Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later and Halloween: Resurrection - The Ripoffs

 

After the debacle that was Halloween 6, the franchise did its first slight reboot. Ignoring the previous four films and just continuing the story of Halloween and Halloween II, Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (yes, that’s the actual full title) was meant to be a return to form for the series. Perhaps it’s the inclusion of Jamie Lee Curtis or just the return to the relatively simple slasher formula, but people seemed to be into it. I was not.  

Maybe if I had watched this back when it came out I would feel differently. But I saw this for the first time a couple weeks ago, and all I saw was a Scream movie with Michael Myers in it. For some, that’s just fine. But I like my series to stay in its own lane, even if I’m not even sure what that lane is.

Identity is the constant problem of the Halloween series. It basically invented the slasher genre, yet it could never figure out what that meant. The copycats, like Jason and Freddy, at least seemed to have an idea of what those movies should be like (even though most of those movies suck, too). Halloween has gone from a nearly perfect model for a slasher movie, then a bit of a repeat with the second one, then they tried to ditch the slasher from their own genre, then brought him back and tried to explain why he’s a supernatural killer, leading the franchise into some truly goofy nonsense. 

So when the hot franchise of the time, Scream (which owes its own existence to Halloween), popularized slasher movies again, it’s easy to see why the Halloween franchise would start copying the copycat. I get why people would like it. There are plenty of familiar horror movie references (and so many Psycho references that they even felt the need to cast Curtis’s mom, Janet Leigh, in a small role), and there is a decent mix of comedy and horror. But I kind of like the stupid shit that came before this movie.

I know I’m in the minority on this one, but I would rather see a franchise grasp wildly at wacky ideas than just start trying to be like the latest trend. So even though H20 is actually one of the better made films in the franchise, it’s one of my least favorite. I would rather watch Paul Rudd play with magic rocks than watch Scream Featuring Michael Myers. 

I might not know what a Halloween movie should be, but I know I don’t want it to be like this. Though I will give it credit for attempting to wrap up the Jamie Lee Curtis storyline, but of course that wouldn’t last, which unfortunately led to the aptly titled Halloween: Resurrection.

Halloween: Resurrection is rightfully considered one of the worst films in the series. H20 seemed to truly end Michael Myers’s story, but this film revealed that Myers had switched outfits with a paramedic, meaning Laurie decapitated an innocent man at the end of that film. That infuriating fake out alone makes this one stupid, but apparently there was a series rule at the time that Michael couldn’t really die. This leads to Curtis coming back to essentially film an extra ending to H20 in which she’s in a mental institution, traumatized after killing an innocent man. But her trauma is an act, as she knows Michael will come for her. He does, and he kills her. 

I wouldn’t have a big issue with this turn of events if this segment had been the actual ending of H20. Sure, some might be upset that Laurie dies and Michael lives, but at least it would be a proper ending for one of the characters. Anyway, that segment placed at the beginning of this film is just an excuse to put Curtis on the poster, because it has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, aside from establishing that Myers is still alive.

After the opening, Resurrection turns into a Friday the 13th movie, which is what truly makes me hate this one. The basic plot is about a manipulative producer, Busta fucking Rhymes, for some reason, who has purchased the Myers house and is going to film a web reality show in which college students explore the house, uncovering the secrets of Michael Myers. 

This goofy concept feels more at home in a later Friday the 13th movie than a Halloween movie. I get that Michael has a connection to his childhood home, but there’s a dungeon in the basement? And I’m not talking about the fake dungeon Busta Rhymes made for the show; there’s an actual dungeon that is revealed to be Michael’s secret home for who knows how many years. That just feels like a Jason thing to me. 

Since he kills Laurie at the beginning, that means this film is still in the original, original sequel, and H20’s timeline. So Michael killed Laurie, fulfilling his mission or whatever, and then went back to the Haddonfield house and built a dungeon? And somehow he didn’t notice and kill the TV crew building a fake dungeon right next to his real dungeon? I guess I can accept that he would return home, but I don’t like the idea that he has nothing to do now, so he just builds a dungeon. 

