A cheap, pathetic, uninspired cash grab. This movie's doomed from the start. Bringing back the director of the dull Halloween 2 for one. And Busta Rhymes getting top billing is just a sign that the movie's going to be a joke, and it is. And not a good joke at that.
The first fifteen minutes of the movie does its best to completely ruin H20, what it had accomplished, and its stellar ending scene. Laurie had taken her fate into her hands and runs over Michael, the van crash resulting in Michael being pinned between the vehicle and a tree. Laurie approaches him and for the first time in his six appearances, we get a reaction out of Michael. Michael's confused, panicked. He doesn't know what to do, and reaches out to Laurie. For a split second, both the viewer and Laurie take a kind of pity on him. But just as quickly, Laurie lops off his head as the Halloween theme kicks in. It was a great way to wrap up her storyline, it was a great send-off for Michael. A brutal, but strong finish to the movie...
We're not fools, we know that the power of corporate greed will resurrect Michael, but I don't think you could come up with a stupider way to explain his return than what Resurrection offers, which is something that COMPLETELY -- COMPLETELY! -- ruins not only H20's final scene, but the entire movie (and the Laurie Strode character -- why break one thing when you can break a bunch of things is Resurrection's motto). Apparently, that crafty Michael, at one point in H20's final act, switched places with a paramedic. That's right, Michael crushes the guy's larynx and swaps outfits with him. Never before have we seen Michael concoct such plans and be steps ahead like this, but, hey... Meanwhile, this genius paramedic is just stumbling around. I mean, think of the end of H20. Michael's trying to attack Laurie, he ambushes her from the back of the van, he walks off flying through the windshield when she wrecks it, he survives the crash that only Michael could...but apparently it's just Bob, the stupidest paramedic who ever lived. When he's pinned between a van and a tree, larynx or no, I think he'd be doing more than holding his head and reaching out to Laurie, as she approaches him with an axe. But, hey, fuck logic when we can ruin a good sequel to pump out a shit one. Too bad they decided against having Michael call out Laurie's name in that last H20 scene, proving it's Michael, and maybe making the Resurrection writers come up with a less stupid retcon.
Laurie beheads Stupid the Paramedic and snaps as a result. She should have just shaken it off like Loomis. "Oh, well, that's the price for looking like Michael Myers, Ben Tramer." Besides this wonderful retcon, which is shat upon us with an extremely clumsy exchange between two Academy Award-winning actresses, Michael just happens to find this mental hospital Laurie's at. Despite the misleading ads -- when I saw the ads, I thought Laurie was going to be the franchise's new Loomis -- Jamie Lee Curtis only agreed to come back if she gets killed at the movie's start, so Laurie gets to look stupid and gets one of the most lackluster death scenes in the history of horror. Fans love Laurie Strode, they think she's a strong character. We've seen her survive for three movies now. Jamie Lee Curtis is a popular actress, one of the genre's biggest successes. I think the character deserved a little more than being suckered into a trick of Michael's, stabbed, and tossing off a super-generic "See you in hell" line before falling to a CGI doom. It's bullshit.
The movie thinks it's one of those slick '90s, Scream-y, WB-star studded slasher movies, but it looks like it has the budget of a Sega CD game, with the cheapness of Canadian cost-cutting to match. (The whole point of having it be a "reality" show, filmed on mini-cams, is cheapness and convenience on the filmmakers' part.) It wants to be timely, but it's instantly dated, with reality shows, internet broadcasts and chat rooms playing important roles in the movies. The characters are uninteresting, the kills are dopey, and the way they have characters distracted in order for any killing to go on in such a tiny location (the entire action takes place in the Myers HOUSE) is dumb. (Tyra Banks misses one of her cameramen being killed because she's too busy dancing while making an cappuccino.)
And the movie just keeps kicking you in the face with one stupid scene after another. (Like Busta Rhymes dressed like Michael "hilariously" dressing down the real Michael, who he thinks is a fake. Sides split, man.) Even if you disregard the insulting stupidity of the first fifteen minutes and how it desecrates a far superior movie, you're left with an incredibly weak, forgettable, bottom of the barrel movie with an ill-fitting gimmick.
The movie would have been better off not even including Jamie Lee Curtis or trying to explain Michael's surviving H20 -- the movie's so corny that they might as well have just made it Michael's spirit haunting the Myers house and terrorizing the contestants of Busta Rhymes' terrible reality show. A lousy premise is bad enough, but tanking H20 adds insult to injury; because even if you remove the first 15 minutes, you'd still be left with the movie that killed the franchise. It's that bad, judged on its own. Every one of the slasher movies has its own worst, horrid, unwatchable movie, and this one is definitely Halloween's, and a close race with Hellraiser: Hellworld for title of Worst of the Worst Sequels. It was a damn struggle to rewatch this movie to write about it. There's no redeeming quality to it, nothing but the pathetic death rattle of the franchise. It's boring. It's dumb. It's cheap. I mean, unless you're into following boring assholes around as they stumble through one location with Fear Factor cams strapped to them, with lame-ass jump scares and fake-out scares in pixelated quality that subliminally slip in shots of Michael, in case you've (understandably) forgotten what you're watching.
And so, the movie that had the gall to call itself Resurrection ended up destroying the franchise as we knew it. The death rattle of this franchise sounds a little like Busta Rhymes making Bruce Lee noises as he kung-fu fights Michael Myers. (Which IS something that happens.) It also sounds a little like the Curly Howard noise Michael makes when Busta Rhymes puts a jumper cable on his nutsack and sets him ablaze. (Which IS something that happens.) Dimension really should have refunded people's money and sent them notes of apology.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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