Halloween: Resurrection

The “Halloween” series manages to pull something off that I really think is worth noting – it takes just six movies and creates three trilogies.

In theory, the series is at least three movies short of the tri-trilogy experience, but sure enough, there they all are.

First, there’s the Myers Family Trilogy, which consists of parts 1, 2, and 4. The first film opens with Michael Myers killing his sister, and ends with the evil inside Michael passed to Jamie, who kills her foster mother while dressed in a clown suit that looks just like Michael’s.

People may argue the merits of part 4, but for better or for worse, it closes off the series with a nice twist and completes the character arcs of everyone involved. Michael is dead, but the evil inside him is triumphant and ongoing. And Loomis, who spent the last several years keeping the evil inside Michael off the streets, will probably spend the rest of his life trying to do the same for Jamie.

It’s a downer of a conclusion to be sure, but it works.

The second trilogy would be the Jamie trilogy, which uses movies 4, 5, and 6. Of the three trilogies, this one is the weakest and the least satisfying, because our main heroes all die (both Jamie and Loomis are, presumably, not coming back) and our villain just sort of survives because of some strange cult thing that doesn’t make any sense.

Since H20 doesn’t pick up where 6 left off, the story just ends, with Michael out and about. There are no twists, no ironies, and in the end whatever ideas the series has introduced up this point are null and void.

Even the strong ending of part 4 is painfully muted, as Jamie doesn’t really go on to do much of anything except run, and scream, and ultimately end up kidnapped and deceased.

There are probably those that would argue that part 4 couldn’t really exist without parts 1 and 2, but I don’t think that’s the case. Loomis enters the story of the original “Halloween” much the way he enters 4 – with a history that we learn about through his frequent monologues.

And really, everything you need to know to enjoy part 4 is laid out for you as the movie wears on. Granted, watching the movies this way weakens the story, but honestly, it wasn’t that great to begin with.

Finally, there’s the Laurie Trilogy, which tracks our heroine from the day she meets Michael to the day she cuts off his head, twenty years later via 1, 2, and H20.

The obvious question is, of course, whether or not this Trilogy is better than the Myers family trilogy.

If you want my honest assessment… the answer is no.

Take the movies at face value, the ending of H20 ties up the story fairly completely. Myers has had his head cut off, and so is therefore very dead. And Laurie, having separated Michael from his head, can finally allow the nightmares in her mind to die.

Which leaves just one problem – Loomis is still dead.

This is an aspect of the story that the Jamie trilogy got right, though they fumbled the ball badly in part six. Loomis is a part of the “Halloween” story, and an extremely important one. He was part of what made the Halloween movies better than the average slasher tale. Unlike most movies of this ilk, which involve people dying one by one with no knowledge that something is even wrong, Loomis is on the case from the word, “Go,” in the “Halloween” movies.

To some extent, the movies were more suspenseful because it wasn’t just a case of, “Who will Michael kill next?” Instead, we had Loomis to root for, as he tried to stop Michael before Michael could do any more harm.

But H20 just took on the standard slasher formula – Michael kills, and we wait to see whom he’s going to kill next.

H20 had a lot of ways they could have dealt with this. Loomis’s nurse, instead of dying, could have lived and used Loomis’s work to locate and stop Michael. One of the cops could have figured out that Michael was the root cause of the deaths early in the movie, and gone on a Michael hunt, essentially filling in the Loomis role.

For that matter, if one of the cops had called Laurie and told her to be on her guard, she could have been preparing for what might come starting in the early minutes of the movie.

But no.

In the end, the only satisfaction that comes from H20 is the knowledge that Laurie has fought and defeated the demon that’s plagued her for the last 20 years.

There’s only one problem: She didn’t actually kill him.

I think if the series had actually coasted to a stop with the death of Michael in H20, you could make a stronger case for Laurie Trilogy. But with the awareness that H20 isn’t the end, fans of the series are denied a real win. And so is Laurie.

Instead, we get another movie, “Halloween: Resurrection,” and whatever good was created in H20 is rendered moot.

As “Resurrection” opens, we get a nice long credits sequence, which goes on and on and on and doesn’t feature a pumpkin, or flashes from the rest of the movie, or anything really. It’s just a bunch of words.

Then the credits fade out, and we’re in a long tunnel, and Laurie’s voice says, “You’ve heard of the tunnel.”

This particular tunnel?

Guess not. Laurie continues: “The one we all go through? At the end there’s a door. And waiting for you on the other side of that door is either heaven or hell.”

As Laurie is saying this, we actually move from the tunnel, wherever that was, into a hospital corridor.

She concludes: “This is that door.”

And then, there we are, with Laurie in the hospital. Her hair is long again, and since it wasn’t this long in the last movie, we must assume she’s been in the hospital for a while. Oh, sorry, “Grace Andersen Sanitarium,” according to the sign out front.

Inside, two nurses yammer back and forth, filling us in on just how, exactly, a movie series with a dead villain can have another movie.