But I’m getting too nitpicky with the series if I’m just arguing that a movie shouldn’t exist. I just wanted to point out that it’s too much like a Jason movie. Once I’m past that, if it’s done well, this movie could still work. But it doesn’t. It’s not scary or funny enough to justify its existence.

Some of the Busta Rhymes stuff is stupid enough to be enjoyable, but just like with H20, this just doesn’t feel like a Halloween movie. If I want to watch a Jason-type character killing random attractive young people, I’ll just watch that. And the focus on the early internet stuff just makes the movie laughably dated. 

Watching every one of these movies over the course of a week was definitely a bad idea, as I was very sick of it all by the time I got to this one. But it seems like everyone else was done with the series, as well, because they decided to jump on the remake bandwagon after this one, putting the keys to the franchise into Rob Zombie’s grimy hands.

Random Thoughts

H20

I never knew the phrase 20 Years Later was actually part of the title. As if H20 wasn’t clear enough. But we’re talking about a movie that thinks its audience is so fucking stupid that when it gives the date of “October 31,” the filmmakers felt the need to add “Halloween” to it. 

Why do I feel like I’ve seen Josh Hartnett wear a very loose, untucked shirt and loosened tie in five different movies? Was this look in his contract next to the “must have weird, shitty haircut” demand?

Two characters are straight up watching Scream 2.

There’s a Jason mask, and a dude dies while getting a corkscrew a la Crispin Glover in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

The mask looks like shit in this one.

Resurrection

Couldn’t all of these have this subtitle?

If H20 was the Scream version of Halloween, then Resurrection is the Friday the 13th version.

This is the second film in a row that he lowers himself down from an overhead pipe using one hand. It makes no physical sense, and it looks goofy.

The eyebrows are way too prominent on this mask.

What the fuck is going on here? 

Somebody apparently told Busta Rhymes that whispering his lines might mask his lack of natural talent. It doesn’t.

The emphasis on technology is hilarious. First off, an online only streaming show, while slightly predictive, would be worthless in 2002, when most people were still dealing with dial-up in their homes. 

I hope you like early 2000s webcam quality footage, because you'll be seeing a lot of it.

The house party that stops to watch this shit is the most unrealistic part of the movie.

So the dungeon is fake, but what about the dungeon behind the fake dungeon? Myers was clearly living there. So there's an actual dungeon under the house?

My feelings about Busta Rhymes in this are all over the place. His acting in early scenes is distractingly bad, but then he starts talking shit while dressed as Michael Myers and it’s funny. Then he somehow survives and saves the day, but then starts spouting off one liners like he’s Schwarzenegger. Okay, he’s my favorite part of this stupid fucking movie.

"40 Days and 40 Nights" - Apparently My Sense of Humor Has Changed a Bit Since High School

*Reminder: I write these articles under the assumption that you’ve seen this movie. So if you need a summary, go check IMDb.

I Do Have Movies in My Collection that I Am Ashamed of...but I Won’t Sell Them.

As I’ve gotten into a weekly groove with my new format for this sight, I may have forgotten a part of the point of this new theme: writing about movies I’m embarrassed to own. The last couple months I’ve only written about movies that I am proud to own, and I end up liking most of them even more after re-visiting them. This week, however, I came across a comedy I thought I still liked and ended up kind of hating it.

Typically, I don’t like writing about comedies (I will not write a traditional review of a comedy), because sense of humor is completely subjective. But I wanted to write about 40 Days and 40 Nights because it showed me that my sense of humor has changed more than I thought over the last fifteen years.

This might be obvious, as most movies we love as children we acknowledge, as adults, are actually quite bad. But we tend to still love them because of nostalgia. For instance, I can admit that Batman Forever is a lesser, even a bad, Batman movie. But I will always love that movie because I was obsessed with it as a kid. The same goes for most comedies. Sticking with Jim Carrey, I know that Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls is a crappy sequel to an already stupid comedy. But I still find it funny. Perhaps it depends on the type of comedy, but more on that later.

