Halloween Resurrection (2002)
Cast: Bianca Kajlich, Busta Rhymes, Tyra Banks, Jamie Lee Curtis, Katie Sackhoff
Director: Rick Rosenthal
Synopsis: Myers is back and this time he goes home to gate crash a live webcast - utterly dire
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

 

 

At the end of the day, of course, it's all about keeping a profitable franchise alive. Moustapha Akkad built a fortune from Halloween, and the series clearly wasn't about to be laid to rest simply because Michael Myers had inconveniently lost his head in the previous film.

Sadly, Halloween Resurrection represents one of the lowest points the series has ever reached. Ironically, Rick Rosenthal—who directed the highly respectable Halloween II—returns here only to preside over one of the franchise's weakest and most cynical instalments.

As for all the increasingly ridiculous revelations about Michael's "back story"—hidden torture chambers beneath the Myers house, sinister family secrets, ancient cults and the druidic nonsense introduced by earlier sequels—they merely reinforce the point that inferior follow-ups have an unfortunate habit of diminishing the elegant simplicity that made John Carpenter's original so terrifying.

This time around, the Friday the 13th camp wins comfortably. As absurd as Jason X may be, it at least knows precisely what sort of film it wants to be. Halloween Resurrection seems uncertain whether it wants to be a slasher film, an internet satire or a comedy—and succeeds at none of them.

For years I maintained that only Halloween, Halloween II and Halloween H20 were truly worth revisiting, dismissing virtually everything else that came afterwards.

Time, however, has forced me to eat at least a little humble pie.

When Halloween III: Season of the Witch first appeared, I hated it with a passion simply because it had the audacity to abandon Michael Myers altogether. It took me many years to revisit it without that prejudice, and viewed on its own terms it emerges as a wonderfully quirky, imaginative and thoroughly entertaining slice of 1980s horror. In many respects, it is one of the series' most original entries.

Sadly, no amount of passing time is ever likely to inspire such a dramatic reappraisal of Halloween Resurrection.