In short, the paramedic who went to go get the dead Michael Myers all by himself found out that Michael wasn’t dead. Michael crushed the paramedic’s larynx, slapped his Michael mask on the guy, traded clothing with him, and then wandered off into the woods.

Laurie, in turn, chopped the head off of the paramedic.

I’m torn between wanted to applaud the guy who came up with that explanation, as it alllmost works… or tearing it apart.

Because the movie shows us Michael, wearing a paramedic uniform, walking through the crowd of people and into the woods. Which means no one stopped him and went, “Hey, YOU’RE NOT BOB!”

Even though he’s carrying a massive kitchen knife.

On top of that, the paramedic had a minute or two where he could reach out to Laurie, appearing to plead for his life. You know what you do in that situation? You take off your mask. That pretty much clears up the whole Who I Am issue pretty well.

But, whatever. Points for trying really hard.

The two nurses go into Laurie’s room. She hasn’t said a word in years, say the nurses. She’s a suicide threat, they’ve found her on the roof before, and so on and so forth and she’s all crazy-like.

The shove a couple pills in her mouth and head out the door.

At which point, Laurie spits the pills out, and stuffs them inside the doll she’s holding in her lap.

She stands up, looks outside, and there’s Michael, standing on the lawn.

Oh wait, he’s not there anymore. So maybe we’re seeing Laurie’s delusions again.

Outside, a security guard comes across a gate that’s open, even though it’s clearly NOT supposed to be open, based on the large lock hanging off of it.

The guard, who deserves whatever he gets, does NOT radio in and let everyone know that the gate is open. Instead he yells out, “Anyone out there?” When no one answers, he lights up a cigarette.

And there’s a dude with a clown mask behind him. The guard jumps, then asks Harold how he got out, and who Harold is supposed to be.

Harold replies that he’s John Wayne Gacy, and then goes on to talk some more about John, he crimes, and when he was put to death. The kindly guard starts walking Harold somewhere. Maybe back to the hospital. Maybe not.

Out in the woods, Michael is standing there, wearing his mask.

Here’s a thought – how does Michael keep finding the same mask, over and over again?

To be fair, in this continuity, the first two movies take place over one night. So that makes sense. But his mask had to have gotten some severe damage in the fire at the end of 2. But if he got up and walked away, there was probably time to pick up another mask that looked the same as the one he stole previously.

Which I guess he then held onto for 20 years. So it made sense that he’d still have the mask in H20.

But he stuck that mask on the paramedic, so where did he get this new one? Ebay? Did he use his own credit card?

Back inside the hospital, another security guard points out to our previous security guard that he sees someone in the basement. They both assume it’s Harold, of course, and head down to locate him.

No, of course it’s not Harold.

As the two guards wander the basement, they pass a snack machine. The Worst Guard Ever says that he skipped dinner, and stops to get a tasty snack. The Other Guard heads into the next room to find Harold.

WGE gets his snack, and as he starts eating, he hears his now-dead buddy screaming. So WGE heads into the next room, once again not calling for help, using his radio, pulling a gun, or even looking for a heavy object to fight with.

He does, however, hold onto his snack cake. Possibly to bribe the murderer with.

WGE sees a load of laundry in the dryer, and stops the dryer to investigate. Maybe he needs a napkin.

Instead he finds a head, so he panics, backs up, and trips over the body of his dead cohort. Which I guess he didn’t see lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

Meanwhile, behind him, Michael lowers himself from the ceiling. I have never in my life seen a basement with such high ceilings. It’s no wonder the residents of the building are crazy, they’re living an in M.C. Escher drawing.

Michael kills WGE, and then goes a-wandering, at one point passing by what I at first thought was Harold’s room, but which I guess is actually an office. I have no idea. Either way, Harold is in there.

Harold sees Michael go wandering by, and Harold puts his clown mask back on.

Michael goes to Laurie’s door, pounds on it a couple of times, and then walks through it. Literally. Like he just walks through it and it crumbles around him. I have no idea what to say to that.

Once he’s in Laurie’s room, Michael looks at Laurie’s bed. Her doll and a couple of pillows are sitting there. Michael raises his knife, I guess to stab the empty bed, and Laurie clocks him with a lamp.

Laurie runs out the door and down the hall, while Michael stalk-walks after her.

Laurie heads to the roof, and then we don’t see her, and then we see Michael, and Michael sees Laurie’s robe hanging over the edge of the roof. So he walks over there, and then turns around, and sees Laurie, who says, “Hello, Michael.”

She presses a button, and a winch that’s on the roof for some reason loops around Michael’s ankle and lifts him in the air.

Laurie says, “I knew you’d come for me sooner or later. What took you so long?”

Hey, here’s a question – why in the world wasn’t every police force in existence looking for Michael? It’s been three years, surely someone should have encountered him, right?

