventually manages to fling her across a bed and onto the floor. Before he can attack her, Freddie gets his attention and, after doing some more kung-fu noises and posing, runs at and sends him crashing out the window with a kick, where he's tangled up in some cables and apparently hung in the process. Feeling that they're now safe, Freddie and Sara walk down the stairs and head out. However,

when they reach the bottom of the stairs, Deckard sends another text, which reads, "HE'S STILL ALIVE!" Looking out the window, they both see that Michael is indeed not hanging out there anymore, having cut himself loose. Sara asks Deckard where he is and he responds, "IN THE HOUSE!" After they see that, Michael is revealed to be behind them and quickly stabs Freddie in the shoulder. Freddie tells Sara to run before he collapses and she takes off into the dark house, trying to escape through the kitchen

door, only to find it locked, along with Rudy's corpse. With no other option, she runs down into the basement, then into the sub-basement and the tunnels beneath the house, with Michael in hot pursuit. Coming across Donna's body, and turning to find Michael standing at the other end of the tunnel, she spots a ladder leading up to a hatch in the roof and, although Michael manages to grab and cut the back of her leg again while she's climbing, she kicks him in the face and makes her way up through the hatch, which leads into the garage. She puts a barricade over the hatch, not noticing that part of the barricade, an old push-mower, is leaking gasoline. Backing away, she slips in a large pool of blood and finds it's coming from Nora's body, hanging from the ceiling.

Looking at the monitors and seeing that all of her friends are dead, she then sees Michael outside the garage door. Sara quickly finds a place to hide, as he enters the garage and searches around in the dark. Seeing her webcam's POV on one of the monitors, he realizes where she's hiding, but she then comes out with a chainsaw and manages to slash him a couple of times, as well as cut some of the cables hanging from the ceiling, sending sparks flying and igniting the fuel that's been leaking from the mower. The chainsaw stalls and, after trying to restart it with no luck, she

futilely flings it at Michael. She tries to run for it, when the fire reaches the mower, which explodes and blows the two of them off their feet. As the fire spreads all around them, Sara is blown onto a small table with a modem sitting on it, which falls and tangles her legs up in the cables (at least, that's what I think is the reason why she can't get up afterward; I could be giving the movie too much benefit of the doubt). Michael rises to his feet, grabs his butcher knife, and makes his way over to Sara. As he raises the knife, ready to kill her, Freddie, injured but

alive, bursts though the garage door and resumes his fight with Michael. He grabs a shovel and whacks Michael across the chest with it, breaking the handle off. Twirling the handle around in his hands (again, despite how he got stabbed in the shoulder earlier), he hits him across the face a couple of times, but when he goes in for a third, Michael grabs the handle and manages to overpower him. Freddie fights back with all of his strength but gets knocked back against some shelves and rendered unconscious. Michael closes in

for the kill, but Freddie awakens at the right moment, grabs a cable, and shoves the end of it right into Michael's crotch, sending him flying backwards and getting tangled up in the cables and wires. Freddie shoves the live cable into the pool of blood Michael is standing in, electrocuting him, as Freddie yells, "Burn, motherfucker! Burn!" He then grabs Sara and carries her out of the garage on his back, leaving Michael to burn to a crisp.

The ending, with Michael's eyes opening with a loud, jolting noise on the soundtrack after his charred body is brought to the morgue and the female pathologist prepares to examine him, sucks besides just being an uninspired jump scare. The biggest reason is because, while they didn't know at the time, this would end up being the last entry in this timeline and, for a while, the original Halloween series as a whole. Obviously, they intended to make another film, but with Resurrection not doing nearly as well at the box-office as H20, the Weinsteins' split from Disney to

form the Weinstein Company, and Moustapha Akkad's tragic death in 2005, the decision was made to completely reboot the series and start over with a remake. While we would eventually return to the original series thanks to Blumhouse and David Gordon Green, it's a shame that this timeline couldn't have a proper closure. Again, while I still don't like that she was killed off to begin with, I do wish that Michael finally killing Laurie was at the end so it could've at least had a concrete conclusion, with Michael walking off into the night after completing his task. But unfortunately, history is history, and fans of this timeline will just have to be content with it ending on an unfulfilled jump-scare.

