Friday, November 5, 2021

Halloween 8: Resurrection (2002)

Director:  Rick Rosenthal

Writers:  Larry Brand, Sean Hood

Composer:  Danny Lux

Starring:  Jamie Lee Curtis, Brad Loree, Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Sean Patrick Thomas, Daisy McCrackin, Katee Sackhoff, Luke Kirby, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Ryan Merriman, Tyra Banks

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Michael Myers is back...and he's ready to clean house!

Plot:  Three years after he last terrorized his sister, Michael Myers confronts her again, before traveling to Haddonfield to deal with the cast and crew of a reality show which is being broadcast from his old home.


My rating:   4.5/10

Will I watch it again?    No.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!! YARRRRRRRR!

I fucking LOVE the first fifteen minutes with Jamie Lee Curtis' literal kiss goodbye!  

Well, that is until 2018 when the Hollywood showed up at her house with the Brinks truck, shoveling sweet green leafy spendy monies onto her front lawn.  The end of that opening pre-credits sequence was dumb as fuck and I loved it!  The rest of the movie was just full of stupid.  One of the few things that I liked was seeing Katee Sakhoff in an early role.  She's got charisma that helps the picture but not enough to save it.  The music?  I guess it worked.  I can't remember anything about it one way or the other.  There's so much dumb shit in this thing like how the six participants have shitty cameras that look horrible to us but are crystal clear on the in-movie bank of monitors.  Cutting between the horribly fuzzy video from those cameras to the actual movie footage was annoying and distracting.  I was ready for this picture to end halfway through but I persisted since I'm determined to get through the rest of this series.  I can see why this movie was the last one until 2007.  Since I've seen the two Rob Zombie pictures (which I really enjoyed), it's the 2018 film next and then I'll sit down and remember something about HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021) which I watched a couple of weeks ago.  After that I'll wash my hands of all this and move onto something else.

Thursday, November 4, 2021

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)


Director:  Steve Miner

Writers:  Robert Zappia, Matt Greenberg

Composer:  John Ottman

Starring:  Jamie Lee Curtis, Adam Arkin, Michelle Williams, Adam Hann-Byrd, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, Janet Leigh, Josh Hartnett, LL Cool J, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Chris Durand

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  It's going to be one hell of a family reunion.

Plot:  Laurie Strode, now the dean of a Northern California private school with an assumed name, must battle the Shape one last time, as the life of her own son hangs in the balance. 

 


My rating:   6/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Wait, I thought Laurie Strode was dead.  How silly; no one ever really dies.  It's a movie and you can do whatever you want.  For this series, I've learned to check my brains at the door and just go with it.  On one hand, this feels more like a Halloween picture because Jamie Lee Curtis is back but on the other, it's less of one.  That's not to say I don't like it.  It's fine I suppose and I kind of like it.  One big departure from the rest of the series is the music, this time from the wonderful John Ottman.  Gone are the synth vibes from twenty years earlier.  Ottman's score has a SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) vibe and I LOVED it!  There are some fun kills but the film has too many jump scares.  The only one I dug was this one.



Nice!  The ending was great.   When Michael was pinned down and unable to escape, I was thinking that one sure-fire way to put this fucker down would be to decapitate him.  And then Laurie goes and does just that.  But just before that she and Michael seemed to share a moment when he reached out to her.  I found it a little touching.  It would've really tugged hard at my heart strings if Michael had groaned a bit in a sad way like a wounded animal.  It was a nice touch...you know, just before the beheading.  While there was a lot here that played by the numbers, there's enough here to like to at least give it a watch.  Watching it again?  I can't see that happening.  The way this series is going, I'm probably going to stick to re-watching the first and third films.

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)


Director:  Joe Chappelle

Writer:  Daniel Farrands

Composers:  Alan Howarth, Paul Rabjohns

Starring:  Donald Pleasence, Paul Rudd, Marianne Hagan, Mitchell Ryan, Kim Darby, Bradford English, Keith Bogart, Mariah O'Brien

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  True Terror Never Dies!

Plot:  Six years after Michael Myers last terrorized Haddonfield, he returns there in pursuit of his niece, Jamie Lloyd, who has escaped with her newborn child, for which Michael and a mysterious cult have sinister plans.

My rating:   5/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

The continuity in this serious is pretty fucking bad.  This is the first one (of the Michael Myers Halloweens) that feels less like a Halloween picture and more like a typical horror movie.  There are jump scares all over this thing and that's not something I remember the previous entries relying on.  I can't think of much to say about it which is neither good nor bad.  It's OK at best.  There seemed to be less music than in previous films and that takes away from building any much-needed atmosphere.  It's just 90 minutes of mostly meh.  I guess they introduced the cult angle to explain how Michael is un-killable.  My mind wandered a lot while watching this and I found myself asking questions like what does Michael do in the off-season?  Where does he hang out, what does he like for breakfast, does he have an exercise plan to keep in tip top knife-lunging shape?  I reckon he must hibernate or something.  He is the definition of evil according to Loomis and the rest of the cast so there's definitely a supernatural thing going on.  This is a notable entry in that Pleasence died shortly after filming and Paul Rudd makes his film debut.  Hey, at least they're getting a little more consistent with continuity by not having any when Jamie Lee Curtis shows up in the next one.

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)


Director: Dominique Othenin-Girard 

Writers: Michael Jacobs, Dominique Othernin-Girard, Shem Bitterman 

Composer: Alan Howarth 

Starring: Donald Pleasence, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell, Beau Starr, Jeffrey Landman, Tamara Glynn, Jonathan Chapin, Matthew Walker, Wendy Foxworth, Don Shanks 

More info: IMDb 

Tagline: He's Back With A Vengeance 

Plot:  One year after the events of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), the Shape returns to Haddonfield once again in an attempt to kill his now-mute niece.


 My rating:  6

Will I watch it again?  Doubtful.

After watching HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021) the other night, it seemed like a good time to finish this series since I've only ever seen the first four. 

I don't know what else you can do with a simple character like Michael Myers but this isn't all that bad of a direction.  All you do is change the person he's going after and let a shitload of people around them get slaughtered.   Start the film off by eating up time with a re-cap of the previous film and change a little here and there, and then jump into the present-day story establishing everything you need to in order for the plot to happen.   Donald Pleasence has some batshit crazy moments that make this worth watching.  There are some fun kills and Howarth does a serviceable job with the score.  The laundry chute was a nice sequence so at least there's that.  Oh, jesus.  I almost forgot about the two idiot cops and the horrible Mickey Mouse silly music Howarth vomits up when they're on screen.  It's just terrible and is very much out of place.  At least they died, albeit offscreen which robbed me of cheering Michael on.  Shame, that.