Laurie picks up Michael’s knife, which fell on the ground, and says, “You failed, Michael. Want to know why? Because I’m not afraid of you. But what about you? Are you afraid of me? Are you afraid to die, Michael?”

Laurie starts cutting the rope that’s holding Michael in the air, and Michael starts pulling at his mask. Laurie says she has to be sure, so she reaches for his mask and gives it a tug.

Michael lets her pull for a second, then grabs her hand.

The rope snaps. Michael and Laurie go over the edge of the roof. Michael grabs the edge of the roof, holding them both in the air, and stabs Laurie with the knife.

Laurie kisses Michael on the mask, then lets go and falls.

She lands on the ground maybe two or three stories below.

I’ve gotta be honest. Her cunning plan was pretty weak. We’ve already seen Michael take six bullets to the chest and fall two stories… at which point he got back up and continued his murder spree. I seriously doubt three stories would have done the trick.

Michael heads back through the hospital, passing by Harold, who is still reading while wearing his clown mask. Michael opens up Harold’s door and hands Harold the bloody knife. Harold starts reciting Michael’s history, from the first movie up until the last few minutes, while we watch Michael walk off down the basement hallway.

Harold ends his speech with, “Now he’s back,” and here comes the title: “Halloween: Resurrection.”

You know, I’ve got to interject two thoughts here:

The first: If this were a short film that someone put together, just to give the series a better sendoff, this wouldn’t be half-bad. For that matter, if they wanted to re-release H20 with this as the ending, it might even make for a reasonably satisfying experience.

But it’s not. It’s the start of a new something-or-other, and now Michael is about to head out and, what? If he follows his normal patterns, he should head out and locate John, Laurie’s son from the last movie.

But I’m going to take a wild guess and say that isn’t going to happen.

So instead, Michael just killed Laurie. And, it should be noted, not on Halloween night. So now he’s off to kill… who? Just some random people?

What’s the point?

Ah well.

The movie heads off to Haddonfield University, where we get to watch part of a psychology class, concluding with a girl named Sara answering a question about something in our inner psyche that’s called, “The Shadow.” I’d transcribe the whole thing, but really, are we going to pretend this movie has themes? Probably not.

Later, Sara is driving along on a little scooter, while some girl calls out to her to wait up. This is Jen. Sara asks Jen what Jen signed them up for. Jen says they need to find Rudy.

Which they do. Rudy is, I guess, taking a cooking class. Which means at the end of the scene, he gets to jam a knife into a pumpkin.

Jen has Sara read Sara’s email, where we finally get to find out just what is going on. It seems that the three of them are going to be part of a Dangertainment (their word, not mine) team, where I guess they’re going to investigate something.

Ah. Some creepy dude has just come on and informed us via a monologue that they’ll be in the Myers house.

Sara says she needs to send a quick email. It goes to Deckard, who I guess she met in a chat room somewhere. He’s a high school student. He has a friend named Scott, who hassles Deckard about the fact that he and Sara have never met, and informs Deckard that he does not have an actual relationship with Sara.

Scott is correct, even though Deckard tries to convince him otherwise.

Oh, sorry, Deckard’s real name is Myles. Deckard is just a screen name. Okay then.

And now it’s later, and Jen, Sara, and Rudy, and three other people are told that they’re going to investigate Michael Myers’s house, because they’ve been selected. But first, Tyra Banks interviews them so we can know why they’re doing it.

Oh, and there’s, like, a host of the show, which is going to be broadcast on the Internet. Wow. The Internet. Everyone knows how many people just sit around, watching live broadcasts on The Internet. For a web site that no one has ever heard of.

I’d talk about why they’re doing it, but really, three of these dudes don’t even have names yet, and we met Sara first. Which means she’s going to live, everyone else is going to die, and all I’m really going to be doing for the next hour is rattling off a death order.

While Sara is being interviewed, a photographer knocks over a light, which explodes. Sara screams, and a glass across the room shatters.

This makes The Host very happy. For some reason.

Later, at the hotel, The Host watches a Kung Fu movie. He’s kind of put out when there’s a knock on his door, and it’s Sara, who wants to drop out. The Host tries to convince her that everyone else is a poser, and she’s real, and that’s what the Internet audience wants.

He also says some stuff about being famous, and the American dream. And fear. Do you care? No? Very well. I guess we can get excited over the fact that we learn that The Host’s name is Freddie. Does that help? No?

The next day, Sara and Jen and one of the other contestants go shopping. While trying on a shirt, Sara looks in a mirror, and sees… Michael Myers! She jumps and turns around. Michael isn’t there.

In his room, Myles pulls up Sara on the Internet and looks at her video from the day before. He tells Scott that he needs to stay home and watch Sara’s first episode.

Scott tells him that they really need to go to some epic party. Myles finally agrees.

And now it’s exposition time! Freddie explains to the “reporters” that they will each have a little camera attached to them, and the Internet audience can choose whichever camera they want to watch. So if they want to be seen, they had better be interesting.

