AKA: Halloween: The Homecoming (USA Working Title)
AKA: Hall8ween (USA Working Title)
AKA: Halloween 8 (USA Working Title)
(Release Date: July 12, 2002)
(Premiere Date: July 01, 2002)
SIGH! Where to begin??? Most fans will tell you that this 8th slice of the once venerable series is the worst of ALL of the sequels to Halloween, but it's really not markedly worse than the rest of the installments in the Michael Myers "Saga". That says less about the quality of this film than it does about the lack thereof you'll find in most every piss-soaked sequel. Resurrection sucks pickled goat hooves through a used, hair-filled PVC water trap that even "Joe the Plumber" would reject outright.
It eats more ass than that tribe of natives that subsists exclusively on mule meat. It must have seemed like a great idea originally... After somewhat rebooting the sequels with Halloween H20, Dimension Films brings back not only Jamie Lee Curtis, but also director Rick Rosenthal who helmed the only really good Halloween sequel to date, Halloween II! Yeah, it WOULD sound great... except that Rosenthal was, incredibly, the THIRD CHOICE (at least) to direct this film and Jamie Lee only agreed to be in this booger to ensure that her character could never appear in any further sequels. Yes, the Scream Queen may have been top billed in the promotional materials of this joke, but her appearance here amounts to little more than a cameo. And not the really attractive jewelry kind of cameo, either! It's slightly LESS cool than Heston's brief appearance(s) in Beneath the Planet of the Apes! As we get deeper into the film, we see just how few great ideas producers Moustapha Akkad and Malek "I Dig Nepotism" Akkad really had up their sleeves! Clearly Bob and Harvey Weinstein were, once again, producers in name only, because, kids... those dudes know better, man! What am I talking about? Well, story writer Larry Brand (who co-wrote the screenplay with Sean Hood) decides to spice things up for the Mikenator and bring him kicking and screaming into the 21st Century by bringing in the "Internet", "Text Messaging", "Handheld PDAs", "Email" and... oh, no... "REALITY TELEVISION"! Oh shit. You're kidding, right??? Wrong. Clearly everybody involved had been watching their fair share of Big Brother and Survivor, which is actually referenced in the script. Holy shit, man... Apparently Michael's been watching, too, because at one point we find out he's been eating RATS! Looks like he was rooting for PAGONG, huh? Fuck! Oh, what's that? You're asking, "Wasn't Michael Myers killed at the end of the last movie? What, was he Only Mostly Dead???" Right! How DOES one survive a beheading, anyway? Well, in a tacked on, insulting and lame-ass introduction, we find out that at the end of the last flick when NOBODY WAS LOOKING, Mikey (here played by Brad Loree) traded places with a TEMPORARILY MUTE paramedic and THAT is the clown that Jamie Lee's Laurie Strode relieved of his head. Seriously, folks... I challenge you to watch both flicks back to back and tell me if that even vaguely tracks. Shi-hi-hit!!! If you think that's goofy as "Wild Cherry Tomato Pepsi", just wait until we get to the main "Plot". Groan... Okay, so a sexy college student named Sara (Bianca Kajlich) wins a spot on an internet-streaming reality show along with her two best friends, Rudy (Sean Patrick Thomas) and the mammary-gifted Jen (played by... oh WOW... Katie Sackhoff, still a while away from Galactica)! And just where would a show called "Dangertainment" (man, fuck, man!) want to shoot its live poor-man's Reality TV Knock-Off streaming webcam bullshit Halloween-Night Program? Well, duh!!! Haddonfield, Illonois, man! Yep, right there in the Myers house, which hasn't been inhabited for 20 years. (Remember, both this film and H20 ignore the events of every sequel since Rosenthal's second entry.) Good grief... I'm getting annoyed just typing about it... Anyway, this lame-ass webcam schlock crap is produced by Tyra Banks's super-hot Nora and, no, I'm not kidding, Busta Rhymes and it features a number of other annoying contestants.
If this isn't all annoying enough, they're all strapped up with digital video cameras to stream everything they see through the internet so douche bags like Sara's CYBER-STALKER Deckard (Ryan Merriman) can watch and drool over her some more. Apparently the character's real name was "Myles Barton", but I'm thinking they should have just gone for ACTUAL reality and named him "Lou Zerr"! Fuck. Really... Ugh, man. So, after Loree's reunion with Laurie, Michael Myers goes WHERE, now? Why, back home, of course, and he's decidedly nonplussed about finding a bunch of annoying kids and entertainment moguls coming up in his shit and fucking it up! Well... fucking it up more, that is! What follows is a 94 minutes of fake scares, "modern technology", homages to the previous entries in this series, most of which feel more like rip-offs than anything else and a silly attempt to build suspense where no suspense (or payoff) is ever actually found. The main plot might have felt vaguely like a social commentary about voyeuristic entertainment meeting horror porn and a horrifying critique of reality television, etc., etc., etc. It might have... if the film had enough depth to include metaphor. It's not deep at all. This is Shalloween, at its DEEPEST, kids! If you're not convinced of the film's intent by what you see, Rosenthal, Akkad, Hood and Brand make sure that the dialogues and monologues convincingly condemn the media, just so the mentally challenged HAMSTERS in the audience can walk out feeling smart! In all honesty this idea might have made for a very cool horror movie, especially as the cameras begin to pick up real murders and the on-screen viewers are crowding around televisions and computer monitors, much more entertained than the actual viewers are. Again, it MIGHT have made a cool horror film... but not as a sequel to Debra Hill and John Carpenter's genre-defining Slasher Flick! This melodramatic, predictable retread best served the world by proving how long in the BLUEtooth this series has become. The visual and suspenseful challenges of the first film are replaced by easy and cheesy startles and the presence of Hill and Carpenter are found only in the characters they created and the famous Piano theme that Carpenter wrote. The special effects are silly, the situations are contrived and the dialogue is alternately weak and humorous. When the final credits roll, most of us with a proverbial LICK of sense realize that it just doesn't add up, man (it really, really doesn't, folks). There are continuity errors, misspelled names in the credits, poor acting moments and so many annoying things in the script that I can't possibly list them all without making this the longest fucking review I've ever written (and for me, that's saying a fuckload). However, I can't quite give this one the DOG rating I expected to. Oh, it sucks and none of the good ideas successfully make it fully formed to the surface, but there actually ARE some good ideas here and there. They don't connect well, but they're there. Further, Bianca Kajlich does a fine job with what she's given and she looks great doing it... it's just too bad she's forced into these oddball situations that only make sense because the writers and directors THOUGHT it might. Also, Daisy McCrackin looks great, especially when she's topless... so she's two good reasons in and of herself to see this movie. Sigh. The rest of Halloween Resurrection is trite and by the numbers with only one unique trick to its whole pony that Rosenthal and company milk for all its worth. It's even worse than the last film, but it somehow (Heaven Help Me) managed to achieve Two Stars out of Five! In spite of the fact that this ended the series (until Mr. Psycho Head Blowout's remake series), and, yes, they saved the WORST for LAST, it's amazing to listen to Rick Rosenthal's self-satisfied DVD Commentary that illustrates the fact that he has no idea that this is anything less than a true masterpiece. And it goes on through the THREE alternative endings he shot and included in the DVD Extras. Hell, he even realizes how cliche this film is, but in HIS case he's making it work. He's convinced. And I'm convinced of how glad I am that this is over. No more Halloween flicks to review, thank you very much... not until the next wasted entry. Only Carpenter can build the real Halloween. If not... why bother? Why do I bother? Screw this! You true believers get back to your webcam shows... I'm going the FUCK to SLEEP! |
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