I'm really starting to think Moustapha Akkad is losing it in his old age. First he gives us HALLOWEEN: H20, a sequel that insults us by asking us to ignore the events of HALLOWEENs 4-6 and is more like SCREAM 4 than HALLOWEEN. Then he gives us HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION, which seems more concerned at being BLAIR WITCH 3 than HALLOWEEN. Thanks to screenwriter Larry Brandt, gone are the intriguing characters and any attempt at continuity. Films 4-6 steadily built up a solid story that was continued and built upon further by each subsequent film, something not every horror series can claim. There were characters intent on discovering the secret of Michael Myers and how to (if at all) stop him, and there were characters you cared about and found yourself rooting for. Here, we're given a bunch of characters who just want to make some quick bucks by staying the night in Myers' house.
The characters are all paper-thin, whereas even in the previous films (except for H20) we had strong characters. Here, everyone just hangs around waiting to get hacked, in death scenes that seem more like FRIDAY THE 13TH than HALLOWEEN. For the most part, the actors are unknowns in stock roles--they're able to scream and shout on cue--but that's about it. Busta Rhymes wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting him to be, but he seems to have been cast more because of his own popularity than anything else. Tyra Banks, also, is cast simply to draw a crowd, and she really does nothing but sit in front of a bank of computer monitors and drink coffee for most of the film.
There are some minor highlights, but not many. Brad Loree does an excellent job of playing Michael Myers the way he should be, making up for the awful Chris Durand interpretation in H20. The mask is about as close to the original as we're likely to get, but still has some problems with it, mostly a little too much hair and the fact we can see his eyes, a part of him that was very rarely seen in the previous films and helped generate a lot of mystery. But he has the menacing walk down perfect. Danny Lux's musical score returns to what made the previous films' scores work, by underlining the on-screen events instead of highlighting, like with John Ottman's overblown H20 score. And the atmosphere is terrific. As he did with HALLOWEEN 2 twenty-one years ago, director Rick Rosenthal brings a great sense of atmosphere to the film that menacingly exploits pools of light and shadow, and several shots of Myers hiding in the dark are truely creepy images. The sequence involving the one girl finding Michael's lair in the sewer underneath the house is very nicely filmed. So the film at least looks nice, which is not something that can be said about H20. And the Myers house itself, from the outside, has been recreated very much like the original, though the interior is (to fans) noticeably messed up.
But for the most part, it was another failed attempt. I fear the glory days of the HALLOWEEN series--when they had characters you liked and stories that were simple yet helped the films develop more than other horror series--is over, having ended with HALLOWEEN 6, and now the films are turning into just pail SCREAM wannabes. The rights should be taken away from the Weinstein brothers and given to an independent company, like some of the previous ones, a company that will respect the fans and the previous films in the series.
The characters are all paper-thin, whereas even in the previous films (except for H20) we had strong characters. Here, everyone just hangs around waiting to get hacked, in death scenes that seem more like FRIDAY THE 13TH than HALLOWEEN. For the most part, the actors are unknowns in stock roles--they're able to scream and shout on cue--but that's about it. Busta Rhymes wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting him to be, but he seems to have been cast more because of his own popularity than anything else. Tyra Banks, also, is cast simply to draw a crowd, and she really does nothing but sit in front of a bank of computer monitors and drink coffee for most of the film.
There are some minor highlights, but not many. Brad Loree does an excellent job of playing Michael Myers the way he should be, making up for the awful Chris Durand interpretation in H20. The mask is about as close to the original as we're likely to get, but still has some problems with it, mostly a little too much hair and the fact we can see his eyes, a part of him that was very rarely seen in the previous films and helped generate a lot of mystery. But he has the menacing walk down perfect. Danny Lux's musical score returns to what made the previous films' scores work, by underlining the on-screen events instead of highlighting, like with John Ottman's overblown H20 score. And the atmosphere is terrific. As he did with HALLOWEEN 2 twenty-one years ago, director Rick Rosenthal brings a great sense of atmosphere to the film that menacingly exploits pools of light and shadow, and several shots of Myers hiding in the dark are truely creepy images. The sequence involving the one girl finding Michael's lair in the sewer underneath the house is very nicely filmed. So the film at least looks nice, which is not something that can be said about H20. And the Myers house itself, from the outside, has been recreated very much like the original, though the interior is (to fans) noticeably messed up.
But for the most part, it was another failed attempt. I fear the glory days of the HALLOWEEN series--when they had characters you liked and stories that were simple yet helped the films develop more than other horror series--is over, having ended with HALLOWEEN 6, and now the films are turning into just pail SCREAM wannabes. The rights should be taken away from the Weinstein brothers and given to an independent company, like some of the previous ones, a company that will respect the fans and the previous films in the series.