You know, if you could swap between viewpoints while watching “Halloween: Wasn’t This About Family At One Point?” or watch everyone at once, like the movie “Timecode,” this could be really interesting. Alas.

Okay, so, we’re in the Myers house. The camera guy is rigging cameras, while Tyra Banks hassles him remotely. Eventually, Tyra gets bored and goes to have some coffee.

Inside, Michael walks past a “camera,” which I guess is supposed to make this movie more creepy, because it’s shot using low-resolution video footage.

Michael picks up the camera, and somehow arranges the tripod, which has sharp, stake-y feet, so that you can see the camera dude get stabbed in the throat. While, of course, Tyra Banks just happens to be looking somewhere else.

(Tyra Banks has the character name Nora, by the way. But we’re going to keep calling her Tyra Banks, because up to this point, no one has called Tyra anything at all.)

At any rate, having stabbed the camera dude and dragged him away, Michael leaves the camera lying on the floor, and Tyra, who is finally looking at the bank of video monitors again, compliments the camera guy on his choice of camera angles. She neglects to mention the fact that the legs of the tripod are also in the shot, and are probably a tripping hazard.

The Dangertainment van pulls up. Freddie is driving. Oh yeah, this is a high-class endeavor.

For some reason, the press is there. Or rather, clearly the press is there so that Freddie doesn’t sound stupid talking to himself as he explains that this is going to be totally, “real,” that nothing in the house has been tampered with, and that no one is allowed to leave until the show is over.

So, the opening of Halloween was, what, maybe ten minutes long? Tops? To go in the house, go to the kitchen, get a knife, go up the stairs, stab the sister to death, and go out again.

And we’ve got six people going into the house. So unless they literally scout every single nook and cranny for possible loose change, everyone should be out in… twenty minutes? Tops?

Oh, I guess I should mention that Michael is in the window upstairs. Since we, the audience, are already aware that he’s hanging out in his house (and man, I hope he stopped to grab a dog for lunch) everyone should be dead in the next three minutes.

This is going to be one short movie.

All the reporters gear up, Freddie blows an air horn, and we, the audience, get to go into nausea mode, as the movie slips between regular film, “video,” people-cams, and a couple of times, yep, they do go into a four-quadrant screen so you can see everything and everyone at once.

Man, I got a question already – the house is rigged with a few cameras, right? So how is it that no one has spotted Michael, yet?

Everyone walks in, and various opinions on what to do next are spouted.

Sara, Jen, and Rudy think they should do some actual exploring.

Rudy notes that the house probably has a huge kitchen. Which is why I guess they showed him in a cooking class, earlier. Does that count as character development? Really?

Rudy opens up the spice rack and smells the fennel. Yes, he really does note that he’s smelling the fennel, and not some other spice picked at random. This is important people. He is NOT smelling the mint, or the celery salt. It’s fennel, and don’t you forget it.

He makes Sara smell it as well, and they both note that it smells fresh.

Which means, what, exactly? That Michael, dog-eatin’ “he got hungry” Michael, opted to steal some fresh spices when he decided to hide out in his old house.

Michael Myers. He loves killing his relatives. And fresh fennel?

Rudy also finds a big knife, but Sara points out that the knife Michael used to murder his family should be in an evidence locker somewhere. Yeah, Sara? You want to start making sense now?

Okay, pop quiz: Where’s is Laurie Strode’s son?

Yeah. I thought so.

Sara opens up a pantry door and she and Rudy find… duh-DUH-DUUUH. A high chair. Everyone piles into the room to comment on how Michael’s family probably used to feed Michael in that chair.

Well, maybe. But it’s probably more likely that Laurie was using that chair last. You know? Laurie? Died at the start of the picture? Sister of Michael? She has a son that Michael isn’t looking for, even though it’s Halloween?

I mean, I get that this flick as abandoned the continuity of the other movies, but now it seems like it can’t remember things that happened less than an hour ago, timetable-wise.

Over at another house, a party rages, and Myles and Simon wander around dressed like characters from Pulp Fiction.

Myles, who clearly isn’t all that interested in the party, wanders off and finds an office with a computer and a really, really, really big wall-mounted monitor. So he fires up the ‘puter so he can see his imaginary online girlfriend, Sara.

(I must note, however, the oddest thing. As Myles heads into the office, the camera lingers on two dudes, dressed up as football players. They dance together for several seconds, with no women to speak of anywhere in sight. Then they leap in the air and bump chests. This would never happen in any version of reality, ever.)

The movie then hops over to nighttime. It seems that darkness has fallen rather suddenly, and a bunch of trick-or-treaters are walking up to the Myers house for some reason.

Oh. The reason is to put a lit pumpkin on the porch. Okay.

Inside the dark house, everyone lights candles and lanterns and flashlights.

