Halloween Resurrection

Sometimes, a writer can have an idea that seems brilliant.  When they follow through and create a movie out of said idea, however, things can be lost in translation.  That’s how I feel about Halloween Resurrection.

The idea behind the eighth instalment of the horror franchise was to put Michael Myers into one of those paranormal investigation reality shows, except to have the show air on the internet.  This was going to incorporate an established franchise with two technological branches that were gaining popularity: the aforementioned reality television and the internet.

Quickly I will give you the plot which is fairly basic.  A bunch of college kids are hired to be in a paranormal investigation webshow at the Myers house.  Michael is there and doesn’t like them being there.  So he starts killing.  Oh, and a kid watching it is instant messaging one of the people in the show so that they can survive.  That’s the basic idea.

This movie had potential.  Coming off of Halloween H20, this movie could have made something of itself.  It could have kept the momentum going.  But it didn’t.  The webshow idea did not work for the movie for two basic reasons.  One: the quality of the headset cameras that the cast had was very, very poor.  The rest of the movie was filmed well, but the internet stuff was poorly filmed and took me out of the action when it was supposed to bring me deeper in.  The other part was the instant messaging kid.  He went to a Halloween party and decided to spend his time watching a webshow.  Then everyone else at the party wanted to watch the webshow.  Then they were telling him what to message to the girl who was in trouble.  It just didn’t work.  It was a waste of my time, the movie’s time, and everyone who has seen the movie’s time.  They weren’t in danger at all.  They were bystanders helping the people who were in danger without being in danger themselves.  And they stopped partying to watch a webshow.  It does not seem plausible, effective, or thrilling to me.  If the instant message boy was also in potential danger, I would have been more invested in that part of the plot.

Also of note, the cast was tolerable except for one particular member.  This member would be the man who named himself Busta Rhymes.  Need I say more?  Okay, I’ll say more.  He’s a money-grabbing ass for half the movie.  When people start dying, he magically knows martial arts and kicks Michael Myers in the head.  He spurts off what would normally be bad one-liners in any other movie, but because this movie wanted to martial arts roundhouse kick me in the head, his one-liners were poorly written not-so-witty monologues that were meant to insult Michael Myers.  He’s also a terrible actor.  I forgot to mention that right when I jumped off the Busta Rhymes bandwagon.

The opening scene was all about Michael once again going after Laurie Strode.  However, at no point in the movie does he go after her son, John.  John was apparently the reason that Michael went to the school in H20.  Why does he not go after John again in this one?  He’s supposed to be trying to get rid of his entire family.  I do not know why he would rather kill a webshow cast and crew that are in his house than go after his nephew, who would be part of his goal of the entire franchise.  It does not seem right.

Whatever.  This movie is still better than Halloween 5 and 6.  It is coherent, looks good, and doesn’t have a girl who is apparently mute but talks quite a bit in the movie.  I’d definitely put it above those two.  I’m not sure how much higher, if I’m ranking them all here.

With that, I have completed the original Halloween series.  There are two more films in the franchise.  I look forward to watching them and then going all “blah blah blah” about them and leaving them for you to look at, say “too much reading!” and not read.  If you made it this far, thanks.