So I don’t like 40 Days and 40 Nights, but there’s no way I’m getting rid of the DVD. First off, physical media is becoming a little less common as most people would rather just stream everything they watch. Second, a new copy of the film is a little over six bucks on Amazon right now, and a used copy is going for just over a dollar. It’s not worth trying to sell, not to mention, who the fuck is buying a used copy of this movie? Finally, I refuse to go through the embarrassment of a secondhand store turning me down again. Years ago, it made sense for me to take a dozen or so DVDs to a video/CD/videogame place and sell them. It would basically be beer money for the weekend (I was in college). I didn’t care if I only got fifty cents for some of them; I just wanted them gone. And then I put the Planet of the Apes remake on the counter. “We’re not taking this one,” the cashier told me. “Nothing. Really?” I asked. “Yup,” he responded as he slid it back to me. I left, ashamed, and I still have that DVD in my collection. After that, selling them just didn’t make sense anymore. Perhaps one day someone will put on a yard sale, and I’ll put fifty or so in a box and ask for ten bucks for the whole thing or something. But, for now, selling any of my collection, especially individually, is not worth the trouble. So 40 Days and 40 Nights is safe. Hey, maybe I’ll come back around and like it again in fifteen years.

Even Don Draper would not have gotten away with this.

I’ve Outgrown Sex Comedies.

The only way I can explain why I like some comedies from my youth, but now hate this one is the subject matter. In this case, it’s basically a teen sex comedy placed in a sort of adult world. I haven’t revisited many sex comedies that I liked when I was younger, so I’m not sure if it’s just this one or not. Maybe I need to watch American Pie again and see what’s up (but I don’t own that one…). With 40 Days sex is treated like it’s a drug everyone is addicted to. It basically takes the line “Sex is a drug” and makes it literal. So when Josh Hartnett gives up all manner of ejaculation, he starts acting like a twitchy drug addict. I guess I found that funny when this first came out (and I was in high school), but not it just seems stupid. Yes, everyone likes sex and ejaculating, and perhaps people can get a bit antsy or angry when they go without it, but to turn into a quivering meth addict seemed stupid to me, not funny.

Sex comedies also always suffer from the passage of time, mainly because the culture changes. But this is why most sex comedies take place in high school, a moment in life when most people don’t feel the need to follow society’s rules. This is why 40 Days is unique. Hartnett works for an internet ad agency (this movie came out in 2002, the era when all movies featured young people working for internet businesses); he’s not a high school student. If his co-workers didn’t factor into his vow of abstinence, this wouldn’t be a big deal. But when you introduce high school sex stuff into an adult workplace (in 2002, no less), it’s impossible to ignore how inappropriate, not to mention illegal, it all is.

First off, the entire office, boss included, get way too involved in Hartnett’s sex, or lack of sex, life. There’s the gambling, which happens in offices all the time, but not usually at a co-worker’s expense. Second, no way would it be accepted for an entire office to talk to a co-worker about sex. It’s one thing for work buddies to bring it up, but eventually the females in the office start conspiring, with one offering to straight up have sex with Hartnett to win the money (but it’s for charity, so it’s okay?), and two of them agreeing to a 3-way with him. The treatment of women in the film is problematic enough, but propositioning a guy to win a bet is just wrong. Finally, Griffin Dunn plays the one of the most inappropriate bosses in movie history. He thinks doing the abstinence thing will make his wife want to have sex with him. She doesn’t, and he turns in a sexual harassment monster at work. He fingers fruit slices because they look like vaginas. He looks up an employee’s skirt. He masturbates at work while the entire office waits outside the bathroom door. And there are no repercussions for any of this behavior. Every single person in that office should have been fired.

But it’s a comedy, right? Sure, but sexual harassment has become painfully unfunny. What’s crazy is that this movie doesn’t take place in the 60s when this sort of behavior might have been slightly plausible. It takes place in 2002. Things were different then, but sexual harassment was not tolerated to this degree. But what do I know? I never worked for an internet company in the early days of web businesses. Maybe it truly was a sexual free-for-all in all these offices. But I doubt it.