Jen and one of the other guys go up the stairs, and head into Michael’s older sister’s room. The boy describes exactly what happened on the opening of the first Halloween, and tries to get Jen to flash his camera.

Jen stands up and moves for her shirt, slowly easing it up while Michael peeks in the doorway. Then she stops, in order to taunt the audience, who just want something – anything – to happen.

Back at the party, Myles is still watching the webcast, and he says, “There was someone in the hall,” in case people were sleeping during that bit.

Some dude and the girl he’s fooling around with launch themselves into the room, and Myles asks if they want to watch with him. The guy says no. The girl says yes.

Back at the Myers house, we get to watch Guy We Don’t Care About and Girl We Don’t Care About banter about the fact that they aren’t going to fool around.

Downstairs, Rudy and Sara talk until a girl screams upstairs. They both run up, trying to locate Jen, and Rudy manages to NOT see Michael in one room.

Then they locate Jen, who was Just Kidding, so everyone gets sort of mad at her.

Out in the van, Freddie and Tyra Banks are drinking wine and toasting themselves for their genius idea, which has probably generated no money, as I don’t see any sort of advertising going on. Freddie feels they are very successful, though what it is they are successful at doing, besides sticking a bunch of teenagers in an old house, I have no idea.

Inside, Dude Who Wanted Jen to Flash Him tells a mirror (well, and the camera attached to his head, I guess) that he’s going to “Get her back for that.” At which point, Michael bursts through the mirror and grabs him, and he screams like a little girl with a skinned knee.

In the van, Freddie and Tyra toast, while the Dude Who Wanted Jen to Flash Him gets a knife to the head. Freddie and Tyra miss the knife going in, but do his that his camera goes out. So they find a new camera view to follow and then toast, “To Dangertainment.”

Jen, Sara, and Rudy, who I guess didn’t hear their now-dead companion die, sit in a bedroom while Jen notes, “This must be the bed where he was conceived.”

I don’t even know how to respond to that.

Sara goes into the closet, encounters a mask, freaks out, and traps herself in the closet. Somehow. Rudy breaks in, in a moment that’s meant to remind us of the original Halloween. Only it mostly reminds us how lame this movie is.

Sara comes out of the closet, and behind her, we see that the Halloween mask is on a mannequin inside the closet. Oookaaay.

In the basement, the people we don’t care about almost make out, but don’t.

Upstairs, Rudy finds coloring books that are scribbled on in a manner that suggests Michael was, like, way disturbed. Then he notes that this is way too easy, and that this stuff should be missing.

He asks Sara to figure out why it’s all still there.

Jen asks where Dude Who Wanted Jen to Flash Him went, and then determines he’s probably planning to scare her.

In the basement, the People We Don’t Care About find a giant locked door in the floor, which the guy unlocks with a massive metal key everyone found in the kitchen earlier.

(I suppose I should take a second to note that while all this has been going on, over at the party, Myles has had more and more people join him in the computer room, where they all sit around watching the Michael Myers Internet Program.)

The People We Don’t Care About head down into the door in the floor, and they find a large cement room with a doll lying down there, and a bunch of chains. The girl describes the room thusly: “This whole place looks like some sort of sadistic playpen.”

The girl realizes that because of the fact that they’re in a locked subbasement with chains on the walls, there aren’t any cameras. Except, of course, for the cameras they’re wearing.

So she pulls off his camera, and her camera, and makes her move, because there is something seriously wrong with her.

Making out ensues.

At the folks at the party where Myles continues to rock the computer give out a cry of joy.

Back in the subbasement, the people we don’t care about continue to fool around, when suddenly a wall crumbles behind them and a bunch of body parts and skeletons pour out.

In the van, Freddie and Tyra cheer.

In the basement, the guy and girl freak out, right up until the guy picks up an “arm,” and sees a tag on it that says, “Made in Taiwan.”

Somewhere else in the house, Michael continues to wander around, not running into anyone else despite the fact that there are five other people and it is just not a large house at all.

And then, suddenly, behind Michael, we see another Michael. So Michael One turns around, and it turns out that Michael One is actually Freddie, dressed up like Michael.

Michael two is, of course, Michael. Only Freddie thinks it’s the camera guy, so he berates Michael, VERY loudly, and tells him that it’s going to ruin the effect if people see them together.

He demands that “the camera guy” go out and help Tyra in the van.

Sadly, Michael does not stab Freddie over and over and over again until Freddie shuts up. Instead, Michael heads out to the van to do some stabbing on Tyra. Poor Tyra, who finally gets called by her character name, Nora. I still don’t care. They waited this long to give her a name, she gets to be Tyra. I’m pretty sure she’ll be dead the next time we see her, regardless.

Down in the subbasement, the boy and girl we don’t care about decide they need to go find Freddie, which should be the easiest thing in the world. All they have to do is pick up their cameras and threaten to blow the whole hoax wide open. But never mind.

The guy heads out of the basement, but the girl sees all the way through the wall, to yet another hole in the wall. Through which is some kind of underground chamber.