That ending was not the one they originally shot, but rather one of several that came about during some reshoots that Dimension ordered after they saw the initial cut and felt the film wasn't strong enough (it was also a result of test audiences wanting more of Busta Rhymes than there was initially). The original ending had Sara fending Michael off by herself in the garage, doing exactly what Freddie does in the final cut, and being saved from the burning shack by Deckard, who finally managed to introduce himself in person. Also, Freddie still lived in this ending, but he was carried away on a stretcher, apologizing to Sara for everything. That probably would've been the best one to go with, as it allowed Freddie to live, gave a purpose to the subplot with Deckard, and left it open

for more, as it ended with Sara telling Deckard, "You can't kill the Boogeyman." Another ending had the police investigating the remains of the burned down garage and, as one female investigator approached the hatch leading down into the tunnels beneath the house, Michael popped up and grabbed her. Same type of lame, jump-scare ending as the one we do have. And finally, there was one where Michael comes to life on the gurney as Freddie and Sara are looking at his charred body. He attacked Freddie, but Sara quickly grabbed a fire axe and put it right into his face! In other words, it was sort of a compromised version of the ending of H20, only this time, it actually was Michael getting the axe put to him. I

think we can assume that, had that one been used, coming up with a follow-up would've been even harder. Also, Freddie telling her, "You big ass-kickin', ball-bustin' chick. God bless you," while definitely funny, maybe would've ended it on too much of a comedic note. When all was said and done, there were so many endings that Rick Rosenthal suggested that they take advantage of it and use it as a gimmick, shipping the film with a different ending to each theater, akin to what they did with with the film version of Clue; the studio, however, didn't see it that way, although these endings are available to see on most home media releases.

As generally hated as Resurrection is, few would agree that one of its strongest assets is the music score by Danny Lux; moreover, I myself honestly think it's one of the best scores the series has seen in a long time, with Lux's rendition of the Halloween theme being the best since the synthesizer version way back in Halloween II. It's a simple, straightforward piano version but extremely atmospheric, often featuring crashing keys and background noises, like an ominous drone and moaning sounds. Those are especially noticeable in the opening version, which transitions into a melancholic section with vocalizing voices, then goes back into a much more somber version of the theme, with mournful singing, as we see Laurie sitting in her room in the asylum. I also particularly like the slow, ominous build-up to the theme after Michael hands the knife to Harold after having killed Laurie, a version that's played again at the end of the ending credits and is given an extra bit of atmospheric oomph with ghostly wailing. And there's also a slow, rather eerie version that plays as Michael walks away after he's killed Donna, which also kind of sounds like the main theme to The Fog. Lux also created some nice original bits of music, like a frantic chase theme for when Michael pursues Laurie up to the roof; a rather emotional piece for when he finally stabs her and sends her falling to her death; some creepy bits for when the group first enters the Myers house; a fitting one for when we see the kids running around Haddonfield on Halloween night; and a very threatening piece that leads into the main theme when Michael starts after Sara after stabbing Freddie. 

Unfortunately, not all of the music is great. There's this one dumb theme, which is only played once, thank God, that you hear when you're first introduced to Jenna, and it perfectly signifies what a stupid character she is, as it's just, "Durn, dur, dur." And the songs on the soundtrack suck big time, especially that God-awful one that Nora listens to while sitting in the control room, talking to Charlie. The same goes for all of those you hear when Deckard is chatting with Sara online in his room, as well as the songs you hear during the party (although, the music that plays when he and Scott first arrive at the party does sound pretty cool). Thankfully, Resurrection's ending credits are played to actual score rather than any trendy songs, which was one of my annoyances with H20.

Despite my being able to get some cheap entertainment out of it, I won't argue that Halloween: Resurrection is one of the franchise's lowest points. While I do think it has some good things about, like some fun kills, a good visual style and moments of atmosphere here and there, nice use of the webcam gimmick and the setting of the Myers house, a decent portrayal of Michael Myers, and a really good music score, it certainly has a lot of faults. The majority of the cast is either unremarkable or just plain annoying,

there aren't that many good chase and suspense sequences until the climax, the opening has two strikes against it with the hackneyed explanation of how Michael is still alive and the undignified death of Laurie Strode, and the film, as a whole, is not just filled with clichés, including an annoying jump-scare ending but is a very typical example of the kinds of slashers we were getting during the final years of the Scream-influenced era, let's say. There are a number of movies that I will die on a hill defending, but make no mistake, Resurrection isn't one of them.