Oh, and I almost forgot: Josh Hartnett gets raped by his ex-girlfriend in this movie because she wants to exert power over him...and win the money. The only consequence of this is that Hartnett’s love interest wants nothing to do with him afterward. Shouldn’t the cops have been called? It’s not like he got drunk and had sex with her. He was handcuffed to a bed, sleeping. How is this okay? And why is his new girlfriend so pissed? Yes, he had sex with his ex, but he clearly had no choice in the matter. She saw that he was handcuffed. Shouldn’t she have been more pissed off with his ex? You know, the rapist? Also, imagine if the gender roles were swapped. Something tells me there would have been outrage when this was released. But since it’s a woman, what’s the big deal, right? This is the same kind of double standard that makes it seem like it’s okay for female teachers to have sex with their students. That whole plot point near the end just confirmed to me that this movie is bad, and I should have noticed that, even as a high schooler.

"Does my baggy, long-sleeved undershirt look stupid?"
"Only if you think that newsie hat I wore in the previous scene looked stupid."

This Movie Made Me Pay Attention to the Wardrobe, and That’s Not a Good Thing.

I remember wondering what was going on with the wardrobe back when I first watched this movie, and I just chalked it up to my ignorance of fashion or what’s cool. I’ve always been a T-shirt and jeans guy, occasionally dabbling with a button-up shirt from time to time. So when I saw Hartnett rocking a long-sleeved undershirt for his Lacoste shirt multiple times, I just assumed that was a thing. And when I saw an office dude wearing a turtleneck, I just assumed that was normal in offices? And when I saw the bagel guy dressed like stoner prospector, I assumed that was how “drug” people in cities dressed. And when Shannyn Sossamon dressed like an 80s Communist chimney sweep poet, I just assumed ladies dressed differently in the internet business world.

As far as I can tell, looking back, none of these were things. As much as we like to apply a theme to certain time periods (everyone dressed like hippies in the 60s, or everyone dressed like they were in a music video in the 80s, etc.), there really aren’t distinctive clothing themes for time periods anymore. Sure, there are changing fashion trends, but thanks to the internet (which is ironically present throughout the film), embarrassing clothing choices are identified much faster now and don’t get a chance to take hold. (Remember when everyone thought male rompers were becoming a thing last year? They did exist, but I imagine 90% of sales were the result of people buying them as a joke. Perhaps without the internet, the male romper could have been like Hammer pants in the 90s.)

I don’t hate this movie because of the wardrobe or anything, but I just couldn’t understand so many of the choices when I rewatched it. I just wonder if this wardrobe person just thought they were going to start some trends with this movie or something. Thankfully, they failed.

Random Thoughts

The DVD cover is one of those gloriously lazy romantic comedy covers. This movie could be about anything, literally anything. Do these two rob a bank and go on a killing spree? Do they switch bodies? Are they undercover cops trying to expose the rampant sexual harassment going on in local offices? And the title doesn’t help explain it. Any of those things could occur over the course of forty days. At least the actual poster made it clear that sex was a part of the plot.

This is at 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is pretty high, in my opinion. Did some critics simply like that it was a teen sex comedy set in an adult world? Even if the adults acted like high school students?

Speaking of which, Ebert liked it. But since I once liked this movie, I’m counting this one.

I hate these people. All of them.

I somehow almost forgot that this movie features a literal sea of breasts and a washing machine bursting open and spraying semen out. I don't really have anything to say about that, but I felt the need to acknowledge that those things are in the movie.

Remember when Josh Hartnett was a thing? I never really understood it. I like him as an actor, but as a heartthrob or whatever, I never got it.

Why did they cast an office dude that looks so much like Paulo Costanzo. Isn’t one Paulo Costanzo-lookin’ dude enough for this movie?

According to Rotten Tomatoes, this is semi-autobiographical. Was it written after this dude was fired from his day job amid three dozen separate sexual harassment investigations?

Looking back, I guess I just can’t get on board with the premise. I can’t imagine people getting this worked up over a dude abstaining from all forms of sex for Lent.

At the very least, I learned from looking up the cast that the dude from Pete and Pete (bagel guy) is now primarily an electrician for movies.

Oh, and Hartnett does still act, but nothing high profile in years. But I think that’s self-imposed.