That’s a terrible explanation. Let’s try to get it to make sense.

Okay, first you have the house. Then there’s a basement under the house. Then there’s a subbasement chamber under the basement.

That subbasement chamber is contained inside a really, really, really, really massive chamber that has, I guess, been sitting directly under the Myers house for years. And, surprisingly, despite the fact that it has had pretty much no upkeep, the Myers house has managed not to fall into it.

The girl wanders around the underground chamber, which has living rats in it. And dead rats in it. And half-eaten rats in it.

Along with a dirty mattress, a little doll with nails through its eyes, and a portable stove with cooking pots and a half-eaten, but still living, rat on it.

The girl freaks out, turns around, and hey! There’s Michael! Or Freddie! Which, come to think of it, might have been meant has a horror movie in-joke.

So I guess Michael didn’t go to the van after all. Instead, after being berated he headed to the basement for some reason. Perhaps to take a nap and cry?

Regardless, Michael slowly stalks after the girl we don’t really care about, while she runs away, eventually stopping when she gets to the end of a short passage in the chamber, which is closed off by a gate that’s been locked up.

One of the gate’s bars has been pulled down, so that it points outward, looking like a tetanus shot waiting to happen. Michael walks up behind her, grabs her, and shoves her onto the broken bar.

Back at the party, Scott says, “That was so fake!” while Myles claims that it was real, and the girl just really died.

Everyone else at the party laughs.

Upstairs at the Myers house, Rudy and Jen take hits off a bong. On camera. All right then.

In another room, Sara is paging through something, when Michael appears right behind her. She runs and finds Rudy and Jen. Well, okay, she just finds Rudy, and drags him back downstairs. Where the murderer supposedly is.

So, what, is Rudy bait? Sara is not a good friend. No sir.

Rudy and Sara look around, but Michael is gone. No, wait! Michael comes out of nowhere, and grabs Sara. It looks like our primary hero is going to die (what a twist, eh?) but then, no. Dude we don’t care about runs up behind Michael and hits him with the Arm from Taiwan.

Michael falls over, and starts complaining in Freddie’s voice. About the fact that he just got hit.

Freddie tells everyone to turn off their cameras, and then explains to them that the whole thing was faked because, “America don’t like reality, first of all.”

He goes on to state that he’s set things up so that everyone can get some decent money on “the back end,” whatever that means. I can honestly say I can think of no way he can set up another revenue stream for Dangertainment. No one is going to buy DVDs of a show that was pretty lame and available for free on the Internet in the first place. Which means no one is going to want merchandise. Or a soundtrack. Or a film based on the exploits of Dangertainment. Or a book.

Okay, let’s go ahead and try to get to the end of this thing, before all available logic just plain crumbles. Or crumbles some more.

(How much money did he sink into this thing, anyway? He had to buy the house, furnish the house, make everything in the house look like it hadn’t been touched in forty years, build a subbasement… the mind just boggles.)

Freddie tells Sara, Rudy, and the guy we don’t care about that they can leave if they want to, but that they should think about the money. And Freddie heads off to scare some more people, unaware that two of the three other “victims” are already dead.
Jen, meanwhile, finds the string for the stairs to the attic, pulls it, and sees the dead body of First Victim lying on the stairs.

She runs to the top of the stairs and screams a bunch, and Sara and Rudy basically go, “You’re not scary, Jen,” and then Michael Myers comes out of somewhere-or-other, and chops Jen’s head off.

And Sara and Rudy kind of look at it, as if to go, “Whaaa?”

And at the party, someone says it was all done digitally, while Myles is all no way you guys she was really killed. So he picks up a phone and calls 911.

Sara, Rudy, and the dude who maybe I should have tried to figure out his name, since he isn’t dead yet, try to get out the back door, only it’s locked. From the outside. Somehow.

Meanwhile, Jen’s head is just lying there on the floor, looking exceptionally fake.

The three still-living kids run into the next room, and Rudy tries to break through the window, which is boarded over.

The dude I guess we kind of care about now picks up a camera and tries to fight off Michael with the tripod. Michael, in turn, stabs his knife into the wall, picks up the kid by the head, and crushes his skull.

Which is a move we haven’t seen since Halloween III, which didn’t have Michael in it as the villain. It’s confusing, really, as Michael’s never really been one for the slow death. Perhaps he changing things up for the cameras?

Rudy and Sara run, and Sara heads up the stairs – one of which breaks under her feet.

Michael starts walking towards her, swinging his knife, and Rudy walks up behind Michael and starts taunting him, trying to get Michael to walk away from Sara. Which is noble, but sort of dumb.

Michael walks after Rudy, and Sara escapes from the broken stair, goes upstairs, and locks herself into a room, then piles furniture up against the door.

Downstairs, Rudy runs into the kitchen. First he grabs a rolling pin and whacks Michael with it. But he’s not smart enough to KEEP doing that. Instead, he grabs a random spice and throws it in Michael’s eyes.

