Dangertainment Is Off The Air!

Hey, I had a blast looking back on the many ups and downs of the Halloween series for this year's round of Trick or Trailers but I'll close out by giving the last word over to someone who fought the boogeyman head on, who got in his face, who walked in his house like he owned the place, and yet still lived to tell the tale, the head of Dangertainment himself, Freddie Harris: 

"...Michael Myers is not a sound bite, a spin-off, a tie-in, some kind of celebrity scandal. Michael Myers is a killer shark in baggy-ass overalls that gets his kicks off of killing everything and everyone that he comes across. That's all." 

Happy Halloween, everyone! 

Cheers! 

Trick or Trailers: Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Oddly for a major franchise, the Halloween series has never had what you'd call a hot streak. Until arguably the current incarnation of the series, for the bulk of its existence the Halloween films never had a point where they, even briefly, hit their stride. With both the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series, they had points where they were undeniably at their peak, where they had at least a two or three film stretch where they were on a roll, commercially and creatively. You might say that having just two good movies back to back isn't much of an actual "roll" but it's more than Halloween had. 

The pattern that the Halloween series followed throughout most of its existence is that a back to basics entry will connect with fans and audiences and right the ship only for the very next installment to tank the franchise all over again. There was no instance of Halloween sequels improving from one to the next or even just holding ground from one to the next. It was always a hit, followed by a train wreck. 

Which brings us to Halloween: Resurrection. 1998's H20 had been well received by critics, fans, and general audiences. It scrapped off the narrative barnacles that had accumulated on the series over the years and seemed to be the big "fix" that the series sorely needed. 

It also ended on a very definitive note. It looked like Laurie Strode and Michael had finally fought their last battle and that Laurie had permanently vanquished the boogeyman. 

Now, I don't think any hardcore Halloween fans truly believed the series was done, no matter how things looked at the end of H20, but the question was just one of "ok, how do you go forward after that ending?" A full reboot would have probably been the smart way to go, allowing H20's ending to stand within that continuity. Or, if not that, then to have evil - or Evil! - re-manifest itself in some creative way. 

But to have the finale of H20 be exposed as a cheap fake-out and just carry on from there...hmm, not great. 

When H20's trailer was released, it was met with a universal cry of "Yeah, Halloween's back!" That was not how the Resurrection trailer was received. From the jump, it looked like this was gonna be rough. Although, from the vantage point of 2021, I'm really loving the cheesy early '00's vibes here.  

 

Sometimes when a movie makes so many stunningly wrong choices, it perversely earns my respect. That's the case here. I will not try and make a convincing case that Resurrection is actually good. However, I would be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy it. How is that even possible, you ask? I don't know. This is just a fun one for me. One thing I love in horror movies is when they try too hard to be of their time and jump on then-current trends. It makes them look hilariously dated as soon as they hit theaters and that is what Resurrection is. 

Resurrection is such a early '00's time capsule with its reality show premise and heavy use of the internet and cell phones as they were then. Everybody's rocking old-timey flip phones. And when they text, it's in full sentences, with proper punctuation! No abbreviations, no emojis! The original Halloween still manages to feel timeless while Resurrection, being so locked into its era, looks absolutely ancient. 

The biggest problem that most people had with Resurrection is with the head of Dangertainment himself, Freddie Harris, played by rapper Busta Rhymes. This is an area in which I will strongly disagree with the haters and say that I genuinely love Busta in this movie. He brings a completely different type of energy to the series. He may be loud and obnoxious and abrasive to some but I'm all for it. And he ends up delivering one of my favorite lines regarding Michael, describing him as a "killer shark in baggy ass overalls." And of course, the immortal "Trick or Treat, motherfucker!" is all him. Freddie rules. If only he and Loomis could have met. Inject that movie into my fucking veins! 

Like Curse, Resurrection came at a low point for the genre, just before horror enjoyed a fresh resurgence. The early '00's were a time when the post-Scream horror boom had ebbed and the genre was floundering in the new decade, with filmmakers not quite knowing what audiences wanted. The genre wasn't quite down and out but it was definitely waiting for the next big wave to happen. Even the Resurrection poster looked like a relic from the fading Scream era. 

The whole movie had a "last nail in the coffin" vibe, not just for Halloween but for the slasher sub-genre. It all felt played out. 

Although no one knew it at the time, Resurrection would mark the second time that a line of Halloween continuity would be brought to an ignominious close. 

