Films: 2000s
(2002) Halloween: Resurrection
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Halloween: Resurrection
Director: Rick Rosenthal
Release: 2002
It is hard to imagine a more mismanaged story than "Halloween: Resurrection." Rick Rosenthal returns to the franchise after 20 years (he directed "Halloween 2" in 1981), but fails to adhere to the very principles of story originator John Carpenter's seminal creation.
The film opens some time after the close of its immediate predecessor, "Halloween H20: 20 Years Later." Jamie Lee Curtis reprises her signature character, Laurie Strode, who is now incarcerated in a mental asylum. The man in the mask that she killed at the end of "Halloween H20" was innocent, a security guard apparently dressed by Michael Myers to confuse her. On Halloween, however, the real thing (played by Brad Loree) arrives. Strode is pursued and makes a final, fatal stand against her brother.
In an interesting scene, Myers then delivers the instrument of his sister's death to a patient, one obsessed with serial killer/clown costume wearing John Wayne Gacy. The narrative has come full circle, then, with Myers slaying his second and last sister - a process he started as a boy in a clown suit - and then giving his knife back to the clown (or, The Clown). This is the last useful storytelling in "Halloween: Resurrection."
Screenwriters Larry Brand and Sean Hood switch setting abruptly to Haddonsfield, Illis., where the Myers house sits empty, but not for long. Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes) runs a reality television production called "Dangertainment." The concept for the coming Halloween is to place a handful of beautiful young people inside the dilapidated structure and have them film their search for clues to the origin of Michael Myers.
What ensues is an awkward and overlong crawl through very stagey looking rooms in a midwestern suburban home that seems impossibly large and ends up being replete with hidden basement rooms, crypts and tunnels connecting to what turns out to be Myers' subterranean lair. Commendable as it may be that Brand and Hood seek to explain where Myers spends all his time when not hunting Laurie Strode, it is too little, too late and in the wrong movie.
"Halloween: Resurrection" is no embellishment upon the mythology of the "Halloween" story. It is, instead a showcase for what appear to be hopeful young performers.
Bianca Kajlich is the nominally tolerable teen selected to enter the house, and is in tertiary communication with a high school Internet nerd named Jim (Luke Kirby) who ends up directing her from a web uplink, watching the "Dangertainment" webcast, as Myers chases her through the house. The rest of the cast fit archetypal over-sexed under-individuated roles - representing greed, naivete, lust and curiosity, but never achieving that characteristic that Curtis brought to Laurie Strode: Mythic innocence.
Without a context similar to "Halloween" (and even "Halloween 2"), Myers' pursuit of victims is tantamount to what it literally becomes with Jim on the cell phone - a video game. The violence, unlike Carpenter's original, is gratuitous and cartoony. By the time basement walls reveal hidden chambers, the film has left the realm of disturbing and elemental Myers and entered a plastic environment, flexing to accommodate script ideas rather than any narrative impetus.
At its conclusion, with Myers electrocuted, burned and reduced to a semi-molten wreck, "Halloween: Resurrection" becomes pure camp, with Busta Rhymes transforming from television producer to kung-fu fighter and shouting unforgivables such as "trick or treat, motherfucker."
That being said, Rosenthal does make good use of the screen-as-visual barrage, and his love of the subject matter is obvious. "Halloween: Resurrection" is never cynical or indicative of self-loathing - it's just ineffective and misshapen.
Where "Halloween: Resurrection could have played out as a claustrophobic comment on narcissism, it collapses instead into self-consciousness. Where the film could have explored the participatory nature of audience in completing the cinematic experience, it swaps film stock and points-of-view for the appearance of on-screen kinetics. Rosenthal reels through the story with the passion of an enthusiast but the discipline of a man without a vision.
"Halloween: Resurrection" lacks much of what its characters, in fact, seek - motivation for the action.
As an epilogue to "Halloween H20," the Laurie Strode/Michael Myers segment of "Halloween: Resurrection" is interesting if too short. Reportedly, Curtis agreed to come on board to finish her character arc and ensure that Strode could not return in the future. She allows herself to appear raw and unpretty in "Halloween: Resurrection," and the potential for a compelling story about cruel and universal injustice is wasted. What is also left gaping is the plot hole of her family from "Halloween H20." It is a shame for the story, as Curtis proved in "Halloween H20" that there is real mileage left to Debra Hill and John Carpenter's early concepts. When they are co-opted into the form of films like "Halloween: Resurrection," however, the engine sputters, runs cold and dies on the road.
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
Halloween: Resurrection, 2002
As an epilogue to "Halloween H20," the Laurie Strode/Michael Myers segment of "Halloween: Resurrection" is interesting if too short. Reportedly, Curtis agreed to come on board to finish her character arc and ensure that Strode could not return in the future. She allows herself to appear raw and unpretty in "Halloween: Resurrection," and the potential for a compelling story about cruel and universal injustice is wasted.