Don’t use fennel, dude! It’s the source of all his power!

Then he grabs a couple of knives and starts slashing the air, trying to intimidate a dude who, frankly, has a pretty impressive body count and a really high pain threshold and, lest we forget, has been shot many, many times and survived being on fire.

At the party Myles is on the phone with 911, trying to explain that he is not hoaxing the police.

Back in the kitchen, Rudy tries to fight Michael off, until Michael grabs his arms, lifts Rudy up, and stabs the knives through Rudy. And a door. Then he goes to get the knife Rudy referenced way earlier in the film, and stabs it through Rudy’s heart. And a door.

Which leaves Sara as the only current survivor.

Oh, except maybe for Tyra, who I guess is still sitting in the van, watching all this happen, and wondering how Freddie is pulling off all these special effects on-camera. Which reminds me – where did Freddie go, exactly?

Sara, trapped in a room, runs to the camera on the wall and starts begging for help.

Myles starts sending her messages through her phone, which appear one character at a time. Which is not how text messages work at all.

So now we get a bunch of little intercuts where, for example, someone at the party says, “Michael is coming up the stairs!” So Myles sends Sara a message that says, “Michael is coming up the stairs! Don’t scream.”

Then Sara screams.

Michael is headed for the door, so Myles tells Sara to go out the window, which she was, I guess, too stupid to think of before.

Sara heads out the window. Michael goes through the room, and pokes his head out the window, and starts slashing at Sara, who should have really jumped off the roof by now.

Instead she first kicks Michael, and then instead of kicking him a bunch more times, she goes UP the roof, to the attic. Where she finds the dead camera guy.

Myles sends her a message telling her that Michael has gone to his room, and that she should try to escape now.

So she heads down the attic stairs, which still have a dead body on them. She goes down the hallway, and Freddie grabs her and pulls her into the shadows, noting that, “Everybody’s dead.”

Dude. You have the keys. LEAVE AND CALL THE COPS.

Freddie goes on to ask Sara where Michael is. She says she doesn’t know. Except she does. Myles just told her.

Freddie says they need to go. I’m not even going to dignify that statement with a joke.

They head for the stairs, but Michael pops out and stops them. They all end up in a bedroom.

Freddie says, “You want to be on Dangertainment? Let’s see what you got.” And, no lie, he starts trying to pull Kung Fu moves on Michael. This works a grand total of once, and then Michael grabs him.

Meanwhile, Sara has grabbed a camera off the wall. She tries to use the camera cable to strangle Michael.

Here’s a thought, Sara – maybe you should have thought of the “rope” angle when you were trapped in a room on the second floor of the house.

Michael release Freddie, and throws Sara off his back.

Freddie despite being in the doorway and much closer to freedom, opts to start making Kung Fu noises. And then Kung Fu kicks Michael out the window.

Turns out, the camera cable was still wrapped around Michael’s neck. So Michael flies out the window, bounces off the roof, and then is hung by the cable wrapped around his neck.

Sara and Freddie head downstairs. Freddie notes that he “had no idea,” and that he “saw Michael’s room,” and that Michael must have been living down there, “for the last 20 years.”

You know what I’d kill for at this point? A timeline. Freddie clearly built the fake subbasement chamber, which means he had to have gone down into the larger chamber at some point. Where he should have noticed all the trash down there, and called the cops.

Only I guess he didn’t think it was important, or something. And where was Michael while they were building? Was he just out that whole time?

You could argue that Michael was off killing Laurie, but that took all of one night, and making that little chamber and rigging up the house with furniture and such had to take weeks. Where was Michael during all of that? Disneyland?

Myles sends Sara a message that Michael is still alive. He cut the cable he was hanging from.

Sara asks Myles where Michael is, and he messages them, “In the House!”

So, of course, Sara and Freddie turn around, and THERE’S MICHAEL, RIGHT THERE!

Michael stabs Freddie. A lot. Freddie dies.

Sara runs away, trying to get out all the doors, which are still all locked from the outside, however that works.

So she heads to the basement, where there is literally no chance of escape. Then she goes to the subbasement. Then into the chamber, where she finds the dead girl.

She turns around, and THERE’S MICHAEL!

So she finds a set of rungs, and climbs up them, and opens what looks like a manhole cover but I guess is pretty light, and she tries to get out, but Michael slashes her across the back of the leg.

So she kicks him and goes up anyway, which leads her to… you know, I have no idea. It looks like the garage, and there are a bunch of computer monitors in there. Oh, and Tyra’s dead body, which is hanging from the ceiling.

I guess I should mention that Sara throws a couple of objects on top of the manhole cover, or whatever it is. And one of them is leaking fluid. Which is probably gas. Which will probably be important in a minute or three.

About four seconds pass, while Sara looks at the computer monitors, which show a bunch of dead people.

Then she hears the squeak of a knife outside.

