Halloween: Resurrection

Halloween: Resurrection opens by showing how Michael survived the end of H2O.

The man Laurie killed wasn't Michael.

Before the final confrontation, Michael had switched clothes with a paramedic and crushed the man's larynx, preventing him from explaining what had happened.

Laurie killed an innocent man.

The knowledge destroys her.

She is committed to a psychiatric institution, apparently withdrawn from the world around her.

But Laurie isn't as helpless as she appears.

She knows Michael survived.

And she knows eventually he'll come looking for her.

Michael does exactly that.

He enters the institution and finds Laurie waiting.

She has prepared a trap.

For a moment, it appears Laurie may finally have him.

But after what happened at the end of H20, she needs to be certain.

She tries to remove Michael's mask.

That hesitation costs her.

Michael kills Laurie, apparently ending the story of the woman who had been running from him since Halloween night in 1978.

It's a startling opening.

The movie has removed Laurie Strode from the board.

And Michael goes home.

The story then shifts to a group of college students selected to participate in an online reality event called Dangertainment.

The concept is simple.

Spend Halloween night inside Michael Myers' childhood home.

Search the building.

Discover clues about Michael's past.

Broadcast everything live online.

Freddie Harris and Nora Winston organise the event.

For the participants, it's entertainment.

For the viewers, it's voyeurism.

For Michael Myers, somebody has just filled his house with victims.

Sara Moyer is at the centre of the new group.

Sara isn't particularly comfortable with the attention surrounding Dangertainment, but she agrees to participate alongside her fellow students.

They enter the Myers house wearing cameras that allow viewers to follow what happens from multiple perspectives.

Initially, the night feels manufactured.

Props have been placed around the building.

Clues have been staged.

The producers want scares.

Then the real Michael Myers arrives.

And suddenly nobody knows which parts of the show are fake anymore.

Returning the action to the Myers house gives Resurrection an immediate link to the franchise's beginning.

This is where Michael murdered Judith Myers.

This is where Laurie delivered a key on the morning of October 31, 1978.

This is the house Haddonfield has spent decades associating with the Shape.

Now it has become entertainment.

Cameras cover the rooms.

People explore its history for an audience.

The film turns Michael's mythology into content.

Then Michael himself walks through the door.

The technology dates Halloween: Resurrection instantly — but that's also part of its charm.

This horror movie is fascinated by the early internet.

Webcams.

Online chat.

Live streaming.

Reality television.

The idea of watching ordinary people constantly through cameras was still relatively novel.

The film uses that technology to give the audience multiple perspectives on the Myers house.

Sometimes the characters can't see Michael.

But the people watching online can.

That creates an interesting inversion of the usual slasher formula.

The audience knows the killer is coming.

The victims don't.

Sara has been communicating online with a friend known as Deckard.

At a Halloween party, he starts watching the Dangertainment broadcast.

Then he notices something.

Michael Myers is inside the house.

At first, the other viewers assume he's part of the show.

Deckard realises he isn't.

Using messages sent to Sara's handheld device, he tries to guide her through the house.

He can see Michael through the cameras.

Sara can't.

The internet, which helped put everyone in danger, becomes one of the few tools that can help her survive.

And then we get one of the most gloriously strange confrontations in the entire franchise.

Busta Rhymes plays Freddie Harris, the entrepreneur behind Dangertainment.

At one point, Freddie finds himself face-to-face with Michael while dressed like Michael.

Later, things escalate considerably.

Freddie fights the Shape.

There are martial arts moves.

There is trash-talking.

Michael Myers is confronted by Busta Rhymes in his own house.

Nobody watching Halloween in 1978 could possibly have predicted that this was somewhere in Michael's future.

And yet here we are.

Brad Loree takes over as Michael Myers for Resurrection.

The character remains largely what audiences expect.

Silent.

Methodical.

Unhurried.

Michael doesn't need to understand the technology surrounding him.

The webcams and internet broadcast don't change what he does.

People have entered his territory.

He removes them.

That simplicity creates a funny contrast with everything happening around him.

The world has become digital.

Michael hasn't changed at all.

Dangertainment has deliberately planted material inside the Myers house to make the broadcast more exciting.

That becomes a major problem.

When the participants discover disturbing things, they don't immediately know whether they're genuine.

A threatening sound could be part of the production.

A strange room could be staged.

A man wearing Michael Myers' mask could be an actor.

The entire premise depends upon manipulating reality.

So when actual danger arrives, nobody knows what to believe.

That's arguably the movie's smartest idea.

The characters have been trained to assume the horror isn't real.

Eventually, the night descends into complete chaos.

Bodies are discovered.

Michael closes in.

Sara and Freddie fight to escape.

The Myers house catches fire.

For yet another Halloween night, Michael appears to have finally been stopped.

His body is taken away.

The nightmare seems over.

But this is Michael Myers.

And Halloween has taught audiences never to trust a body on a stretcher.

At the morgue, Michael's body is prepared for examination.

The attendant begins opening the body bag.

Then Michael's eyes open.

It's a classic Halloween ending.

No complicated explanation.

No lengthy setup.

Just confirmation that the Shape survived again.

Michael Myers is still out there.

Laurie Strode's death remains one of the most controversial elements of Halloween: Resurrection.

H20 had given Laurie an enormously satisfying confrontation with Michael.

She stopped running.

She fought him.

And she apparently killed him.

Resurrection reverses that victory almost immediately.

For viewers who loved H20's ending, it was understandably frustrating.

Of course, Halloween continuity would change again eventually.

And Laurie Strode's story wasn't really finished.

Not even close.

Few films capture their particular moment quite like Halloween: Resurrection.

Reality television was exploding.

The internet was becoming part of everyday life.

Webcams felt futuristic.

Watching strangers online was becoming entertainment.

So the movie asked a wonderfully early-2000s question:

What if Michael Myers walked into a reality show?

It isn't subtle.

It isn't remotely as atmospheric as Carpenter's original.

But more than two decades later, its obsession with turning tragedy into online entertainment feels strangely familiar.

Halloween: Resurrection ultimately became the final film in this branch of the original continuity.

The franchise had travelled an extraordinary distance.

Halloween.

Halloween II.

Then decades later, Halloween H20 ignored the Thorn sequels and brought Laurie Strode back.

Resurrection continued directly from that film.

And then this timeline stopped.

Five years later, Rob Zombie wiped the slate clean and started Michael's story again.

Then, in 2018, the franchise created yet another timeline by returning directly to Carpenter's original.

That's the wonderfully ridiculous thing about Halloween.

Michael Myers doesn't simply survive the movies.

He survives the continuity.