Halloween - Resurrection DVD > Reviews > Lights, Camera, Slaughter

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Satisfactory
Characters / Performances	Unmemorable
Special Effects	Standard
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	Amazingly brings some new ideas to the series, quite intriguing for an hour, second best in the series
Disadvantages:	slasher movies are so .  .  . '80s', blood and gore seems somewhat minimal, does the world need more of these movies?

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the movie theatres you're not only hit with a new Friday 13th movie which unsurprisingly sucked harder than a black hole faced with a Werther's Original but then that other veteran of the horror movie sequel Michael Myers comes back to dish out some more pain in yet another Halloween movie! I shelled out to see Jason X earlier in the year , stupid I know, but having seen the other 1,835 movies in the Friday The 13th franchise it seemed silly not to see the latest as well. I'm afraid I saw this one under the same principle and yes, if they make another Critters movie I'll see that, or another Leprecaun one and so on. That said, I was actually quite entertained by it...

Umm to qualify that last statement, I rather like crap horror movies so you might like to take any positive opinions expressed within this review with a liberal pinch of salt...

Anyhoo, it's 2002 and in the parallel universe served up for us Michael Myers(played here by stuntman Brad Loree) is a legendary serial killer up there with the 'best of the best', the Mansons, the Dahmers, the Geins etc. of this world all paling into some kind of insignificance by comparison to his legendary exploits. It's the old thing where the movie makers know they've over-stayed their welcome and try to bring movie folklore into perspective with reality. Jamie Lee Curits is here once more, but she's banged up in a mental institution after it's revealed the man she killed at the end of the last movie was actually a police officer with his vocal cords ripped out and wearing a Michael Myers halloween mask so she takes little precendence in the movie at all. Instead, we get a 'teched up' version of the Halloween story where the principals of reality TV and the internet come into play. You see, some bright sparks have the idea that they are going to pay some students to stay one night in the old Myers house on Halloween night. The house will be fitted up with cameras all over the place, they'll wear microphones and mini-cams of their own and all they'll be asked to do is explore the place for the night and viewers will be able to switch around the cameras and it'll all be great fun. The inevitable happens, they explore, they bitch, they argue, they shag despite(or because of) the house being full of cameras and find a load of seriously odd and disturbing stuff which seems to explain just what made Michael so screwed up.

And then the mayhem begins...

OK, so it's effectively a slasher movie with some reality TV elements to spice it all up a bit but you can always watch and fantasise about how much better this year's Big Brother would have been if they'd have unleashed Michael Myers amongst the boring sods if nothing else. Of course it probably wouldn't have been that different, Alison would still have been one of the first to go because she couldn't run away fast enough, Sandy would have been next, throwing himself on Michael's machete to escape the horrors of being forced to socialise and Alex would have whinged constantly about Jonny bleeding in the shower...

Anyway, the movie, you already know whether you like ths 'kind of thing' or not, there can't be that many who've never seen or heard of the Halloween movies or who have never seen at least ONE slasher movie in their time. If you found those entertaining then you'll get *something* out of this too, if not then there's nothing to see which'll make you change your mind. For fans of the franchise (and for them to make this many then there must be one or two of you) then rest assured it's one of the best in the series, probably second or third to the original and certainly a distinct step upwards from the abysmal H20 which was the last time Michael (dis)graced our screens. Oh and rest assured also that it's left wide open unlike the latest Friday The 13th, and not just for one sequel, but if you think hard about the first 15 minutes, for at least two more. Whichever way you look at it, it's crap, but it's crap with it's tongue planted firmly in it's cheek so it's good crap as opposed to the Swimfan/My Little Eye kind of teenie crap I yawned through last week.

Gripes and moans? The acting stinks, but then you saw the other movies, or any slasher movie, so you knew that anyway. The script stinks too and again you knew that and it's all veeeeery obvious...which you also knew. Teens stay in dark spooky house, big dude with a machete comes and hacks them up, you've seen it all before - whether you want to see it again, is something only you can answer. More legitimate moans come from the depiction of Michael who has gone from a big dude with sickly looking grey flesh and black pits for eye sockets in previous movies, to Pennywise the clown in this one. Brad Loree looks like he's wearing a porcelain face mask which just made me want to giggle...and I did, often. He also gets far too much time on screen in full camera shot and with the porcelain white mask effect and resolute muteness you get the feeling you're looking at a beefy mime in a boiler suit. Marcel Marceau may well be lined up for the next movie...

More moans...there's not enough blood 'n' gore. Am I worrying you yet? Well, surely blood 'n' gore is one of the few reasons to watch something like this and there's not enough I say! Oh there's a few beheadings and some butt-clenching close-ups of the machete going in but...do people not bleed anymore??? How many stabbed, hacked and beheaded people don't bleed? Mmm, well these ones don't, much. There's also very little in the way of real shocks and tension here, rather we're looking at a few "BOO!" scenes following a somewhat disproportinately long build up to the action actually taking place and tension in a few fleeting instances. You won't be too shocked at what you see here, nor will you be sitting on the edge of your seat...but you might be entertained in other ways. The reality TV aspect worked for me, so too did the use of the on-body cameras which I thought added something to the mayhem although of course it makes it all a little confusing. Equally intriguing are the explorations of the house and the things the knife-fodder cast uncover which does set this above some of the other entries in the franchise which seem content with pitting Jamie Lee Curtis against Michael and be damned with any kind of intriguing storyline. This one isn't 'good' as such, but it's more interesting to anyone who has seen the others than all the other sequels...

In all, you probably already knew whether you wanted to see this or not so this is something of a throw-away review. Resurrection is certainly more interesting and has more in the way of clever ideas than many other slasher movies but ultimately, it boils down to dumb teens wandering around a house and getting hacked up...same as it ever was. I'd rate it second best in the series behind the first Halloween and the rating below reflects this alone. As a general slasher movie it's probably a 3 star watch-at-home affair or a flat out zero if you think slasher flicks should have remained dead and buried in the 80's where they probably belong.

Official Site: http://www.halloweenmovies.com/

This is the official Halloween website and offers a wealth of information on ALL the Halloween movies as well as offering fan chat, merchandise and a whole lot more. It is a bit on the slow side though for modem surfers and you will need the flash plug-in to fully appreciate it, but worth a look if you're interested in such things.