Um… how fast is Michael? Because he just ran through the large chamber, into the subbasement, went up the ladder to the basement, went up the basement steps, and then out of the house and into the yard in about fifteen seconds.

Dude should be in the Olympics.

Sara tries to get out the back door, which is locked. So instead she hides in a random corner.

So I guess maybe this is, what? A shed, instead of a garage? Which I guess is logical, but what is up with the manhole cover that leads into that massive underground chamber? Was the original owner using it for extra storage?

Michael looks at the bank of monitors, and sees that one of the monitors is showing him.

He goes to pull away some debris, and Sara pops out with a chainsaw, which immediately comes to life. That thing has a pretty impressive starter, I must say.

Sara screams out, “This is for Rudy. This is for Jen. This is for all of them!” You see? Even she didn’t think it was worth learning everyone’s name.

Sara starts stabbing Michael with the chainsaw. She accidentally cuts an electrical cable, which, yep, sparks on some gasoline and sets everything on fire.

Suddenly, her chainsaw stalls, and she tries to start it again. And it actually is one of those chainsaws that starts by yanking a cord, which makes her starting it earlier make even less sense than it did to begin with.

She can’t get it to work, so she just sort of throws it at Michael, who falls over. No wait. I’m sorry.

They BOTH fall over when the gasoline-powered mower explodes.

Sara wakes up first, only she’s trapped under random electronics.

Michael wakes up, grabs his knife, and gets ready to do some stabbing.

Freddie, who is less dead than I thought, bursts in, and calls out, “Trick or Treat,” followed by a dirty word. Which I guess is supposed to sound really cool, but it actually made me roll my eyes back in my head so far I could see part of my brain standing up, grabbing its hat, and yelling out, “That’s it! I’m out of here!”

Freddie grabs a shovel off the wall, and hits Michael with it.

The handle snaps in half, leaving Freddie with a long, pointed stick.

Seriously, y’all. Sara gets to be the final girl, but Freddie is the hero. That is just not okay.

Don’t get me wrong. I guess it’s sort of progressive to have a black man be the hero of a horror movie, but he’s pretty much the slimiest character ever.

Michael grabs Freddie and throws him into a wall, and it looks like Freddie might be down for the count… but no. Freddie pulls an electrical cable out of a nearby device, and shocks Michael with it.

Michael falls backward, ending up standing in a puddle of blood that appears to be about 1/8th of an inch deep. Which I guess is enough to do damage, as Freddie tosses his still-sparking cable into the puddle and Michael starts convulsing.

Freddie pulls all the electronics off of Sara, and they exit the shed with, “Hey Mikey! Happy Expletive Halloween!”

Yeah, I know, he doesn’t actually say the word Expletive. But trust me, the moment is no less silly. Remember, they’re leaving a garden shed, while Michael kind of hangs out, propped up on some cables. While the shed burns.

As drama goes, it’s kind of a non-starter.

Later, Sara is standing around a bunch of cop cars, when reporters show up. Myles send Sara a message that she’s alive, and they can see her on the news. Reporters start asking Sara for quotes, and she says, “Thank you Deckard. You saved my life.”

Everyone at the party congratulates Myles on saving two people out of a possible eight.

Reporters continue to hassle Sara, when Freddie appears, noting that Dangertainment is off the air. They ask him what happened to Michael Myers, and he replies: “Michael Myers is not a sound bite, a spin-off, a tie-in, some kind of celebrity scandal. Michael Myers is a killer shark in baggy overalls, that gets his kicks off of killing everything and everyone that he comes across. That’s all. We’re done dancing for these cameras.”

Someone asks how Freddie is feeling, and he says, “Feel this.” And then breaks a camera.

Later, Sara, who is still standing around and is not in an ambulance driving away for some reason, walks over to a fireman and points at a body bag. She wants to see Michael’s face.

He says, “I want to warn you ma’am, it’s not a pretty sight.”

He opens the bag, the director denies the audience the chance to see anything, and Freddie comes over and says, “You’re looking a little crispy over there, Mikey.”

He caps it off with, “Well, may he never, ever, rest in peace.”

Later, at what I’m guessing is the morgue, two dudes in white take the body to the autopsy doctor, and tell her she has a celebrity on her hands: Michael Myers.

She unzips the body bag, leaving the other body in the room to just lie around. Also, where did all the other dead people from the Myers house go, if not here? Do they think they can attach Jen’s head again?

We get to see – Michael’s mask, which is still on, but sort of melted. Which means that Sara didn’t get to see his face. So what was the point of that whole scene?

The doctor keeps on unzipping, and goes to pull off Michael’s mask, when Michael’s eyes pop open.

So, no one ever actually checked for a heartbeat, then?

And that’s the end of the series.

Which is probably for the best, because ultimately if the series had gone on, it would have been about Michael going to find John. And how Freddie, our new and way-unimproved Dr. Loomis, went to track him down.