Halloween Retrospective: Halloween: Resurrection

Halloween Retrospective | #8 | Halloween: Resurrection

After the breath of fresh air that was Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, the series found renewed success, and of course a sequel was greenlit despite the highly conclusive ending of Halloween H20. The questions on everyone’s mind were likely the same; why would they keep going when they already had such a good ending? Where could they even go with this sequel? Most importantly, would they be able to maintain the level of quality that H20 brought?

The answer to this last question was a clear and resounding no. But make no mistake; this isn’t the pointless, creatively bereft slog of Halloween 5. It’s not even the overstuffed mess that was The Curse of Michael Myers. No, Halloween: Resurrection is something entirely new. It’s trash, but it’s trash of the highest order; finely procured single use plastics and scrap metal held together by weeks old compost, delivered fresh out of the compactor on a china plate for your consumption. It’s something so hideously broken that it has to be seen to be believed.

To start off, an oddly haunting and atmospheric opening narration that has nothing to do with the rest of the film introduces the main explanation for the question of “how did Michael Myers survive getting his head cut off in Halloween H20.” The answer is that he actually paralyzed a paramedic and then gave him his mask, and the man Laurie Strode beheaded at the end of H20 was actually not Michael Myers at all. This seems incredibly lazy until you realize that this was planned since before H20 was even finished. Jamie Lee Curtis wanted the franchise to end, but producer Moustapha Akkad had a legal clause on his side that made it literally a breach of contract to kill off Michael Myers. In order to make Halloween H20 the send off that Jamie Lee Curtis wanted, they had to plan a convoluted retcon that would spoil it in advance.

The rest of the opening segment is dedicated to removing Laurie Strode from the story so that Jamie Lee Curtis wouldn’t have to be in it anymore, and let me tell you, of all the brutal kills Michael gets in these movies, none of them have anything on the absolutely clinical brutality with which Halloween: Resurrection dismembers and destroys everything that its predecessor was built upon. Never in my life have I seen such disrespect towards such an iconic character, their legacy and the direct predecessor that made this film possible. I’m not even mad about it; I’m more impressed at this point.

After doing away with Laurie Strode, the film spends the rest of its runtime with Michael Myers returning to his abandoned childhood home in Haddonfield, where a completely unrelated story is about to take place. A group of college students including final girl Sara Moyer (played by Bianca Kajlich) win a competition to take part in an internet reality show called Dangertainment, in which they must be recorded spending a night in the Myers house as director Freddie Harris (played by Busta Rhymes of all people) sets up artificial scares and dresses up as Michael Myers to play up the theatrics for those watching the live stream. Predictably, the real Michael Myers returns home and crashes the show, and soon everyone winds up in a fight for their lives.

I mentioned in my last review that Halloween H20 was decidedly a product of its time in terms of the various late 90’s/early 2000’s stylistic flourishes it has, but that has nothing on this film. Every single ounce of it represents everything terrible about post-millennium horror. Every character is either insufferable, boring, or both. Every man in the film is the sleaziest person you’ll ever meet save one (who’s still catfishing the protagonist for no plot relevant reason). When they aren’t spouting exposition at each other they’re either sexually harassing each other for laughs or actually having sex. The kills are gory and fun but are incredibly over-edited and the soundtrack is full of terrible early 2000’s alt rock. The story flirts with some interesting ideas deconstructing the legacy of the franchise in a way other horror was doing at around the same time (Scream, Blair Witch 2, etc.), but never ends up doing anything with it. The only unironically fun part of the movie for me was when Sara has to navigate the house using text messages from her friend who is watching the stream and is able to see where Myers is at any given moment, and even that is undercut by a significant lack of understanding of how text messaging works.

Everything is so poorly executed that… it’s honestly such a blast to watch. It’s like a trainwreck that you can’t look away from. There were multiple times where I had to pause and rewind to watch a single scene again over and over because it was just so funny. The early 2000’s trappings are just icing on the cake. It’s a perfect storm of bad ideas and decent ideas executed terribly. Almost none of it is good, but I adore it so much. There is literally a scene where Busta Rhymes martial arts kicks Michael Myers out a second story window. It’s absolutely perfect. The only way it could be better would be without the weird sex stuff I mentioned before.

Objectively, this is the worst Halloween film aside from Halloween 5. But it’s also some of the most fun I’ve had in this entire series. It’s fun for all the wrong reasons, but still, after some of the depths this franchise has sunk to, I’m okay with that. I’m glad that this was the last attempt at following up H20, but for what it is I’m glad that it exists.