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...

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.

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...

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...

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.