For this year’s 31 Nights of Horror Challenge, the Day 21 prompt was Terrible Remake. Many, many movies could fit this bill and since we are traveling and had to rely on AMC’s Fear Fest for. a choice this night we went with Halloween Resurrection (2002). They don’t get much worse than this one.
Storyline
Serial Killer Michael Myers is not finished with Laurie Strode, and their rivalry finally comes to an end. But is this the last we see of Myers? Freddie Harris and Nora Winston are reality programmers at DangerTainment, and are planning to send a group of 6 thrill-seeking teenagers into the childhood home of Myers. Cameras are placed all over the house and no one can get out of the house… and then Michael arrives home!
Our Thoughts on Halloween Resurrection
My God this one was bad. They gave Michael Myers eyebrows for christ sake.
Watching this in 2022 it makes you realize how far tech has come. This movie is full of references to cell phones, texting and pretty much video-taping everything–way before we had GoPros, TikTok and of course Facebook. This movie just does not age well, 21 years later.
Aside from that, this movie is just plain awful. It is pretty much just one cliche after another and Busta trying to make a name for himself as an actor. Newsflash–he is more than terrible.
More…
Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is now in an asylum, where she awaits the inevitable return of Michael Myers. Myers, after visiting her, returns to his childhood home and makes a nightmare for a group of kids who have decided to film a reality show inside the house.
First of all, this film pretends that Halloween 4 through 6 never happened, creating the possibility that the Myers house has been abandoned for decades, rather than lived in by other families. This reboot is a result of the writing on H20, but it was still a bad idea no matter who started it.
Second, one would think that bringing in Rick Rosenthal would be a good idea. He made “Halloween 2”, which was probably the last solid part of the franchise. But Rosenthal is clearly not the horror directing master we might have thought, as he approaches this film with a weak vision and sense of style, more emulating MTV than his own work. A quick glance at his credits will explain this: he has spent the last twenty years making teenager-based television rather than horror films.
Next, add Busta Rhymes. Like its previous installment with LL Cool J, this is the point in the series where a rapper is added to the mix. Much like how many horror franchises ultimately ended up in space, many started adding rappers to the cast. Why? I do not know. But it does nothing to help the credibility of the picture. Busta Rhymes and Tyra Banks do not have the appeal for horror fans that other actors would have.
The POV camera thing is a mess. It looks bad and is more or less a bad idea. Yes, it has worked in such films as “The Blair Witch Project” and more recent excursions. It does not work here. Had they cut that aspect out entirely, this film would have been a bit better instantly.
No horror franchise took as big of a nosedive as “Halloween”, with this being the final crash landing. Reviews of this film were so poor, and viewer appreciation so weak, it’s very unlikely they will ever make another one in the series. Yes, they made the two Rob Zombie films after this, but I just like to pretend that never happened.
1 out of 10
Trivia
Originally, the executives of Miramax wanted to continue the series by creating a whole new story of which didn’t have anything to do with Michael Myers after the last film, in a similar manner to Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) , but poll results conducted throughout fan websites proved to the producers that fans wanted Michael Myers to return again.
Several new endings were written during production and the cast was never sure how the film was actually going to end. Four different endings were filmed, and the director wanted the studio to ship a different ending to each theater, a technique used before during the theatrical release of Clue (1985). The studio disagreed, and the endings now appear on the DVD and Blu-ray.
This is the second Halloween film to make any sort of reference as to what exactly Michael Myers eats. In the original Halloween (1978), when Sheriff Brackett and Dr. Loomis enter the Myers house, they see something on the floor, which turns out to be the corpse of a dog. Dr. Loomis simply says “He got hungry.”
Michael’s knife is a, 12″ Victorinox Forschner with Rosewood Handle.
