The Facts:
Synopsis: When a group of teens win a contest to spend a night in Michael Myers’ childhood home to be broadcast live on the internet, they believe they are in for a little fun and some free publicity. But, things go frightfully wrong and the game turns into a struggle to make it out alive.
Stars: Jamie Lee Curtis, Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Katee Sackhoff, Tyra Banks, Ryan Merriman, Thomas Ian Nicholas
Director: Rick Rosenthal
Rated: R
Running Length: 94 minutes
TMMM Score: (2/10)
Review:
Review: Well, once again the Halloween franchise followed a nice high with a real low when four years after Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later they brought Michael Myers back to life for another homecoming event featuring the masked killer and a bunch of idiot teens. While it’s not quite as bad as the worst of the bunch (Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers) it’s pretty close…and it’s an especially disappointing entry considering some of the players in front of and behind the camera.
Halloween II director Rosenthal is back with absolutely nothing to bring to the table. The film looks messy and feels like it was directed by committee in conjunction with a freshman film studies major. Actually, Rosenthal did need some last minute help from John Carpenter before Halloween II could be released so maybe Carpenter was the key factor not present in this outing. Not that Carpenter would have gotten anywhere near this lame-o plot that tries to capitalize on the live webcast internet craze that was popular in 2002 and now seems so incredibly goofy.
The grumpiest looking person in the whole movie is Curtis who wisely high tails it out of the film in the first fifteen minutes. Thinking that she had taken care of her big brother (and the franchise) once and for all at the end of H20, she clearly took part in this fiasco so she could be done with the character for good.
Since the Halloween films nearly always have a female protagonist the new one introduced here is a Kajlich and she’s a pale comparison to those that have come before her. Boring and forgettable, she’s overshadowed by everyone and everything on screen which may have been her intention considering how awful the script is.
The script. Oh yargh…what a mess of dead ends and deadly ends for our characters. At this point in the series, when Myers kills someone they drop dead in two seconds. I’m pretty sure that being stabbed in the shoulder shouldn’t make you keel over dead without a whimper but it happens in this here film. It’s a walk and stab job for the actor playing Myers and it’s hard to imagine how anyone could encounter him and not run to safety with ease. Taking place in the Myers house, the small exterior gives way to a Daddy Warbucks style mansion that our characters run around screaming in.
It’s so terribly boring…a film with no pulse. Speaking of no pulse…Rhymes and his performance are dead on arrival. It’s an awful, awful performance laced with obscenities and flat delivery from someone that has no business celebrating Halloween much less starring in a sequel of the popular franchise. Banks also is sky-high bad playing a character that is required to do nothing but get killed.
This proved to be the final straw for audiences who turned their backs (justifiably) on the movie and its creators. It would take five years for Rob Zombie’s truly unsettling remake of Halloween to hit the screens and slightly reinvigorate the character. I just hope that the modest money that the greedy producers made off of this was worth the price they paid in their reputation.
Click here for my review of Halloween II
Click here for my review of Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Click here for my review of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
Click here for my review of Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
Click here for my review of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
Click here for my review of Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later