Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

After the nicely thrilling H20, there was the faintest glimmer of hope that maybe the Halloween series had turned itself around (having long ago given up on the dream that Moustapha Akkad would stop making sequels). Alas, Resurrection is back to dismal and vaguely offensive crap. It's a derivative movie actively working to tarnish the memory of John Carpenter's original classic.

Michael Myers is at it again. After a brief encounter with sis Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in a very Friday the 13th, Part 2 sort of opening (one that doesn't begin to respect Curtis's contributions to the series), he heads back to dear old Haddonfield. To his surprise, he finds a lot of fresh, warm bodies, participants in an Internet webcast that's "investigating the mystery" of Myers. Well, I guess it's time to knock off a whole bunch of new folks for no good reason. Nothing ever changes...

Well, maybe the quality. Yup, boys and girls, this has to be the worst slap in the face to fans of the original. The screenwriters had absolutely no concept of what they were doing. If H20 took the "television star" theory of Scream, this one attempts to be self-referential - and fails, mostly. Sure, a few bits work, like when the Internet audience starts to act like typical fans watching an 80s stalk-and-slash (i.e. "Don't go in there...he's right behind you..." etc.). Most of the time, though, the jibes and jests brought on by the Internet webcast gimmick fall on their ass.

I know a lot of people consider director Rick Rosenthal's previous work in the series, Halloween II, to be the best sequel (I disagree - see the first paragraph). At least there he had the hands-on guidance of Carpenter. Here he's totally floundering, throwing in direct quotes from many of the films in the series (most blatantly the original), as well as stealing (I suppose one could call it homaging) bits from Peeping Tom and The Thing (from Another World). A more skilled director might have made that look clever. Rosenthal makes it look like robbery.

Michael Myers deserves to be laid out to the pasture. Alas, though, the ending of Resurrection promises more sequels. With any luck, though, executive producer Moustapha Akkad will be a decent man for once and let us live on without the unnecessary banalities of further rehashes.