Personally I wish they would have continued on from the end of Resurrection. Not only would I have loved to see more of Freddie Harris (really!) but given that, for the first time, the series would have had to carry on without any of its familiar touchstones like Laurie, Loomis, or even the Myers house, it would have been cool to see what the next Halloween might have been like. But, of course, no one wanted to bother with that. Rather than the resurrection its title promised, this Halloween felt more like a funeral, or a kiss good bye. 

Remembering The Class Of '02

The older I get, the more I find myself saying crap like "man, where did the time go?" but I have to say it feels odd to consider that 2002 is already a long ten years ago.

It wasn't a particular milestone year for the genre but as the year following the events of 9/11, it did represent a crossroads of sorts. Post 9/11, some pundits speculated that the audience for fear fare might dry up in the wake of such a catastrophic tragedy but, if anything, the fall out of 9/11 and the two wars the US became embroiled in because of it led to a renewed popularity for the genre.

That new wave didn't really florish until 2003/2004 but 2002 laid the groundwork for big things to come and over at Shock Till You Drop, we've taken a look back at a handful of films that helped define that transitional year. This is not intended to be a "best of" list but simply an acknowledgement of several films that proved notable in one way or another - whether they kicked off trends, put an end cap on an era, or tapped into the cultural mood at the time. In sizing up the Class of '02, Spencer Perry writes about Signs, Tyler Doupe takes on Resident Evil, Paul Doro considers the teen thriller Swimfan, while I take a look back at The Ring and Halloween: Resurrection.

Regarding Halloween: Resurrection, even though that movie will never be much good (no matter how much time passes!), I'll always regard it with some affection. Filmed prior to 9/11 (originally it was meant to come out in September of '01 but reshoots and schedule shuffles moved its release to almost a year later), Resurrection has the virtue of being one of the last horror movies to be filmed pre-9/11 and as such feels like a bittersweet keepsake of a time when a "killer shark in baggy-ass overalls" could be more easily touted as the epitome of Evil.

New Decade. New Rules.

A lot of the talk surrounding Scream 4 has centered on how scripters Kevin Williamson, Ehren Kruger and director Wes Craven managed to cope with the challenge of adapting to a world that's changed so much since 2000's Scream 3. Some have complained that, despite its creator's efforts to incorporate such modern staples as the internet, webcams, smart phones and reality TV, that Scream 4 is still mired in the '90s.

What I haven't seen anyone remark on, though, is that Scream 4 lags almost a decade behind another slasher franchise that already made strides to change with the millennium.

In 2002, Halloween: Resurrection was the first slasher film to embrace the internet culture, reality TV, and the advances in video technology. Producer Moustapha Akkad was surely spurred by the then-recent phenomenon of The Blair Witch Project (1999) to make the latest Michael Myers outing into something that spoke to the current vogue for the found footage genre as well as the burgeoning appetite for reality TV. Clearly, just a simple stalk and slash picture wouldn't cut it with young audiences anymore. And just for good measure, rapper Busta Rhymes was brought in to lend the movie some street cred.

The Resurrection screenplay by Larry Brand and Sean Hood follows six college students who have been chosen to participate in an Internet reality show called Dangertainment masterminded by entrepreneur Freddie Harris (Rhymes) and his assistant Nora Winston (Tyra Banks). The students are sent into the long-shuttered boyhood home of Michael Myers, each equipped with a personal mini-cam that broadcasts their every move to the web. Their task as they spend Halloween night in the Myers' house is to look for clues for why Michael decided to go with "stabbing" as a career choice.

Sara Moyer (Bianca Kajlich) is the film's resident good girl (following slasher movie protocol, she has an irrepressible, smart-talking BFF - Battlestar Galactica's Katee Scakhoff as Jen Danzing) and it's her internet friendship with high school student Myles Barton (Ryan Merriman) that will prove to be a lifeline when the real Michael Myers returns home to put the danger in Dangertainment. Smitten with Sara, even though they've only communicated through e-mails, Myles ducks out of a bustling Halloween party to find a private room in which to follow Dangertainment's broadcast. Before long, the rest of the party decides to join him.

When it becomes clear that the mayhem they're watching is not staged and that Sara and her "co-stars" are lined up for a slaughter, Myles uses the advantage of the cameras set up throughout the Myers' home to feed Sara via her phone the information that she needs to survive.

