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I thought I'd kick the new year off with another movie marathon. I thought it was time to check out a few old school mystery flicks. Som...

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

The movie opens with some narration from Laurie aka. Jamie Lee Curtis talking about a tunnel that we all end up going down. One that may lead to hell. Then the action shifts to some nurses who are there for some exposition. Thru them we find out that it wasn’t Michael that Laurie killed at the end of the last movie, but an ambulance driver who he switched clothes with. Since she killed an innocent man, she has been locked up in the looney bin in a comatose state. Of course, that is nonsense because we immediately see that she is faking it. She has been waiting for her brother to come for her again and he does. This time he finally kills her. Seriously this was supposed to be her last time in the role, and they finally kill Laurie off!

The action then moves to an entirely new group of victims. Some college kids have signed up for a spooky night investigating the old Myers house for an online show. What they don’t know is that Michael has been living in the sewers underneath the house and can come and go as he pleases thru the dungeon where his parents used to lock him up. Wait… what the hell? He kills a bunch of kids as he stalks them thru the small house because no one can see him moving around or hears a sound in the small house. Finally, there is a final girl who he is about to kill but then Busta Rhymes does some Kung Fu and saves the day. God damn it.

Resurrection is by far the worst of the non-Rob Zombie Halloween movies (which I utterly detest and will not be covering since they are remakes). The story is an absolute mess with too many characters, a plot that grinds to a halt after a decent opening with the stalking killing of Laurie in the first ten or so minutes. The “kids” in the movie are completely generic and I wasn’t at all interested in them. This isn’t helped by them not getting any backstory at all. I’m not even sure their motivations. Our final girl, Sara, is only memorable for her being able to scream loud enough when scared to shatter glass. Cool that must somehow be important later right? Especially when they take the time to establish earlier that Michael has issues with loud noises. Nope it is never mentioned again. That is the kind of awful writing we are dealing with here.

Kung Fu Fighting
The kills are okay but not great. We get a head in a clothes dryer (someone watched My Bloody Valentine!), a throat getting cut, another getting a tripod jammed thru it, a head gets squeezed, and someone gets ruth thru a metal spike. The most memorable kill is a head getting chopped off. Though it stuck with me not because it was good but because the effect looks so silly. We also get zero tension as you always know where Michael is and any jump scares are poorly executed and telegraphed.

This is just a bad movie that wastes some early performances from up and comers Katee Sackhoff, Thomas Ian Nicholas, and Sean Patrick Thomas. I’ve seen all of them in much better movies and know that they can act. Sadly, after Jamie Lee Curtis leaves the screen early on there is nothing worth watching. This is a bad movie that could have been a franchise killer. In fact, it was so bad that sixteen years later we would get another soft reboot of the franchise. Again, I’m ignoring those Zombie made abominations. Skip Halloween Resurrection as it is not worth your time.

 

© Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

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