ChillerPop

Saturday, March 21, 2015

OCTOBER 15, 2014 9:46AM

Your Fifteen Minutes Minutes Are Up

Rate: 4 Flag

HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION

Released: 2002
Director: Rick Rosenthal
Writer: Larry Brand, Sean Hood (Debra Hill and John Carpenter are given credits but I don't care to sully their good name)
Notable Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Busta Rhymes, Katee Sackhoff, Tyra Banks
Plot: (courtesy imdb.com, written by user "Halloween 8") 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 of the house alive.
Commentary: This one is rightly considered the worst of the Halloween series. There are those that will say Halloween III is the worst, and they are dead wrong.
It's a "defeat" of sorts for longtime Halloween fans and feminist scholars.

(Earlier in September I entered a meme contest to win the box set of the entire series. My memes didn't even make it into the contest for consideration. So I went a bit Glenn Close and created a series of #dissedbyhalloweenmovies memes.)

It is awfully scripted and filled to the brim with obnoxious and uber-narcissistic personalities. This is relevant to the "What We're Afraid Of" analysis.

(Michael Meyers has not mastered the art of 'smizing' and he was not chosen to be America's Next Top Model )

Furthermore, it's blatantly artless and its creative team had no idea if they should, or how to, pull off a balance between horror movie or laughably ridiculous parody.
However, rapper Busta Rhymes has become loved-reviled for this sequence:

There will some day be a post about hip hop stars and horror.
What We're Afraid Of: Here's maybe one redeeming quality about this film: it codifies a special subset of economic anxiety.
When you think of Halloween, you think of babysitters alone in the house, slow moving terror, sinful teens paying for their slutty ways, etc etc. Not so with Halloween: Resurrection. I'm going to ignore for now the plot point at the start of the film, which was disappointing for many reasons. It's tempting to read it as an attack on Final Girls themselves, but I'll withhold that judgement as I don't believe the people behind the plot are any sort of conscious thinkers.
Here, the masked killer Michael Myers represents anxieties around the Coin of the Realm, which in this era is celebrity and fame. Reality shows as a human sacrifice, as masochistic prostitution for riches. Celebrities melting down in deep psychological pain for delighted consumers of TMZ or Perez Hilton. Youtube "celebrities" earning exhorbitant amounts or being bullied for singing goofy songs about Friday. All aided by the ease of technology and The Internet.

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Comments

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I've been reading this series and have enjoyed it, so just wanted to finally post a comment. You're right about this one. It was hard to watch on many levels. That one in space was pretty terrible too.

DandyLion

October 15, 2014 10:50 AM

Perhaps a digression but, "...your fifteen minutes are up!" Wasn't that President Andrew Shepard's line from Sorkin's "The American President"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zemrWBIc_hE

Always one of my favorite horror flicks. So scary because it's so very nearly true to our present political insanity. R&R ;-)

jmac1949

October 15, 2014 11:43 AM

@Gary Seven - I love improbable, but superficial, inane and cliches? Yeah, I'm older than 14. Physically. Not mentally.

@DandyLion - thank you so much for reading, it is very appreciated! And yes, Hockey Goalie in Space was awful.

@jmac - I am excited to check The American President out! Thanks!