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 've never been all that fond of the "Halloween"
franchise. I sort of remember seeing the original, which was made in the late
'70s by horror guru John Carpenter ("The
Thing"), and I remember seeing part three, which oddly enough was not related
to the rest of the series and the whole Michael Myers thing. The rest of the
franchise? A complete mystery to me. So approaching "Halloween:
Resurrection" on this basis, I can safely say that I haven't missed a
thing. Actually, I don't even know what number installment this one is. (As it
turns out, it's number 8.)
"Halloween: Resurrection" opens with a short
prelude letting us know what happened to Laurie Strode, Jamie Lee Curtis'
character from the original, and the one recurring character in the franchise
besides masked killer Michael Myers. In the prelude, Laurie has been confined to
a mental asylum after the events of the last installment, but that doesn't last
as her brother, Michael, returns after a 3-year absence to finish what he
started. Laurie is killed while battling Michael, and the character is
supposedly killed off for good. (Yeah, right. The only ones who are "killed
off for good" in these movies are promiscuous college kids.)
Back to our main story. We are introduced to six victims --
er, six bodies -- er, no, six characters who will make up the bodycount
in this latest installment. It seems two enterprising webcam operators played by
rapper Busta Rhymes and supermodel Tyra Banks have decided it would be swell to
put cameras in Michael Myers' old home, throw some victims -- er, college kids
-- into the house and have people pay to see it on Halloween day. Of course, no
one bothers to tell the audience how these brainiacs got the rights to the house
in the first place, or why the cops are allowing them to walk around a notorious
mass murderer's home and destroy everything inside. Anywho.
In quick order, we learn that Michael Myers doesn't like
having his home turned into a tourist attraction and begins hunting down the 6
college kids and the 2 entrepreneurs during the live broadcast. And really, can
you blame the guy? Among the college kids is Sara, our heroine, and the only
character guaranteed to survive, but only after a lengthy, sustained running
battle with the masked killer toward the end. (Come on, like it's a mystery how
this is going to end.) We can assume Sara is going to survive from two things:
Sara is hesitant to join the show, thus showing some common sense, and also poor Sara gets jumpy around, well, jumpy
situations, and is made fun of because of it.
The dead meats consist of: skanky Jen (who has victim
written all over her), salacious Bill (another obvious addition to the body
pile), poseur Jim (who is guaranteed certain death), pretentious chick Donna
(destined to shed her clothes before getting sliced and diced), and token black
jokester Rudy (probably the only kid besides Sara who has a chance to make it
out of this film alive). Busta Rhymes and Tyra Banks round out the victims. As
the token adults in horror films, both Rhymes and Banks have a limited shelf
life.
I won't insult your intelligence by telling you anything
you don't already know. Sara, the purest of the white kids, will of course
survive. The rest will all die, with only a couple of characters open to
possibilities of survival. Rudy, the token black character, may survive because
he has enough one-liners to qualify as the Sassy Black Guy, and sassy black guys
always survive in Slasher flicks. But then again, Busta Rhymes is also a Sassy
Black Guy, and as we all know, there can't be two Sassy Black Guys in a
Slasher film, so one of them obviously has to go.
At just under 85 minutes including credits,
"Resurrection" is a fast ride. (Thank God for small miracles.) The
film opens quickly and ends quickly. The first of the college kids die at the
40-minute mark, but the body starts falling in the prelude. Most of the kills
are not very creative, with the standard plunging knife and crushing head deaths
showing up. There's nothing of note here, and the gore is kept to a minimum
until one scene toward the end when a character slips in a pool of blood. But
the most dangerous element of all is that Michael Myers has as much ability to
scare as a baby asleep in his crib.
"Resurrection" is a total waste of time. It's 85
minutes of unknown 20-something actors masquerading as college kids, running
around a dark house doing stupid things and finally getting killed off in
unimpressive fashion. Everybody except for Sara, and possibly one of her
colleagues, will die. Unfortunately "Resurrection" is such a by-the-book Slasher
flick that there's not even any joy in trying to figure out who will get a knife
to the head and who will survive to the end credits.
Who cares, really?
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