hipnerd

This is my first review. Let me know what you think.

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Halloween Resurrection (2002)

Overall rating: 1/5
Director: Rick Rosenthal
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Sean Patrick Thomas, Tyra Banks

Tagline: Michael Myers is back! And he’s *yawn* killing people or something. I’m pretty sure there was a knife…

Film: Oh Lord, where to start? Watching this movie is the visual equivalent of having your television stand up, grab you by the shoulders and knee you in the balls. Halloween Resurrection is so bad, it’s a waste of Tyra Banks’ acting talents. Think about that, won’t you?

The movie starts out with John Carpenter’s original Halloween theme music—which is still scary—and quickly goes downhill from there. Jamie Lee Curtis fulfilled her contractual obligation to appear in the film by getting killed as quickly as possible—proving that she’s the smart one in the cast. Her death closes the ugly chapter in the Halloween franchise where Michael Myers had some sort of interesting motive. Now we can proceed with random murder and gore.

The movie switches gears after Jamie Lee’s death, and we are quickly introduced to the actors that will provide the bloody grist for the Michael Myers mill. They’re been assembled by hot-shot Internet/television producer Busta Rhymes to explore Michael Myers boyhood home on Halloween night.

There’s a cook, the narcissistic nympho, the weird art student and the heroine. I think there were a few others, as well, but they didn’t make much of an impression. The movie utilizes the technique of characterization by having the cook say stupid things like, “I bet this place has a really big kitchen,” The nympho constantly primps in mirrors and the heroine “has a bad feeling” about this. She probably read the script.

The characters may have had names, but who cares, really? They are here to be stupid and get stabbed, and they fill their roles nicely. They split up to explore the house, investigate strange sounds and fail to hear the blood-curdling screams of their fellow victims. For all the death and mayhem, the movie failed to scare me at all.

Busta Rhymes, who is supposed to be a hot-shot television producer, can’t produce a coherent English sentence in the entire film. Evidently the director just told him to “be Busta.” He appears to be suffering from a variation of the Smurfs’ disease. Except instead of replacing every other word with “smurf,” he replaces it with “mutha****a”. This leads to the classic line “Trick or treat, mutha****a!” It doesn’t help that he is given the dramatic “sum it all up” speech at the end of the movie.

I could go on and on about how this movie sucks, but picking on Halloween: Resurrection is like beating up the handicapped: it’s easy, but still not much fun. The acting is uniformly atrocious. The plot makes little sense, and the film looks like it was edited with a Cuisinart. If you want a scary movie, try the original Halloween. This one isn’t even worth making fun of.

Rating: 1/5

DVD: Widescreen anamorphic format.

Commentary: director Rick Rosenthal and editor Robert A. Ferretti

Extras: Deleted and alternate scenes with director's commentary – This is the best feature in the movie: deleted scenes! I only wish they had deleted more scenes. In fact, they could delete the whole movie and I’d be happy. They also showed a series of alternate endings, ranging from the boringly predictable to the completely nonsensical. They chose nonsensical for the final cut.
Web cam special with commentary, Photo gallery, On the set with Jamie Lee Curtis, Head cam featurette, Storyboard comparisons

Rating: 2/5

Five Degrees of Separation

Halloween – Watch this one and never go near any movie with “Halloween” in the title again.

Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist – If you’re into watching movies like Halloween: Resurrection, there’s a good chance you will be intrigued by the life a fellow human who enjoys inflicting pain on himself.

A Fish Called Wanda – Probably the best Jamie Lee Curtis movie to date.

So I Married An Axe Murderer – Another serial killer movie with Mike Myers in it. Except this Mike Myers is the good guy.

The Rugrats Movie – If a better Busta Rhymes performance exists, I have yet to find it.

DRG

Interesting take, although I'd be careful with the spoiler concerning Curtis.

hipnerd

Actually, I thought of it as a warning. With her prominent placement in the trailer and on the packaging, you might think she's actually in the movie. It's a bait and switch.

It's hard for me to imagine "ruining" this particular movie. If I made someone not want to see it, I did them a favor.