Brand and Hood's screenplay pulls more than a few boneheaded moves that director Rick Rosenthal (encoring from 1981's Halloween II) was apparently ok with. Killing off Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode in film's pre-title sequence set in a psychiatric hospital was likely exactly what Curtis wanted in order to end her obligation to the series but it's not ok that her plan to destroy Michael should involve setting up a rooftop booby trap that's so goofy it'd be laughed out of a Scooby-Doo episode. I mean, Laurie has Michael step into a rope noose which, when Laurie springs her trap, has him dangling in the air - upside down, no less! Ooooo!!

I don't know...maybe it's because Laurie's been kicking back in a mental hospital for a few years that this half-assed scheme seems like an effective way to dispose of Michael once and for all. I mean, hanging upside down does make the blood rush to a person's head and, as anyone will tell you, that's not pleasant. Assumedly, once Michael was at her mercy, Laurie planned to cut the rope or whatever and send Michael plummeting several stories to the ground. Would that hurt more than getting shot multiple times? Or more than being set on fire from head to toe? Because neither of those things were able to quite stop Michael previously, as Laurie ought to know. I mean, Michael fell off a second story balcony after Dr. Loomis emptied a full round of ammo in his chest and after that he just got up and walked away. Did Laurie forget that? Maybe her reasoning was that Michael isn't as young as he used to be so being dropped on his head from thirty, forty feet might do more damage than it would've before.

Honestly, though, even if Brand, Hood, and Rosenthal were all dumb enough to think this is how Laurie Strode should exit the series, you'd think that Curtis would've argued for something better - something that didn't make Laurie look completely moronic. Or maybe, God help us, this was the improved version. If this is what ended up being shot, I can only imagine what ideas were rejected along the way.

Besides having its most honored cast member go out like a fool, Rosenthal and co. allow the clownish Rhymes, while dressed to impersonate Michael, to verbally berate the real Michael (as Freddie believes it to be his cameraman in disguise). Did no one involved think that Halloween fans might be insulted by this? The error of having a C-list rapper get away with treating Michael like a punk is compounded when Freddie later unleashes a flurry of kung-fu moves on Michael and, again, survives to tell the tale. Is it any wonder that Resurrection is regarded as the worst in the Halloween series?

On the plus side, the notion of a group of viewers able to look on as Michael stalks his victims and being able to instantly advise Michael's prey on the best avenues for escape is a fitting high-tech analogy for the way that horror audiences have been shouting advice to the screen for decades. Unfortunately, constantly cutting back and forth from the Myers house to the group of kids at the party disrupts any chance for building suspense.

The one thing I do dig about Resurrection is Brad Loree as Michael Myers. Slasher fans tend to talk a lot about the different actors who have played Jason over the years but for some reason the different Michaels aren't discussed so much but I think that Loree was the best of the bunch since Nick Castle. He had the right body language and they designed one of the best masks for him. It's a shame that Rob Zombie cast Tyler Mane as Michael for his reboot as Loree was terrific.

As terrible as Resurrection is, though, as it was the last "official" Halloween sequel I can't help but have some affection for it. For all its missteps, I thought it left the series in an interesting place. Laurie was gone and the Myers house had been burned to the ground. How the next film would've continued without those familiar elements to lean on had me intrigued but Rob Zombie's 2007 remake put a quick end to that.

Some would say that's just as well. I say that while the later-day Halloween sequels were mostly awful and not looking to improve, Zombie's remake and sequel replaced them with something just as bad, if not worse. Moustapha Akkad's son Malek, who had been producing the Halloween sequels with his dad since 1995's The Curse of Michael Myers, took on the responsibility of shepherding the series after Moustapha was tragically killed (along with his daughter) in a 2005 terrorist bombing in Amman Jordan but while Zombie's name was able to gave the series a commercial shot in the arm, I have to imagine that Moustapha would never have signed off on it.

The one thing Moustapha understood about the series and Michael Myers was that you couldn't lose the boogeyman element. Once you turned Michael into just a psycho, you didn't have much. Rhymes' describes Michael as a "killer shark in baggy ass overalls" and I prefer that succinct take on the character to Zombie's efforts to portray him as the product of a crappy upbringing.

Unfortunately, what Moustapha didn't understand was that the series didn't need to jump on the latest technology or trends. Incorporating webcams and high tech in such a clumsy, pandering way only made Resurrection appear more out of touch. That's the same boat that Scream 4 finds itself in now. Thankfully, Scream 4 isn't anywhere near the unholy debacle that Resurrection was. And for those who think Scream 4 needed to embrace cutting edge tech more than it did, Resurrection proved almost ten years ago that the only cutting edge that should ever matter in a slasher film is a sharp blade.