Halloween Resurrection (2002) Review – Another Step Back

For the most part, Halloween H20 wasn’t just a bump in the franchise’s quality after an array of worsening films, but it was the first one that I can actively call good and genuinely entertaining on more than one level since maybe Halloween 2 (1981). With that in mind, it’s 2002 sequel, Halloween Ressurection, seemed to go out of its way to do one thing; be bad.

That might seem a bit cruel and overly critical, but it also feels true. Unlike H20, the short runtime of this movie doesn’t seem to be to tell a short and compelling story but to get us through the gallery of stuff we’ve seen before as quickly as possible. The story goes that a bunch of teens are going to be live-streamed on the internet as they explore Michael Myers’ childhood home to uncover the truth about why he became a killer, not knowing that the organisers have rigged the place with spooky surprises for them… Or that, y’know, Michael is in the home and about to start killing them.

In my opinion, this is an interesting premise but not one that works for Halloween; The movie as a whole feels more like a rejected Scream sequel if anything. It clearly wants to be a horror-comedy with minor meta moments that, if properly leaned into and embraced by a better director working with a better script, could have been truly shocking and funny. Alas, this movie’s attempt to capitalise on the rise of the internet to breathe air into the franchise falls flat – Mostly because they don’t capitalise on it at all and the premise goes to waste. Resultingly, it’s just a case of watching Michael kill people until the film ends. And I think the reason for this is that the filmmakers were scared of experimentation driving away existing fans, despite clearly wanting and, and thusly failing, to go in an alternate direction.

But blimey, I wish Michael could have killed those teens faster. I don’t think I liked a single character in this movie. All the teens were generic, overacted archetypes who do and mean nothing to the story aside from the final girl (whose name I don’t remember) and Busta Rhymes. Any time they’re on screen it’s just them talking about how horny they are, how they want to have sex with one and other or them getting jump scared by a fake thing set up by the organisers of the stream. For the entire movie, I was on Michael’s side; I just wanted these characters to die as quickly as possible so the film could end.

When it does end, Busta Rhymes kickboxes Michael into next year and sticks an electrical wire into his genitals so that he starts to burn to death, and then carries the final girl to safety. The final girl doesn’t even do anything in the movie’s climax because an extremely light piece of equipment is on her leg, and so is the very corner of a prop so devoid of weight that Busta Rhymes tosses it aside like a softball. Naturally, she is immobilised so that Busta Rhymes can earn his paycheck by saving her and, y’know, electrocuting Michael Myers’ genitals.

They are the only two survivors and Busta Rhymes learns a lesson about not sensationalizing serial killers or something, and the final girl learns literally nothing. Also Laurie Strode is dead…

Oh, yes, I should probably mention that Jamie Lee Curtis is in fact in this movie for all of 20 minutes because, technically, this is a sequel to H20 despite very obviously trying to distance itself from it by severing their connection in a rushed opening scene.

In an entirely unrelated sequence to the rest of the movie, the introduction takes place in a sanitorium wherein Laurie has been imprisoned after decapitating a man she thought to be Michael Myers. I don’t really care about any of this because my biggest gripe with H20 was that I didn’t buy that Michael could have swapped himself and dressed up the corpse of someone else with his clothes before Laurie got to where he was… That’s not even to mention the fact that nothing Michael has ever or will ever do in this franchise lines up with his character being the type to fake his death. It seems more likely he would switch the body and stab Laurie in the back in the end of H20, if anything.

But I digress, Michael gets trapped by Laurie and very nearly killed by her at the Sanitorium. Before she can kill him, however, he clutches his mask as though to pretend he isn’t really himself, which is something the fake Michael did at the end of H20, and causes Laurie to second-guess herself. I don’t think this makes sense as this movie confirms Michael walked off into the darkness well before Laurie had a final confrontation with the fake Michael at the end of H20, so he could not have seen the fake him clutch his mask and reach out to her. But anyways, Laurie second-guesses herself and approaches Michael who then kills her for getting too close.

And then the movie goes onto the regularly scheduled live stream subplot as though H20, it’s characters, setting and tone never existed. I guess Micheal doesn’t want to kill his relatives now? I mean, he has a nephew in John who was well established in H20. But I guess what Michael really wants is to eat rats in the basement of his childhood home until a bunch of kids come in with cameras. It’s not like Michael was so devoted to killing his family that the entire franchise had been shaped around it until this point… I guess they couldn’t get the actor for John back?

A lot of people call this the worst Halloween movie. I disagree. So far, I think it’s the second-worst Halloween movie. Although the movie isn’t hilariously bad, there are a couple of unintentionally funny moments that make it shine in places the overly serious Halloween 6 could not. Busta Rhymes kickboxing Michael is… Well, it’s entertaining, regardless of if it fits in this movie or should have happened.

Additionally, I do have to give credit where it is due because there was one genuinely scary scene in this movie and I am not exaggerating when I say it is the final scene before the credits roll. Michael’s burnt body is rolled into a morgue where we see the fire caused his mask to melt into his face, and his skin is all black – It looks genuinely horrifying and is something I thought Halloween 4 should have done with the character’s appearance after he survived the fire in Halloween 2 (1981). Then we get a close-up and the doctor in the morgue approaches, and his pale, emotionless eyes flash open. In my opinion that was the one and only scene in the entire movie that was great from start to finish, and is the singular light in the darkness for this otherwise dumb movie, that definitely should have been an experimental sequel to Scream, or it’s own independent movie with an unrelated serial killer as the antagonist.

So no, I would not recommend Halloween Resurrection for the reason that it is not scary, is poorly written, sometimes poorly directed and just a waste of time.

At the end of every Halloween review, I rank the movies I have seen so far from best to worst. Find the updated list below:

1. Halloween (1978)
2. Halloween H20 (1998)
3. Halloween 2 (1981)
4. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (1983)
5. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
6. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
7. Halloween Resurrection (2002)
8. Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)