But I see your point. I'll be more careful in the future.

LiquidSky

I agree with your review although it was fun watching during my "bad movie" party. We got high/drunk and ripped it to shreds

Busta Rhymes was indeed horrible as was the entire cast (except Jamie Lee Curtis)


***************SPOILERS****************************'

Is it just me or was the "explanation" concerning Michael Meyers being alive rediculous? I need to watch the end of H20 to see if it really matches up. I doubt it does. If it was not Michael at the end of H20, then why did he keep trying to kill Laurie? Pitiful.

d2cheer

Good review of a very poor movie!

LivingINClip

I am a huge Halloween fan. I own the bootleg VHS tapes of H6 and H20 even. However, when I bought this the day it came out, it was a terrible terrible mistake.....Ugh..

hipnerd

Unplanned sequels invariably suck. I stopped watching after Halloween II. What unplanned horror sequel was anywhere near as good as the original? Aliens? Maybe but I submit that:

a) it wasn't really a horror movie. It was more of an action flick, and

b) it's the exception that proves the rule.

Nightmare on Elm Street 2 - sucked
Friday the 13th Part 2 - sucked (well, so did the first one)
Hannibal - sucked (when compared to Silence of the Lambs)

The last good horror sequel was "The Bride of Frankenstein"

Bechman 2000

What abotu Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. Those got better as time went on.

I hold the opinion that Wishmaster 2 is better than the original. I enjoyed both, but felt that the sequel was twice as good. I haven't seen the third in the series, but the fourth is just horrible.

Although I wouldn't say that I loved Halloween: Resurrection, I have to say that it was better than Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers. Too much of a mystical explaination of a serial killer that doesn't need any explaination what-so-ever. I do agree that Busta could have stayed home on this one, and there wasn't too much of a "scare" factor involved. I bought it just to complete my collection of the series, although I still need to get H2O.

Nice review though!

hipnerd

I'll give you Evil Dead II. That's a great sequel. Army of Darkness is fun too, but it's not quite as manic as ED2.

Saying that some movie is better than the original Wishmaster is like saying that some guy is nicer than Hitler. The Wishmaster series is all gore - no plot, no humor, no characterization: no redeeming value of any kind, really.

I still maintain that the original Halloween is the only truly scary one in the bunch. The rest are poor knockoffs. (Except for Halloween III, which settled for being scarily bad.

I love the Evil Dead series. Wes Craven is hit and miss. John Carpenter had a few good ones in him. But most horror is pretty bad because people will go see bad horror movies. I don't know why, but they will.

LivingINClip

Note:

So how do you explain Silence of the Lambs, which was the sequel to Manhunter?

SMGFanatic

I don't think this movie was HORRIBLE but I was very disappointed with it. I was hoping Rosenthal could have pulled it off and on some levels he did- but it ended up pretty much like the rest of them (execpt for H2, H4 and in my opinion H2O...) um ok so maybe not the rest of them-
Out of 4 stars i gave it **1/2, because whenever I want to see a movie I usually end up loving it, and loving it is ***1/2 to ****, but when I saw H:R in the theater I was just a little disappointed but o well, what can we do?

hipnerd

Silence of the Lambs was not a sequel to Manhunter in the traditional sense. It was a totally different set of actors, a different director and a different producer.

I would catagorize it as more of a second attempt at bringing a Hannibal Lector story to the big screen.

Red Dragon was the true sequel/prequel to Silence of the Lambs and despite an A-list cast, it was a disappointment.

That's my take, anyway.

Steve Phillips

I kind of liked WISHMASTER, but the cheap O sequels were very poor, IMO. Actually I haven't seen the fourth one, and am in no hurry to do so. Maybe if I'm in traction sometime...

Aw, Jamie Lee could return insane, with a cane and some scars as the new Loomis character in the next one. If that sounds stupid, so were half of the sequels, and the outragous fact that they ignored the three freakin movies because they couldn't find someone who could do a little *creative* writing and tie them all together....

I say go for it......I always wanted that stranger in boots from H5 to turn out to be Jamie Lee anyway........