mid the darkened halls of an insane asylum, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) stares blankly out a window. Only one thing can be on her mind—Michael Myers, the legendary serial killer, her brother. Unable to kill Michael herself three years ago, Laurie knows that he will come for her
again—but she's ready for him.
Meanwhile, Sara Moyer (Kajlich) has learned that she, along with several of her college friends, has been selected to appear on a "Dangertainment" Webcast. In the brainchild of the ambitious and fast-talking Freddie Harris (Rhymes), participants are equipped with only flashlights and video cameras, and charged with the task of roaming around Michael Myers' childhood home to look for clues as to what may have turned a little boy into a murderer.
But as the students meander about the gloomy and eerily preserved house, screaming here and giggling there, they eventually get the feeling that something's not right. It's all too easy. There are too many obvious clues lying out in the open—a scribbled-in coloring book, mutilated toys, chains
in the basement. Are they being put on or something?
Wondering if Harris has set them up proves to be the least of these not-so-innocents' worries, for what started out as a way to get a rush, some fame and scholarship money turns into a terrifying fight to escape alive.
If only Sara had stuck with her instincts and walked away from this thing. Can she even trust Harris to help her? Perhaps the only person she can rely on is someone she's never met, an online pal (Merriman) who's watching the Dangertainment Webcast from a high-school Halloween party. It's a good thing she's got her PDA with the wireless Internet connection on her!
A goofy and gory identity crisis
A bastard child of the The Blair Witch Project and various Scream-like movies, this latest Halloween installment is pure Hollywood popular-culture pastiche, though it's as much a series of rip-offs as it is homages. Perhaps the money-making thinking behind this one went as follows: Teens and 20-somethings (absolutely huge demographic that they are) are big on "reality TV," the Internet, pot-smoking, one-liners, techno-gadgets, hip-hop stars and kung-fu movies these days, right? Well, sex and violence still work, so slap on that franchise label and it's good to go! Ka-ching!
Viewers might wonder if an earlier cut of this film was longer, and maybe even better, as Halloween: Resurrection suffers under the weight of what complexity it does have. Too many characters are underdeveloped, too many plot elements are raised and then dropped either too soon or inexplicably and the end result is a horror movie that not only makes little or no sense at various points but hardly has any suspense to it—just a stream of occasionally appealing stimuli.
To be fair, Resurrection does succeed in mixing elements of horror with techno-fetishism (not exactly an easy task) here and there to good effect. And Kajlich's reluctant, forebodingly pouty heroine is someone to care about at least a little bit. Jamie Lee Curtis, doing her best T2 Sarah Connor impersonation (and is that some Alien3 and Alien: Resurrection Ripley in there?), soldiers on, tying the events of Halloween: H20 to this movie. And Busta Rhymes (hurling
out "mutha@#%$ah"s like a true aficionado), Flip Mode bless 'im, looks to be having fun, but seems quite out of place amongst the rest of the film's professional cast (which isn't too bad, really), especially when he's expected to carry off most of the film's comedy and to wield its clumsy message hammer.
Michael Myers is still scary from time to time in this installment, and the film does send a few nods and winks the audience's way with its mix of critical, intellectualized psycho-lingo and teen sex and violence. At the end of the day (or night), though, its attempts to combine self-conscious humor with grave scarymaking mostly just burdens it with a goofy identity crisis.
